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9,149 | There are a number of movies and cartoons that humorously have a hero saving the day by rescuing a cat from a tree (the first one that pops into my mind is in the movie The Incredibles). There are a TON of these kinds of scenes documented here at tvtropes . Do cats really get stuck in trees often enough for it to be used so much in movies? | The answer is yes, that cats do get stuck in trees and the reason they can't get themselves down is well established. More on that in a bit. As to whether it happens often enough to warrent such a strong featuring in the public psyche is a subjective question and one which is difficult to answer. But the concrete "Does it happen at all" is much easier; a Freedom of Information Request was submitted to North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service enquiring How many cats that were stuck up trees, did you rescue in 2010 and the answer (as you'll see in the link above) was Seven. Elsewhere, there has been a case of firemen having to fell a tree to rescue a stranded cat in Japan and a Tiger stuck in a tree at a zoo . Most cats (Including most big cats, domestic cats) climb trees very easily due to the shape of their claws allowing them to scale upwards very easily. However to get down they usually jump from the lowest point they can reach, edge down backwards, or scamper down forwards. Cats from the Genus Panthera and Leopardus are generally much better climbers and often live in trees, with some species (eg, the Margay) able to rotate their claws: When descending a tree trunk, the margay can go down headfirst, but
does not have to scamper down quickly like the majority of cat species
must. The long claws, broad feet and nimble toes, plus the fact that a
margay has the ability to rotate its feet 180 degrees to an outward
position, make this possible. The margay is also agile enough to grab
a branch with its long claws to prevent a serious fall when it does
make a mistake while in the tops of trees | {
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9,164 | It's May Day, while Communist regimes celebrated this day, others mourn . Specifically there are claims that communist governments have killed 80 to 100 million people in the last 100 years . Are communist governments directly responsible for over 80 million deaths? (directly means killed via execution, internment, work camps, etc. but would not count deaths theoretically due to a weakened economy) Communism. In less than 100 years, Communism has claimed more than 100
million lives. Today, it continues to enslave one-fifth of the world's
people. | The Black Book of Communism has communist government death totals at: U.S.S.R.: 20 million deaths China: 65 million deaths Vietnam: 1 million deaths North Korea: 2 million deaths Cambodia: 2 million deaths Eastern Europe: 1 million deaths Latin America: 150,000 deaths Africa: 1.7 million deaths Afghanistan: 1.5 million deaths This totals just over 94 million. These are the deaths committed by government agents against citizens of their own country. This source estimates the Chinese number between 50 and 78 million deaths and the Soviet number at 23 million which is similar in magnitude to the source above. | {
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9,180 | I've seen it many times in movies ; people not only forget something that happened, but they forget who they are entirely- including their name. A much-used plot device, retrograde amnesia occurs when a person forgets part or all of his or her past. Here is a list of movies (sorted by year) where people forget their own identity: I Love You Again (1940) Sullivan's Travels (1941) Random Harvest (1942), in which Ronald Colman's character suffers from the condition not once but twice. Crime Doctor (1943) Anastasia (1956) RoboCop (1987) Overboard (1987) Regarding Henry (1991) The Majestic (2001) The Addams Family (1991) The English Patient (1996) Dark City (1998) Mulholland Drive (2001) The Bourne Identity (2002) Finding Nemo (2003) The Number 23 (2007) Spider-Man 3 (2007) Unknown (2011) A list of more of these movies can be found here The reason I am so skeptical about this, is that a person's name is one of the first things they learn. Often even before an infant learns to talk, it will still respond to it's name. So it would seem like, if you were unable to remember your name, you would also be unable to remember how to talk and do other very basic human functions. (This is just my speculation) In addition, the term Retrograde Amnesia means the inability to remember something from the past (as apposed to Anterograde amnesia which is the inability to form new memories.) Retrograde Amnesia is a well known medical condition, however, I have yet to hear of a real, documented case, of retrograde amnesia that was so extreme, that the person couldn't even remember his or her own name / identity. Retrograde Amnesia is often temporally graded, consistent with Ribot's Law: more recent memories closer to the traumatic incident are more likely to be forgotten than more remote memories. In fact - the only time I have actually heard of this happening (a person forgetting who they were), was with regards to Stage III Alzheimer's Disease . However, in Stage III Alzheimer's, the other symptoms include "Loss of communication, relying instead on grunts or moans", and "Loss of control over bodily functions, such as trouble swallowing or lack of bowel and bladder control". Is there any scientific evidence or backing to this being possible (forgetting one's own name / identity, but still being able to function as a normal human being)? Has there ever been a documented case of this actually happening? Edit: for those of you wondering, the link on Wikipedia on retrograde amnesia doesn't cover forgetting your name | I'm not sure why the OP is attributing so much importance to one's name as compared to recognising people close to the amnesiac or similar. But, here goes ... From Wikipedia's entry for retrograde amnesia : As previously mentioned, RA commonly results from damage to the brain regions most closely associated with episodic and declarative memory, including autobiographical information . In extreme cases, individuals may completely forget who they are. Generally, this is a more severe type of amnesia known as global or generalized amnesia. However, memory loss can also be selective or categorical, manifested by a person's inability to remember events related to a specific incident or topic. From page 220 of Psychology and Education, Volume 11 : This is particularly true when an accident renders one unconscious. One is quite unable to recall what happened, or how the accident came about. The loss of memory may extend backwards over a period of only seconds or minutes; but the disruptive effect can also entail a retrograde amnesia which, in an extreme instance, may involve the whole of one's past life. Cases have been reported in which, after recovery from a shock involving a state of coma, the entire memory was a blank, the individual being unable to remember or recognize even his own name . From the journal, Learning & Memory , a study titled " Functional Amnesia: Clinical Description and Neuropsychological Profile of 10 Cases " (case #10): His personality also changed after the accident. He seemed more pleasant and was a more motivated student, though he was more introverted and isolated. He lost interest in his religion, which had been important to him before the accident. He was also immature and childlike in his social interactions. He was less aware of the feelings of other individuals. He did not understand jokes and interpreted them literally. At the time of our evaluation, he told us that following the accident he had not remembered his own name or how to speak . He said that he relearned the English language during his first 2 d in the hospital by reading a dictionary. He had some recall for faces of persons he knew when he was very young. He had relearned other information from the past. So, yes, it is possible for an amnesiac to forget his/her own name and identity, and there are documented cases where this has happened. | {
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9,202 | In a letter to The Guardian newspaper artist and pro-tobacco campaigner David Hockney suggests that there could be a link between not smoking and being obese or having diabetes. Is there a link between the decline of smoking and the rise of obesity and diabetes? ... Some people might be much better off smoking instead of nibbling. Is there any evidence that smoking can prevent obesity or diabetes? | This has to be one of the most pathetic attempts to earn money I can imagine - ignoring all of the evidence and actually recommending smoking? That is bat!@#$ crazy. Comparing the Risks Let's look at the mortality rates. (I've limited myself to just the evidence in the UK, because that is where this <expletive> lives.) 70-75 thousand people in the UK with diabetes die every year... not of diabetes... with diabetes. [ Source ] 34 thousand people in the UK die of obesity. [ Source ] No doubt, there is overlap with the above figures. Compare that to the 100 thousand people in the UK dying of smoking every year. [ Source ] The whole idea of putting yourself at risk of smoking-related deaths to avoid obesity and diabetic mortality is in-f!@#ing-sane. Why not douse yourself in petrol and set fire to yourself to avoid the risk of frostbite? Positive Correlation - Diabetes Even that is assuming, of course, that smokers genuinely have reduced the risk of diabetes. But that's not the case! For diabetes, the association goes the other way. Carole Willi, Patrick Bodenmann, William A. Ghali, Peter D. Faris, Jacques Cornuz, Active Smoking and the Risk of Type 2 Diabetes: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis , JAMA 2007;298(22):2654-2664. doi: 10.1001/jama.298.22.2654 Results The search yielded 25 prospective cohort studies (N = 1.2 million participants ) that reported 45 844 incident cases of diabetes during a study follow-up period ranging from 5 to 30 years. Of the 25 studies, 24 reported adjusted RRs greater than 1 (range for all studies, 0.82-3.74). The pooled adjusted RR was 1.44 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.31-1.58). Results were consistent and statistically significant in all subgroups. The risk of diabetes was greater for heavy smokers (≥20 cigarettes/day; RR, 1.61; 95% CI, 1.43-1.80) than for lighter smokers (RR,1.29; 95% CI, 1.13-1.48) and lower for former smokers (RR, 1.23; 95% CI, 1.14-1.33) compared with active smokers, consistent with a dose-response phenomenon. Conclusion Active smoking is associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes. Future research should attempt to establish whether this association is causal and to clarify its mechanisms. Smokers are more likely to get diabetes. This idiotic risk reduction technique won't get you out of the frying pan into the fire - it will leave you in the frying pan and the fire! Negative Correlation - Obesity For obesity, I have to accept that there is an association between obesity and never smoking: Carole L Hart, Laurence Gruer, and Graham C M Watt, Cause specific mortality, social position, and obesity among women who had never smoked: 28 year cohort study BMJ. 2011; 342: d3785. doi: 10.1136/bmj.d3785 Overweight and obesity were more prevalent among never smokers than among current smokers in all occupational classes and among both never smokers and smokers in the lower occupational classes. (Note: I couldn't find a measure of statistical significance of this anywhere - I expected it in Figure 1 or Table 2.) Of course, this was the line in the study that the media, such as the BBC latched on to, even as they reminded people: Prof Johan Mackenbach from the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam welcomed the study but added: "It is important not to forget that smoking is a much stronger risk factor for mortality than most other risk factors, including obesity." In fact, the same data set supports the idea that any upside to be being smoker is outweighed by the downsides: Laurence Gruer, Carole L Hart, David S Gordon, and Graham C M Watt, Effect of tobacco smoking on survival of men and women by social position: a 28 year cohort study BMJ. 2009; 338: b480.
doi: 10.1136/bmj.b480 Conclusions Among both women and men, never smokers had much better survival rates than smokers in all social positions. Conclusions This crap hits a trigger button for me, and makes me angry. Giving people false information about life decisions that kill 100,000 people a year is obnoxious, callous and unethical. Even if you assume the inverse relationship between obesity and smoking is causal, smoking to prevent obesity is putting you in a higher-risk category, and so is counter-productive. Smoking to prevent diabetes is even more nuts. It doesn't reduce the risk, it is associated with a higher risk. First, give up the cigarettes. Then, work on your weight. Then, work out how we can retain freedom of speech and yet get guys like this to shut up. | {
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9,316 | On of the theories in the Kursk incident suggest that it was sunk by USS Memphis following the collision with USS Toledo. Theory has originally surfaced in 2005 film, but lately allegedly there are some leaks from Russian Navy officers confirming it. French filmmaker Jean-Michel Carré, in Kursk: a Submarine in Troubled
Waters , which aired on 7 January 2005 on French TV channel France 2,
alleged that Kursk sank because of a sequence of events triggered by a
collision with a US submarine. Carré claimed that Shkval torpedo tests
were being observed by two US submarines on duty in the region: USS
Toledo and USS Memphis. According to his version, these observations
eventually led to a collision between USS Toledo and Kursk. Carré
theorized that neither of the subs was seriously damaged in this
incident, but the sound of the collision, combined with sounds of
loaded torpedo tubes, made the captain of USS Memphis believe that
Kursk was preparing an attack on USS Toledo, so he launched a
pre-emptive strike against Kursk with a MK-48 torpedo. According to
Carré, this attack was successful and was the cause of the powerful
explosion within Kursk's hull, sinking the submarine and leaving
Memphis and Toledo slightly damaged. Carré claimed that specific
damage visible on the Kursk hull was the main evidence of this
version, including signs of an initial collision, and a hole left by
the torpedo when it entered the Kursk hull. He also claimed that a
damaged submarine was sighted leaving the Kursk incident area, and USS
Memphis was sighted soon afterwards being repaired in a Norwegian
port. In below screen capture you can see a round hole, which allegedly is point where torpedo penetrated the hull. Question: is there any indication that collision actually happened? is there any possibility that it was sunk by Mk-48 fired by USS Memphis? | There some additional photos of this round hole at this page (in russian): Good quality shoot from unknown source. Text in russian is: "А что значит это отверстие в правом боку подводной лодки" - "And what is meaning of this hole in right side of the submarine". It is clearly seen that hole has very sharp edges on its top and left sides. Also we can see that hole is not round in its low-right side (as it was required in comments, taken from other angle): This is a copy from the TV-film discussed ("Kursk: a Submarine in Troubled Waters"): This photo is labelled: "пресс-центр ГП РФ"; "ГП РФ" is abbreviation for "Генеральная Прокуратура Российской Федерации", so "Press-center of Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation" (press center of Federal Attorney of Russia): This photo has date mark on it "24' 4'02" = 24.04.2002 and text "район прочного корпуса напротив которого отверстие в легком корпусе. никаких пробоин нет" = "region of strong hull (=inner hull=pressure hull) opposite of which hole in light hull (=external hull) /is located/. There are no any breaches": And finally is frame with labels "росляково. мурманская область. РТР". It has label of Russian federal channel RTR. According to the page, Carre says that this hole was not shown on TV, but it was: There is interesting phrase on military history forum "vif2ne": От tevolga
К All
Дата 31.10.2001 11:06:44
Рубрики Современность; Флот;
Круглая дырка на Курске
Главком пояснил, что ее вырезали водолазы еще в прошлом году, никакого
отношения ни к возможному столкновению, ни к торпедированию не имеет. Ее
теперь заварят, что бы не было более досужих вымыслов:-)))
C уважением к сообществу. From: tevolga; To: All; Date: 31.10.2001 11:06:44; Rubrics: Modernity, Fleet Subject: Round hole on Kursk Commander-in-chief /of the Navy/ clarified that hole was cut by divers early as in previous year /2000/, no any relation is possible to hypothetical collision or to torpedo attack. The hole will be welded now to limit more of myths :-))) With respect to the community. Other phrase is on federal newspaper forum Александр _Покровский, 11 август 2012 в 09:24
В "Рубине" мне сказали насчет того отверстия: был технологический разрез. Alexander Pokrovsky , 11 August, 2012 at 09:24 In "Rubin" (= Rubin Design Bureau , operator of the Raising operation of Kursk) I was told about this hole: was technological incision The newspaper "Независимая Газета" directly says in 2001-11-01: Круглое отверстие на стыке первого и второго отсеков, которое наблюдали
миллионы телезрителей во время демонстрации видеофильма Главной военной
прокуратуры, оказывается, имеет искусственное происхождение: часть корпуса
по просьбе главкома вырезали еще в прошлом году. Когда ее в интересах
следствия поставят на место, многое прояснится, намекнул Владимир Куроедов. Round hole between first and second compartments, which was seen by millions of TV viewers at the time of airing of film by Chief Military Prosecutor Office, turns out to have artificial origin: part of hull was cut in previous year (=2000) at the request of the Commander-in-chief /of the Navy/ (= Vladimir Kuroedov ). When it will be returned in place for investigative purposes, much may become clearer, Kuroedov hinted. | {
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9,410 | I was watching documentary about Earth's formation National Geographic. They made this following statement. ......An astonishing event is about to take place.The Earth is on a collision course with another planet and about to experience the biggest bang in its history. The only reason we knew about this collision is because of the moon encircling the earth... Then it went on, not clearly stating how the moon and the collision are related.
Are there any studies done about this assertion? | This is known as the Giant Impact Hypothesis or the "Big Splash". As remarkable as it sounds, it is actually is the scientific consensus of how the moon was formed. The Moon is generally believed to have formed from debris ejected
by a large off-centre collision with the early Earth. A letter to Nature magazine , August 2001. More evidence for this event, including: Earth's spin, the Moon's orbit, the Moon's core, lunar rock samples, and evidence of other collisions is listed on the Wikipedia page. It also describes the process. (I am comfortable relying on Wikipedia, because this is high-school-level astronomy.) | {
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9,423 | I heard this several times, is it really true or just a joke/rumor? The claim is, that "Charlie Chaplin once only came second in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest" . source | Update: Possibly? Thanks to @alan-boisvert the passage that the Association Chaplin referred to in the book My Father, Charlie Chaplin does exist: Dad told me about one of these that had taken place before I was born. It was at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, and there were thirty or forty people on the stage doing their best to imitate Dad. Dad was one of them. He'd gone up incognito to see how he would fare. He came in third. Dad always thought this one of the funniest jokes imaginable—whether on him or the judges or both, I don't know. I'd argue that this is still an anecdotal claim, told decades after the fact. But it does have significantly more precise detail than some of the other published examples of the claim. So, whether or not this happened depends on whether or not you believe the story a father told his son. No. “Charlie Chaplin Look-Alike Contest” by J. W. Sandison, November 5, 1921 This is a myth that has been around for a long time, but there is no direct record of it happening, and all of the claims are anecdotal. As far as I can tell, Charlie himself never admitted this, and his son didn't mention it in the book he wrote about his father. I emailed the Association Chaplin and got a response: ... The only real reference I have ever seen to this story is in English newspaper clippings from 1918, when Mary Pickford was in London at an Anglo Saxon Club dinner, and told a story to Lord Desborough who repeated it to the press that Charles Chaplin entered a Chaplin walk contest at a fair in the US and came in 20th. This anecdote told by Lord Desborough, whoever he may have been, was quite widely reported in the British press at the time. There are no other references to such a competition in any other press clipping albums that I have seen so I can only assume that this is the source of that rumour, urban myth, whatever it is. However, it may be true. I also scribbled on a piece of paper a note to myself a while back that Charles Chaplin Jr mentions the competition in his book called My Father... but I have been unable to find the reference again in that book...(!) Mary Pickford was a popular actor at the time and a good friend of Charlies. Unfortunately this story has an "I know a person who knows a person who says..." smell about it. I managed to track down some newspaper articles which are simple rewordings of the same gossip story: Singapore's The Straits Times , 10 Aug 1920, "How Charlie Chaplin Failed" : And another version of the same story from the Poverty Bay Herald (NZ) , also in 1920: And another from the 23 March 1921 Albany Advertiser (Australia): A competition in Charlie Chaplin
impersonations was held in California
recently. There was something like
40 competitors, and Charlie Chaplin,
as a joke, entered the contest under
an assumed name. He impersonated his
well known film self. But he did not
win; he was 27th in the competition. These examples are all of 1920s gossip columns - simple retellings of a story that was spreading virally at the time. These early versions of the myth all also share many similarities with the Association Chaplin retelling. I'm unsure of the location of this Anglo-Saxon club based on any of the articles, and they're also sparse on details (in different ways) on Charlie Chaplin's supposed competition loss. I would say that it's unlikely that any of these particular retellings are true in any way. I have personally read the "My Father" book, while researching this question, and there's no mention of any kind of impersonation or walk contests, even in passing. I paid particular attention to the 1915-1922 period that most of the claims fall into. Edit: The claim from the book has been identified. It's most likely that this story was completely made up, using Mary Pickford's name to lend credibility ('a friend of Mary Pickford's who is friends with Charlie says that...') and spread through gossip columns the world over throughout the following months and years. I find it amazing that despite the wildly varying dates and locations that these retellings state, and the lack of specific dates, times and locations ("a fair in the United States") within the claims, the myth has still survived for almost 100 years. | {
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9,425 | In this question: Are any notable biblical characters historical figures? the answer touches the Davidic dynasty and not king David himself. I was wondering whether or not there was a real "king David" to whom can be attributed all of the following accomplishments, as they are all attributed to him by the bible (old testament): Being one of the first kings of the Israelite people. Conquering and settling Jerusalem (called Jebus before the conquest). Conquering relatively vast territories and bringing the borders of the kingdom of Israel (not modern day Israel) to their biggest extent ever. Actually being called David (or something resembling that name) | There does not seem to be an abundance of evidence, although it is the opinion of scholars that King David likely existed. The evidence we do have: The Tel Dan Stele The Tel Dan Stele is written in Aramaic script without vowels which makes translation difficult, allowing for multiple interpretations. Scholars seem to agree that the first part of a phrase refers to house, but disagree if the second part of the phrase is "beloved", "uncle", or "house". The consensus seems to be that the stele refers to a "House of David": The inscription, which dates to the ninth century bce, that is to say,
about a century after David was thought to have ruled Israel, includes
the words Beit David ("House" or "Dynasty" of David"). It is the first
near-contemporaneous reference to David ever found. It is not
conclusive; but it does strongly indicate that a king called David
established a dynasty in Israel during the relevant period. - Source The Mesha Stele The Mesha Stele is also thought to contain the Name David in two places, which scholars consider a very reasonable translation, however it is not certain. This paper is a series of updates and corrections to an earlier paper, however it still explains the problem in establishing the text on the stele. I will update with the original paper when I find it. The City of David The City of David is a subject of much scholarly debate, of which the Wiki page has a good summary of. There is evidence of pots and sculptures that have been dates to a time that corresponds to what scholars agree would have been King Davids reign. The evidence we have so far shows only that: There may have been a "House of David" There was a functioning city and government that corresponds with the time and place King David is thought to have ruled We don't yet have enough evidence to say for sure that King David existed, or that the claims made about him are true. | {
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9,446 | I've seen this statistic reported on several sites (for example, Those Who Don't Build Must Burn and Want To Do Meaningful Work? Keep Reading. Literally ), along with a list of other startling numbers. 33% of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives. 42% of college graduates never read another book after college. 80% of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year. 70% of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years. 57% of new books are not read to completion. According to the Mental Floss article Who Reads Books? these numbers came from a 2003 survey conducted by an organization called the Jenkins Group . That article mentions that they've been unable to uncover any explanation of the results, and I haven't been able to find the original survey myself. (Do a search for some of the phrases in the bulleted list above and you'll see that the survey has been quoted so many times that it makes finding anything useful via a Google search very difficult.) My own very biased and unscientific survey of "a bunch of people that I know" makes me skeptical of the reported figures. My question has two parts: Has anyone verified (or debunked) the results of the original survey? (If anyone can even find it.) A lot has changed since 2003 ( Harry Potter , Hunger Games , ebooks). Have there been any more recent surveys that show a decline in the statistics reported by the Jenkins Group? | Brief summary for those who don't want to read the whole thing - reading in the United States is in decline, but not to the extent suggested by the Jenkins Group survey. I'll take each point from the question in turn and attempt to answer it. I wasn't able to find the Jenkins Group survey referred to, however I found two useful reports by National Endowment for the Arts - To Read or Not To Read and Reading At Risk and I'll mostly be using these. 33% of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives and 42% of college graduates never read another book after college Reading At Risk shows the rates of literature reading amongst high school and college graduates: Note that respondents were asked if they had read any novels, short stories,
plays, or poetry in their leisure time (not for work or
school) during the previous 12 months. So this would appear to be a narrower question than that asked by the Jenkins Group survey. It's also worth noting that the more education you have received the more likely you are to read literature, which is the opposite of what was claimed by the Jenkins Group survey. 80% of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year This graph from Reading At Risk shows that 56.6% of individuals stated that they had read a book in the previous 12 months. If 56.6% of individuals have read a book, then I don't see how only 20% of households could have read a book. 70% of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years I was unable to find much useful data on this point. Bookstores have been in decline and now account for less than half of book sales ( source ): Traditional bookstores accounted for less than half of the book market last year ... The majority of books were sold by a variety of other retailers including Amazon, Price Clubs, supermarkets and convenience stores. It's worth noting that book sales have been relatively flat (source - To Read or Not To Read), and I'm not convinced that it matters where a book was bought. 57% of new books are not read to completion I was unable to find any useful data on this point. | {
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9,484 | Is the name of the Prophet Muhammad or Ahmad mentioned in the Bible? Does Jesus predict the coming of Muhammad in the Bible? This video ( part 2 ) is an example of this claim. Here is a quote of a similar claim : Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is mentioned by name in the Song of Solomon chapter 5 verse 16: "Hikko Mamittakim we kullo Muhammadim Zehdoodeh WA Zehraee Bayna Jerusalem." Translation:"His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is Mohammad. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem." In the Hebrew language im is added for respect. Similarly im is added after the name of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) to make it Muhammadim. In English translation they have even translated the name of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) as "altogether lovely", but in the Old Testament in Hebrew, the name of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is yet present. | This claim is false. It is a simple matter to search the entire contents of the Bible . Doing so will reveal no occurrences of the words Muhammad or Ahmad or any of their spelling variants. Anyone even slightly familiar with the New Testament will know that there is no passage in which Jesus predicts Muhammad or anyone who remotely resembles him. The videos appear to be referring to the Gospel of Barnabas . The Gospel of Barnabas has never been part of the Christian Bible. It contradicts all of the early Christian documents in many ways, follows a remarkably Islamic point of view, and includes a passage in which Jesus predicts Muhammad. No manuscripts of this gospel, or any indication of its contents, exist from before the 16th Century. (There are mentions of a Gospel of Barnabas from the 6th Century - still much later then the canonical gospels - but we have no way of knowing if this is the same document.) There is a claim that an allegedly ancient book found recently in Turkey contains the Gospel of Barnabas. However nobody has been able to analyse this book, either to prove its age or to see if it really does contain a copy of the Gospel of Barnabas. Even if both of these turned out to be true, it would not make the Gospel of Barnabas a part of "The Bible". EDIT:The bit about the Song of Solomon was added to the question after I wrote this. Please see Caleb's answer to that, and vote it up. | {
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9,488 | Someone sent me the following claim: a US Army person who had met with President Obama had suggested that he was wearing his American Flag lapel pin upside down. Obama had the woman removed from her assignment and demoted because she had corrected the President. Example of the claim : A few weeks ago a young female Marine Staff Sergeant (one of very few chosen for this post) was serving with HMX-1, the Presidential Helicopter Squadron. She had just finished her tour as a Drill Instructor and is/was obviously a squared away Marine that was on a fast track and who planned on making the Marine Corps her career. I am assuming that she excelled on the Drill Field which landed her the "choice" assignment with HMX-1. A few weeks ago she was assigned to the flight crew and after giving our illustrious President her best "Main Gater" hand salute, she respectfully advised the President that the American flag pin on his lapel was on upside down, you got to remember this young lady has been around for a while and had just finished her tour as a Drill Instructor, I have no doubt that she advised him in the proper way....do you?? Anyway, President Obama relieved her on the spot. Apparently he doesn't like being told that he doing something wrong, especially by lowly military personnel...WTF. That man just ruined a young lady's career when all she was trying to do was prevent him from being embarrassed....what a gem. This info comes from a very,very reliable source who has the "inside" scoop on the Marine Detachment at HMX-1. Is he really the best man for "Commander in Chief"????? What a joke. I am sure other Marines will be "lining up" for that assignment now. Is this rumor true? | First, let me clarify some distinctions; a Marine is certainly not a Soldier. Soldier is Army, Airman is Air Force, and a Sailor is Navy. Second, the story is false. As someone with an 'inside scoop', the President wouldn't (and cannot) 'relieve' an enlisted military personnel on the spot. The closest I could find to this story is this article . A 26-year-old sergeant and Iraq veteran is in the process of being
dismissed from the Marine Corps after making "political statements"
about the commander-in-chief on Facebook. Such comments are considered detrimental to "good order and
discipline" under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It is just that, enlisted personnel are under a contract with the government to serve the time period they signed for unless violating a Punitive Article of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, medical separation, or a few other special circumstances. And for every circumstance, there is a board of high-ranking, competent personnel who make the decision to separate an individual. If the President had in fact said such a thing, it would be in direct violation of the Marine ethos of being able to correct anyone, regardless of rank (In the correct manner, of course). I'm going to chalk this up to President-bashing, which has been gaining increased momentum over the past decade. The likelihood that the President of the United States (who is ALWAYS shown in the world's eye) would wear the American Flag pin upside-down, which is disrespectful of our country in almost every way, is low. He has teams of people to look over his appearance before stepping out and into the public's view. If anything like his had happened, it would be all over the military press (Yes, we have a press). EDIT: I have a few more references and points to make (For quality assurance, of course); First, on the unverified Wikipedia page : Below are some of the most common reasons for discharge: Expiration of Term of Service (ETS) Reaching the maximum age limit High Year Tenure (reaching the maximum allowable time-in-grade, and not selected for promotion) Disability, Dependency, or Hardship Pregnancy/Parenthood Personality Disorder Condition not a disability Physical or Mental Conditions that interfere with military service resulting in being placed on the Temporary or Permanent Disability Retirement Lists Convenience of The Government/Secretarial Authority (voluntary redundancy due to funding cutbacks, for example) Unsuitability Misconduct - Minor Disciplinary Infractions Misconduct - Drug Abuse with and without administrative review board Misconduct - Commission of a serious offense Entry-Level Performance and Conduct Resignation (available to officers only) Reduction in Force (RIF) UnCharacterized if discharged within the first 180 days of service and no misconduct found in service members record Punitive Discharges - Bad Conduct Discharge issued by either Special Court Martial or General Court Martial only. Dishonorable Discharge issued by a General Court Martial only This all seems very vague, though what isn't covered here is likely covered underneath an Administrative Separation Board for review. Second, this page goes over the process pretty extensively, specifically Once the commander receives the attachments from the respondent,
he/she determines whether or not to proceed with the discharge
proceedings. If the commander elects to proceed an administrative
discharge board is convened (if required). If the board is not
required, the commander forwards the package to the approval authority
(usually the installation commander) for final approval or
disapproval. The President would certainly have to go through the proper military channels in order to separate a service member. | {
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9,522 | I was sent an email with a copied/pasted version of this NaturalNews article which contains the following quote (emphasis original): Concerned about the 2012 U.S. presidential election? Worried about GMOs? Fluoride? Vaccines? Secret prisons? None of that even matters if we don't solve the problem of Fukushima reactor No. 4, which is on the verge of a catastrophic failure that could unleash enough radiation to end human civilization on our planet. "It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Japan and the whole world depends on No.4 reactor." - Mitsuhei Murata, Former Japanese Ambassador to Switzerland and Senegal, Executive Director, the Japan Society for Global System and Ethics ... To better understand the severity of this situation, read these facts about Fukushima reactor No. 4 which I have assembled from available news sources: Reactor #4 contains 1,535 spent fuel rods which remain highly radioactive. These fuel rods currently hold the potential to emit 37 million curies of radiation. Those fuel rods are stored in a concrete pool located 100 feet above the ground, inside the structurally compromised reactor building, effectively making the pool open to the air. The pool holding these fuel rods is "structurally damaged." "If an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly 10 times the amount of Cs-137 released by the Chernobyl accident." - Mr. Robert Alvarez, former Senior Policy Adviser to the Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary for National Security and the Environment at the U.S. Department of Energy. The opening statement says, "on the verge of a catastrophic failure," however subsequent statements say, "If an earthquake or other event were to..." These seem to be at odds. Couldn't one say my house is "on the verge of a catastrophic failure if an earthquake or other event were to destroy it"? Just how likely is the failure of Fukushima Reactor Number 4, and what would the impact of such a failure be? | No. The assembled facts are all fairly inflammatory, and include a few common misconceptions. Reactor #4 contains 1,535 spent fuel rods which remain highly radioactive.
These fuel rods currently hold the potential to emit 37 million curies of radiation. Firstly, definitions: Reactor 4 was shut down for maintenance (PDF, p35) when the earthquake struck, and all of the fuel assemblies had been removed from the reactor. There is a spent fuel pool which comprises part of the reactor 4 building , but these are absolutely not the same thing. The spent fuel pool is literally a pool filled with water for holding spent fuel rods (in their assemblies) which allows them to cool (a years-long process once they are deemed "spent" and removed from the reactor core). All of the fuel assemblies that were removed from reactor 4 prior to the earthquake were placed into this pool in the reactor 4 building. The spent fuel pool contained 1535 spent fuel assemblies at the time of the earthquake . As spent fuel assemblies are kept underwater, under normal conditions it is perfectly safe to walk around near the surface of the pool (see below), as no or very little radiation is emitted. Each fuel assembly contains 50-70 fuel rods . Image Credit Those fuel rods are stored in a concrete pool located 100 feet above the ground, inside the structurally compromised reactor building, effectively making the pool open to the air. There are a few points here. Firstly, the concrete pool is located 4-5 storeys above ground level and is part of the structure of the reactor building itself. See the image below, where the spent fuel pool is labelled (5) and the spent fuel rods (27). It is not inherently more dangerous to have the spent fuel pool high above ground level - in fact the opposite is the case . The reactor is designed this way in order to eliminate any risk of any part of a damaged fuel pool's contents reaching the water table, allowing for redundant containment systems to be built beneath it. Secondly, that the reactor building is structurally compromised. This is more or less restated in the next bullet point, which I address below. Thirdly, that the spent fuel pool is open to the air. The upper surface of the pool is normally enclosed by a sheet metal structure (see picture above), which was blown off by a hydrogen explosion ( the hydrogen may have come from reactor 3 via a pipe , but there have been subsequent contradictory reports) after the earthquake. The sheet metal structure is not meant for containment of radiation, so the pool being "open to the air" is not considerably more dangerous than if the sheet metal structure was intact. The fuel pool is currently covered with plastic sheeting to minimise evaporation. The pool holding these fuel rods is "structurally damaged." The reactor building and the pool were damaged, yes. A lot of things happened, so this is a massive oversimplification. The upper reactor building (sheet metal structure) was badly damaged by a hydrogen explosion (the pool is "open to the air"). I am unsure as to whether repairs have been made to this portion of the structure, as it is not critical for structurally or for safety I assume its repair would have been a lower priority. The pool was structurally compromised. This has been defined as a "4cm bulge" in one of the walls of the fuel pool. It has supposedly since been reinforced (PDF) with steel beams and concrete pours. It should be noted that at no time during the earthquake, tsunami or explosion did the fuel pool leak. The reactor itself or other parts of the reactor building may have been structurally compromised. I can't find much information on this, but the reactor was not running, has not been restarted and it is unlikely that it ever will be. "If an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly 10 times the amount of Cs-137 released by the Chernobyl accident." The points leading up to this last one are worded so as to make you more and more fearful, culminating in this scary quote. However, since the earthquake: All ability to circulate cooling water through the fuel pool was lost Water injection was used to keep the levels high until the ability to pump was restored Circulation cooling (rather than injection) has since been resumed The pool has been structurally reinforced The fuel rods in the pool show no signs of damage when observed with overhead photography , from both the low water levels and the earthquake itself. The fuel pool has proven itself as remarkably resilient, withstanding a magnitude 9 earthquake, a tsunami, a loss of power, a loss of cooling, an explosion, low water levels partially exposing fuel rods, and minimal damage was sustained. I consider that pretty damn impressive. Given the repairs made to it, the likelihood of an earthquake causing the pool to drain is low. If it did occur, workers would follow the same procedure to keep the pool partially filled until cooling could be restored. The quote sounds like a response to a question like "What if the spare fuel pool drained completely?", and there are a number of unlikely events required in order for such a situation to arise: Another earthquake of an intensity causing structural failure of the (repaired, structurally sound) fuel pool. This would have to be of a similar magnitude to the last one . That this structural failure itself is so severe that the fuel rods for some reason cannot be cooled by topping up the leaking fuel pool ("emergency cooling" like was performed last time), causing a radiological fire That the radiological fire could not be contained by any other means (dumping boric acid / sand / any number of other potential options) and is allowed to burn all of the available fuel That a radiological fire could and would release all of the Cs-137 contained in the fuel rods into the atmosphere. The likelihood of all four of these things happening is just not very high. I haven't even looked at the consequence if these things were to happen, I may add something later. I would assess the situation with the reactor 4 spent pool fuel as "stable, but obviously not ideal". It is not "on the verge of catastrophic failure". The end of the world is not nigh. This seems to be a fairly honest assessment of the situation. In terms of potential consequence , I have been scouring the internet for any kind of modelling performed for expected outcomes for radiological fires in fuel pools. I can't find a thing. Please comment if you know of anything. As far as I'm aware, the statement that all of the potentially radioactive material in the fuel rods could be released by a cladding fire is completely unfounded. From what little I have been able to find, it appears that runaway zirconium cladding fires are an area of active research, and there aren't any definitive answers. For one to have any chance of happening, there would need to be relatively "fresh" (hot) fuel rods that had recently been moved to storage, and for them to become completely uncovered due to another loss of cooling/water. Whether or not the zirconium "fire front" could spread from those initial assemblies to other, cooler assemblies is unknown. It also commonly stated that this event occurring may also require a physical failure in containment (dropped assembly / falling debris) causing two rods/assemblies to come into contact causing a criticality/excursion. 30th June 2012 Update: It also appears that the cooling system for the fuel pool in reactor building 4 has failed and is set to be restarted within a couple of days. Tepco has been unable to activate a backup cooling system for the pool and is looking into the cause of the trouble, officials of the plant operator said later in the day, adding it is unlikely the temperature will rise rapidly. The water temperature of the pool was 31 C at the time of the suspension at around 6.25 a.m. local time and no leakage of water with radioactive materials has been found, Tepco said. The temperature of the pool rose 0.26 C per hour by late Saturday afternoon, according to the utility. If Tepco continues to be unable to cool the pool, the temperature could reach 65 C, which is the upper limit designated in the safety regulations, on Tuesday morning. The cooling system at the No. 4 reactor was previously suspended on June 4. | {
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9,615 | An organization called Freedom Health Canada makes an extraordinary claim on their website, which can be found here . “Scientifically controlled clinical trials have shown that only 10 -20 % of all procedures used in present-day medical practices are of benefit to patients. It was concluded that the vast majority of medical procedures now being utilized routinely by physicians are "unproven" when subjected to the same rigid standards these same orthodox physicians are demanding of alternative, nutritional practitioners.” - U.S. Office of Technology Assessment Although the claim is certainly questionable in my opinion, they do quote the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment , which is legitimate. My question is: Was this claim ever made by the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment, and could the claim be true? | The quote attributed to the OTA is untrue, both in its exact words and in its intended meaning. With thanks to Oliver C, the quote that they are referring to is from this report . The full quote is: It has been estimated that only 10 to 20 percent of all procedures
currently used in medical practice have been shown to be efficacious by controlled
trial. In short that does not mean "we did controlled tests on all medical procedures, and only 10-20% were found to be effective", it means "we have only done enough controlled tests to show that 10-20% of procedures were effective". That is very different from what FreedomHealthCanada is claiming. Note first that this is from 1978, and things have changed a lot since then. Second the OTA did NOT think this was a good state of affairs, even then, and wanted more clinical trials. Quite a lot of procedures are of course known to be effective without the benefit of controlled trials. There are also a large number of procedures where it would be unethical to do a controlled trial - such as performing CPR on only half the patients with a stopped heart to see how many recovered. | {
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9,647 | While talking to CNN, Donald Trump said President Barack Obama himself wrote that he was born in Kenya. Is it true that the President's book said this? When his publisher comes out with a statement from him made in the 1990s that he was born in Kenya and he was raised in Indonesia [...] Trump, at 4m03s And all I know is last week somebody came out with a very strong statement saying that he stated himself that he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia. Now I didn't make that statement. That was made by I assume either the publisher or the President himself. And, that's the statement. That's a pretty hard statement to refute.
That was a statement made prior to somebody knowing that he was going to be running for the presidency. Trump, at 8m01s The Daily Trawler came out with an excerpt from a promotional booklet. | No , it was never in his book, rather it was a promotional pamphlet circulated amongst other literary agents, which was not written by President Obama (nor was it approved, or even distributed to him). The person (Miriam Goderich) who wrote that particular promotional piece has admitted that it was a mistake . "This was nothing more than a fact checking error by me--an agency assistant at the time," Goderich wrote in an emailed statement to Yahoo News. "There was never any information given to us by Obama in any of his correspondence or other communications suggesting in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii. I hope you can communicate to your readers that this was a simple mistake and nothing more." The same article states (emphasis mine): According to a promotional booklet produced by the agency, Acton & Dystel, And the agent also states the same to this news agency . And they also state (emphasis mine): for circulation within the publishing industry only Even Breitbart ( who doesn't buy into the birther nuttery ) also states that the pamphlet was produced by the agency, and was not in President Obama's book: Breitbart News has obtained a promotional booklet produced in 1991 by Barack Obama's then-literary agency, Acton & Dystel, which touts Obama as "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii." The booklet, which was distributed to "business colleagues" in the publishing industry, includes a brief biography of Obama among the biographies of eighty-nine other authors represented by Acton & Dystel. Note the distinct assertions: produced by Acton & Dystel; distributed in the publishing industry; that this wasn't Obama's book, but rather a listing of 90 authors. Now, I will give The Trump the benefit of some doubt, and he may just be mis-stating what he heard. However, his history of behaviour and bombastic (thanks Skava for reminding me of that word) style indicates this will become a revisionist position to Mr. Trump. Now that he has stated it, he will not retract from his position, no matter how wrong he may be. Also related Is Barack Obama a natural born US citizen? | {
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9,676 | The skull was originally dated to be almost 3 million years old. This led Richard Leakey, the son of famed archeologist Louis Leakey to comment, " Either We toss out this skull or we toss out our theories on early man . It simply fits no previous models of human beginnings." ( National Geographic, June 1973 This 2.6 million year old date was verified by many different testing methods . Based on other fossils that were very similar. Vertebrate faunas -- Elephant, Suid (pig), Australopithicus, and tools (Maglio, 1972; Nature 239:379-85, Leakey, 1967-69, etc.) On K-Ar and Ar40-Ar39 dating. Potassium-Argon dating -- selected crystals (K-Ar and Ar40-Ar39) (Fitch & Miller '70, Nature 226:226-8 and see 251:214) Paleomagnetism. Paleomagnetism -- polarity data, based on 247 samples below KBS tuff (Brock & Isaac, 1974, Nature 247:344-48) Fission Track Dating. Fission Track Dating -- involving uranium, noting possible reanealing (Hurford, 1974, Nature 249:236; '76, 263:738) Eventually, these 2.6 million year date was revised to a more recent date (1.8 million years). Instead of tossing out the theory, they determined that the dating methods that all agreed on the 2.6 million timeframe must all be in error because the fossil record wasn't in agreement with the dates. This has led some credence to some creationists arguments that the dating methods aren't accurate. Then in the late 1970's, a remarkable thing happened. One by one (with much heated controversy apparent in the papers) the other "independent methods" re-evaluated their work in light of the new radiometric date, and confirmed the new age: I.E.: One by one all of those former "good" dates were scrapped in favor of a younger date which was more in agreement with the theory of evolution. Paleomagnetism -- pinpointing a different polarity reversal, in light of the change in the K-Ar date (Hillhouse et al, 1977, Nature 265:411) Vertebrate Faunas -- three suid (pig) species (based on teeth) suggesting possible phylogenetic branching and its timing in relationship to the new radiometric date (Cooke, 1978; Science 201:460-63 (&198:13-21) Fission Track Dating -- (U-238 in zircon) emphasizing re-annealing, in light of the change in the accepted K-Ar date (Gleadow, 1980, Nature 284:229-230) By 1980 there was a new "remarkably concordant" well-accepted radiometric date. Do you see what happened? Many more dates than those mentioned here were obtained by radiometric methods, but the choice of which one to accept was made on the basis of the fossils (as you pointed out), because the acceptable range of dates for each fossil form was known (by evolutionary theory). And this creationist page: To make matters even more confusing, Garnis Curtis at Berkeley has recently used potassium argon dating on the KBS tuff and come up with younger dates yet. His first series of tests showed it to be 1.8 m.y.o. and his second series of tests showed it to be 1.6 m.y.o. To add chaos to confusion, recent fission track studies of zircons from the KBS tuff indicate an age of 3 m.y.o.! No wonder radiometric dating labs require that all samples to be "dated" be identified as to their source in the Geological column! Approximately 8 out of 10 specimens ("dates") are discarded by radiometric dating labs because they are well out of range of age they "ought to be" given there source in the geological column. In their book POTASSIUM ARGON DATNG, PRINCIPLES, TECHNIQUES AND APPLICATIONS TO GEOCHRONOLOGY, Dalrymple and Lanphere sum up the whole circular process of radiometric dating: "If the potassium-argon ages of a group of rocks agree with the stratigraphic sequence determined on the basis of physical relationships of fossil evidence, then the probability is good that radiometric ages are reliable..." (page 197) Was Richard Leakey correct, did they toss out the fossil, or the theories on early man? Were the first 4 (2.6 Million) dates thought to be accurate at the time of their original publication. Were they later revised to the more recent 1.8 million-years-ago timeframe? Is this evidence that the fossil record trumps all other dating methods (i.e. if there is disagreement, the fossil record is not revised, it is the other dating methods)? | First let me just give you a philosophical overview as to why the question is disingenuous and you are barking up the wrong tree. You ask: Was Richard Leakey correct, did they toss out the fossil, or the theories on early man? No, he was not. Of course, that is because he was taken out of context in that selective quote ( a favorite creationist tactic ). I'll lecture later on why he said it, but later in the same article, he also admits that he, or someone else could have made a mistake, and they needed to figure it out. Were the first 4 (2.6. Million) dates thought to be accurate at the time of their original publication? Not exactly, because again, this is creationist propaganda . If you actually read the cited papers, they aren't actually dating the skull, but other material found in the same strata as the skull, and in locations they thought were similar. Also, note the dates of all those publications. Methodologies have changed since the 1970s. Furthermore, we understand the geology of the area better, which has cleared up a lot of confusing results. Note that the skull was discovered in 1972 , yet the creationist page uses papers from 1970. Were they later "revised" to the more recent 1.8 million years ago timeframe? Because that's what the evidence indicated they should do. Not because of the old and inaccurate radiometric results, but because they figured out their mistake ... The ability for science to be a self correcting mechanism isn't a weakness or a fault, that is the strength. You seem to indicate that this is an unacceptable practice, yet I am sure the computer you are using isn't from the 1970s. Is this evidence that the fossil record trumps all other dating methods (i.e. if there is disagreement, the fossil record is not revised, it is the other dating methods)? No. The fossil record really isn't required to have evidence for evolution. However, what the fossil record does is give us a more detailed understanding of evolution. Of course, there aren't Post-It (TM) notes attached to fossils describing all the circumstances of fossilization, what exact species it is, or exactly how it fits in to the evidence trail. That's what the scientists need to figure out. Okay, now to some more detailed rebuttals, and again, I am sorry if this seems like a lecture, but all to often, creationists will try to use one single misunderstanding to attempt to "prove" their point, while totally ignoring the mountain of evidence that makes their stance the height of ignorance and foolishness. They trot out the same lame arguments time and again, and never listen to the actual replies . As to Leakey's quote, as a scientist, he understood that when you find an earth-shattering discovery that goes against or disagrees with what we know, there are several possibilities, two of the most commonly thought are: You have made an earth-shattering discovery that will totally rework everything we know about the field. You have made a mistake. Scientists want and desire to make the first type of discovery. It's what puts them into the journals and history books. What usually happens is the second one. In the case of KNM-ER 1470, it was indeed the latter, but with a touch of the former. In this paper, Leakey admits to his mistake about the initial date and the KBS Tuff : At present, analysis of samples collected for dating from the KBS Tuff in area 131 has proved inconclusive because of the apparent alteration of the sanidine felspars. This was not seen in the 105/108 samples from the same horizon which provided the date of 2.61 m.y. and there is no reason to suspect the validity of that date (personal communication from J. A. Miller). However, as a result of all this investigation, he did figure out that he may be on to a new species in the genus Homo. Specifically Homo rudolfensis . Now that we have figured out that there is a new member of the genus Homo, the fact that creationists keep using this 40 year old argument, goes back to the fact that they don't listen... As the archeology info site states (emphasis mine): The specimen was originally thought to be around 2.9 myr old, due to an inaccurate dating of 2.6 myr for the KBS volcanic tuff located above it . This inaccuracy was caused by contamination of older material, and the tuff is now know to be much younger. The specimen is now thought to date to approximately 1.8 myr (Leakey et al. may have been more willing to attribute the specimen to habilis had they known the real antiquity of the specimen from the beginning). Though this date is now generally accepted for the specimen, the geologists who orignally dated the KBS tuff continue to argue for a later date for the specimen. While they admit the dating of the volcanic tuff was inaccurate, This page doesn't quote anything after 2000, and the 2001 paper with Leakey et al does figure out the problem with the Tuff . One other problem that many people ignorant of human evolution fail to understand is that it's not a linear path. As a previous link mentions, several hominid species co-existed . Some became extinct, and some didn't. This is where Leakey actually made a great new discovery. Again, it's all part of the self correcting mechanism of science. Something was off, and at first they didn't know. Further investigation and scientific methodologies actually gave them clues, and then they had to revise what they thought they knew. This is the accepted scientific method, not blindly accepting the first thought that may come to one's mind. A paper that details a better understanding of the family tree was published by Bernard Wood (one of the men that help assemble the skull with Leakey: Discussing the radiometric dating as it was understood in the 1970s compared to the 1990s and beyond, Dr Groves of Tufts university relays some information on KNM-ER 1470 that may be relevant : White et al wrote of Aramis: "All hominid specimens were surface finds ..." This does not mean that they were rolled in from elsewhere; in fact, their condition indicates otherwise (there is a whole field called Taphonomy which is devoted to the study of how fossils got to be where they are). The date was also, at one point, queried by Kappelman and Fleagle (1995, Nature, 376:558-559), and satisfactorily answered by Wolde Gabriel et al. in the same edition of Nature. This is an account of the history of the growth of understanding of the dating of the deposits; it is not some kind of admission of circular reasoning, of making the 40Ar/39Ar dates fit. They then go on to explain in some detail why Kappelman et al. misunderstood the argument about the dates. [As an aside, there has been much speculation, informed and uninformed, about the reasons for the delay in publishing further information about Ardipithecus. White presented a paper at a congress in South Africa in late June/early July, 1998, attended by about 750 palaeoanthropologists and human biologists. The paper was illustrated by slides of the site and some of the fossil material. The site is flat, stony and arid; the fossils are scattered over the landscape, friable in the extreme, and difficult to collect, let alone to preserve. It is true that remains of at least 50 specimens ascribed to A.ramidus have been collected, but these will take years to preserve, fit together, study and describe.] For Lubenow, this seems to be an attempt to make the radiometric dates fit the faunal analysis, which reminds him of the polemic over the date of the famous skull KNM-ER 1470, from Lake Turkana in Kenya. There was, he claims, such disagreement between radiometric and other dating techniques that it was finally dated by "biochronological comparisons", in this case the stages of evolution of pigs in East Africa. Not true, actually. What is true is that the palaeontologists argued for some years for restudy of the K/Ar dating techniques, because their faunal analyses suggested that the date of the KBS Tuff, below which ER 1470 was found, was anomalous. Ian McDougall’s group finally managed to date material from which all contaminants had been eliminated, and showed that the palaeontologists were correct. [Incidentally, the significance of these "stages of evolution of pigs" is passed over in silence by Lubenow. Surely he is not making a tacit admission that pigs did evolve! In creationism, neither humans nor pigs should evolve; and yet, there they are - several lineages of them, abundantly represented - in sites like Omo/Shungura, whose stratigraphy and dating are entirely uncontroversial, evolving away and eventually either becoming extinct or ending up as the modern Bushpig, Warthog and Giant Forest Hog. Elephants, incidentally, did the same thing, and their remains are likewise sufficiently numerous that their evolution can be tracked in great detail between about 4 and 1 million Ma.] Again, this Taphonomy is a delicate science that may require decades to fully understand how something happened. And initial mistakes are remembered, while the correct answer seems to go ignored. Of course, this is nothing new from creationists . If you need to get a Christian perspective, this individual takes a biblical approach, and still has to conclude that radiometric dating works and is accurate . A telling bit in that paper states: Other creationists have focused on instances in which radiometric dating seems to yield incorrect results. In most instances, these efforts are flawed because the authors have misunderstood or misrepresented the data they attempt to analyze Which seems to be the entire premise of the KNM-ER 1470 discussion. Nothing but misunderstanding and misrepresentation. | {
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9,692 | Livestrong claim that: Sunflower, safflower, corn and soybean oils are polyunsaturated fats, also known as omega-6 fatty acids. These oils are bad for arthritis sufferers because they increase inflammation and prolong pain and stiffness, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center. Not all omega-6 oils are bad for arthritis, but these particular oils are. In lieu of these items, use olive oil. Many commercially baked goods like cookies and cakes contain these omega-6 oils. I followed their link, but failed to see where the Uni of Maryland's Medical Center made such a claim. Is there evidence that corn oil (or omega-6 fatty acids in general) may prolong pain and stiffness in arthritis sufferers? | First let me just give you a philosophical overview as to why the question is disingenuous and you are barking up the wrong tree. You ask: Was Richard Leakey correct, did they toss out the fossil, or the theories on early man? No, he was not. Of course, that is because he was taken out of context in that selective quote ( a favorite creationist tactic ). I'll lecture later on why he said it, but later in the same article, he also admits that he, or someone else could have made a mistake, and they needed to figure it out. Were the first 4 (2.6. Million) dates thought to be accurate at the time of their original publication? Not exactly, because again, this is creationist propaganda . If you actually read the cited papers, they aren't actually dating the skull, but other material found in the same strata as the skull, and in locations they thought were similar. Also, note the dates of all those publications. Methodologies have changed since the 1970s. Furthermore, we understand the geology of the area better, which has cleared up a lot of confusing results. Note that the skull was discovered in 1972 , yet the creationist page uses papers from 1970. Were they later "revised" to the more recent 1.8 million years ago timeframe? Because that's what the evidence indicated they should do. Not because of the old and inaccurate radiometric results, but because they figured out their mistake ... The ability for science to be a self correcting mechanism isn't a weakness or a fault, that is the strength. You seem to indicate that this is an unacceptable practice, yet I am sure the computer you are using isn't from the 1970s. Is this evidence that the fossil record trumps all other dating methods (i.e. if there is disagreement, the fossil record is not revised, it is the other dating methods)? No. The fossil record really isn't required to have evidence for evolution. However, what the fossil record does is give us a more detailed understanding of evolution. Of course, there aren't Post-It (TM) notes attached to fossils describing all the circumstances of fossilization, what exact species it is, or exactly how it fits in to the evidence trail. That's what the scientists need to figure out. Okay, now to some more detailed rebuttals, and again, I am sorry if this seems like a lecture, but all to often, creationists will try to use one single misunderstanding to attempt to "prove" their point, while totally ignoring the mountain of evidence that makes their stance the height of ignorance and foolishness. They trot out the same lame arguments time and again, and never listen to the actual replies . As to Leakey's quote, as a scientist, he understood that when you find an earth-shattering discovery that goes against or disagrees with what we know, there are several possibilities, two of the most commonly thought are: You have made an earth-shattering discovery that will totally rework everything we know about the field. You have made a mistake. Scientists want and desire to make the first type of discovery. It's what puts them into the journals and history books. What usually happens is the second one. In the case of KNM-ER 1470, it was indeed the latter, but with a touch of the former. In this paper, Leakey admits to his mistake about the initial date and the KBS Tuff : At present, analysis of samples collected for dating from the KBS Tuff in area 131 has proved inconclusive because of the apparent alteration of the sanidine felspars. This was not seen in the 105/108 samples from the same horizon which provided the date of 2.61 m.y. and there is no reason to suspect the validity of that date (personal communication from J. A. Miller). However, as a result of all this investigation, he did figure out that he may be on to a new species in the genus Homo. Specifically Homo rudolfensis . Now that we have figured out that there is a new member of the genus Homo, the fact that creationists keep using this 40 year old argument, goes back to the fact that they don't listen... As the archeology info site states (emphasis mine): The specimen was originally thought to be around 2.9 myr old, due to an inaccurate dating of 2.6 myr for the KBS volcanic tuff located above it . This inaccuracy was caused by contamination of older material, and the tuff is now know to be much younger. The specimen is now thought to date to approximately 1.8 myr (Leakey et al. may have been more willing to attribute the specimen to habilis had they known the real antiquity of the specimen from the beginning). Though this date is now generally accepted for the specimen, the geologists who orignally dated the KBS tuff continue to argue for a later date for the specimen. While they admit the dating of the volcanic tuff was inaccurate, This page doesn't quote anything after 2000, and the 2001 paper with Leakey et al does figure out the problem with the Tuff . One other problem that many people ignorant of human evolution fail to understand is that it's not a linear path. As a previous link mentions, several hominid species co-existed . Some became extinct, and some didn't. This is where Leakey actually made a great new discovery. Again, it's all part of the self correcting mechanism of science. Something was off, and at first they didn't know. Further investigation and scientific methodologies actually gave them clues, and then they had to revise what they thought they knew. This is the accepted scientific method, not blindly accepting the first thought that may come to one's mind. A paper that details a better understanding of the family tree was published by Bernard Wood (one of the men that help assemble the skull with Leakey: Discussing the radiometric dating as it was understood in the 1970s compared to the 1990s and beyond, Dr Groves of Tufts university relays some information on KNM-ER 1470 that may be relevant : White et al wrote of Aramis: "All hominid specimens were surface finds ..." This does not mean that they were rolled in from elsewhere; in fact, their condition indicates otherwise (there is a whole field called Taphonomy which is devoted to the study of how fossils got to be where they are). The date was also, at one point, queried by Kappelman and Fleagle (1995, Nature, 376:558-559), and satisfactorily answered by Wolde Gabriel et al. in the same edition of Nature. This is an account of the history of the growth of understanding of the dating of the deposits; it is not some kind of admission of circular reasoning, of making the 40Ar/39Ar dates fit. They then go on to explain in some detail why Kappelman et al. misunderstood the argument about the dates. [As an aside, there has been much speculation, informed and uninformed, about the reasons for the delay in publishing further information about Ardipithecus. White presented a paper at a congress in South Africa in late June/early July, 1998, attended by about 750 palaeoanthropologists and human biologists. The paper was illustrated by slides of the site and some of the fossil material. The site is flat, stony and arid; the fossils are scattered over the landscape, friable in the extreme, and difficult to collect, let alone to preserve. It is true that remains of at least 50 specimens ascribed to A.ramidus have been collected, but these will take years to preserve, fit together, study and describe.] For Lubenow, this seems to be an attempt to make the radiometric dates fit the faunal analysis, which reminds him of the polemic over the date of the famous skull KNM-ER 1470, from Lake Turkana in Kenya. There was, he claims, such disagreement between radiometric and other dating techniques that it was finally dated by "biochronological comparisons", in this case the stages of evolution of pigs in East Africa. Not true, actually. What is true is that the palaeontologists argued for some years for restudy of the K/Ar dating techniques, because their faunal analyses suggested that the date of the KBS Tuff, below which ER 1470 was found, was anomalous. Ian McDougall’s group finally managed to date material from which all contaminants had been eliminated, and showed that the palaeontologists were correct. [Incidentally, the significance of these "stages of evolution of pigs" is passed over in silence by Lubenow. Surely he is not making a tacit admission that pigs did evolve! In creationism, neither humans nor pigs should evolve; and yet, there they are - several lineages of them, abundantly represented - in sites like Omo/Shungura, whose stratigraphy and dating are entirely uncontroversial, evolving away and eventually either becoming extinct or ending up as the modern Bushpig, Warthog and Giant Forest Hog. Elephants, incidentally, did the same thing, and their remains are likewise sufficiently numerous that their evolution can be tracked in great detail between about 4 and 1 million Ma.] Again, this Taphonomy is a delicate science that may require decades to fully understand how something happened. And initial mistakes are remembered, while the correct answer seems to go ignored. Of course, this is nothing new from creationists . If you need to get a Christian perspective, this individual takes a biblical approach, and still has to conclude that radiometric dating works and is accurate . A telling bit in that paper states: Other creationists have focused on instances in which radiometric dating seems to yield incorrect results. In most instances, these efforts are flawed because the authors have misunderstood or misrepresented the data they attempt to analyze Which seems to be the entire premise of the KNM-ER 1470 discussion. Nothing but misunderstanding and misrepresentation. | {
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9,711 | In Stephen King's novel The Green Mile and its film adaptation one of the characters (Eduard Delacroix) is getting electrocuted. Before the execution one of the correction officers instead of wetting the sponge placed under electric chair's cap left it dry, turning Delacroix's execution into a torturous burning instead of usually "quick" and "effective" death. Here is the explanation of this in IMDB FAQ: What is the purpose of the wet sponge placed under the electrocution cap? Water, particularly salt water, is a good conductor of electricity. Having the brine-soaked sponge causes the electricity to move in a more efficient line, thus killing the prisoner faster (comparable to a fast blow to the head with a large hammer). Without the sponge, the electricity would simply disperse over the body, meeting with a lot of resistance, causing the body to cook, and death would be much more agonizing, as seen during Del (Michael Jeter)'s execution (comparable to getting hit all over the body with a lot of small hammers). Although the whole concept of electrocution is awkward and immensely cruel to me, it seems to me a strange thing that level of sponge wetting could change the whole process of electrocution. So, my question is: Are there any researches about wet sponge contribution to the death of electrocuted inmate? I would also appreciate: Examples of execution malfunctions proved to be caused by sponge wetting. Or burning of electrocuted person caused by other factors. Instructions for correction officers considering sponge wetting. P.S. Google search bring me to the case of Pedro Medina . Some witnesses claim that they saw flames on Medina's head. But I couldn't find any evidence that flames were caused by Medina's body burning because of insufficiently wet sponge. | The whole issue with electrodes in medicine (and Medical physics which I did my degree in) is that there needs to be a good electrical contact between the skin and the item transferring the current, otherwise burns may occur. The aim is to have a low resistance at the point of contact. If you think about it this is entirely logical electrical physics - if there is a high resistance when you are transferring current, heat is generated. This is why conducting gel is used in a clinical setting with clinical electrodes. Thus it seems a logical reason for the "wetting of the sponge", a high resistance between the current supplier and the skin will generate lots of heat. so you wish to minimise this by using a good conductor of electricity. In answer to point 1 I would suggest the following Here's a case of a condemned man suffering burns when he was electrocuted (pretty recently) Allan Lee Davis A case which sounds very similar to Stephen Kings, and seems to be very similar is that of Jesse Tafero . Wikipedia states blandly that A member of the execution team had used a synthetic sponge rather
than a sea sponge, But provides no citations, although a later court case supports this view , saying that it was determined that for the first time a synthetic, rather than a
natural, sponge had
-2- been used in the headpiece. The Department concluded that the burning of the sponge caused the flames and smoke which were seen
during Tafero's execution. Heres an interesting article on the whole process , and insight onto the legal thought around the two cases I referred too above, and the Medina case you refer to. Here's what the judge concluded around the Medina Case The fire and smoke during the Medina execution was the result of the dry sponge laced onto the brass electrode in the head piece
catching fire and burning almost completely due to a lack of saline
solution in that sponge. The lack of saline solution in the dry sponge
caused the dry sponge to act as a resistor. The resistance produced
heat which ignited and consumed the dry sponge. Any future executions should be performed using only one wet sponge in the head piece. . . . The sponge should be thoroughly soaked in a
saturated saline solution, and not a 9% saline solution . . . $(to$)
further reduce any possibility of a reoccurrence of a burning sponge.
. . . That article also contains (in point 3 - a bit too big to post in here) the process for soaking the sponge etc. which appear to answer your question 2. | {
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9,788 | I found this post on Reddit in which it is mentioned that the Quran advises men to beat their wives if they do not obey them. This is a quote from the link: Surah 4:34: "Men are in charge of women by [right of] what Allah has
given one over the other and what they spend [for maintenance] from
their wealth. So righteous women are devoutly obedient, guarding in
[the husband's] absence what Allah would have them guard. But those
[wives] from whom you fear arrogance - [first] advise them; [then if
they persist], forsake them in bed; and [finally], strike them" Is this claim true? Are they misrepresented or quoted out of context? | The Quran has some specific things to say about women , and how they are to be treated. These particular suras are the ones that may have some bearing on that particular belief (all emphasis mine): 4:34 Men are in charge of women , because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great. 4:129 Ye will not be able to deal equally between (your) wives, however much ye wish (to do so). But turn not altogether away (from one), leaving her as in suspense . If ye do good and keep from evil, lo! Allah is ever Forgiving, Merciful. 66:10 Allah citeth an example for those who disbelieve: the wife of Noah and the wife of Lot, who were under two of Our righteous slaves yet betrayed them so that they (the husbands) availed them naught against Allah and it was said (unto them): Enter the Fire along with those who enter. As with any text written in a poetic style, and based on mysoginistic viewpoints, the interpretation is up to the reader. | {
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9,870 | I was installing Java today and this was shown in the installation. Is there anything that supports this claim? | There is actually some more detail on this on the Java website: 1.1 billion desktops run Java 930 million Java Runtime Environment downloads each year 3 billion mobile phones run Java 31 times more Java phones ship every year than Apple and Android combined 100% of all Blu-ray players run Java 1.4 billion Java Cards are manufactured each year Java powers set-top boxes, printers, Web cams, games, car navigation systems, lottery terminals, medical devices, parking payment stations, and more. Which comes from the Learn about Java Technology webpage. These numbers can be drilled down into a bit more (e.g. blu-ray sales , PCs with Windows installed 1 , etc.) but the figure they give in the setup actually seems to be fairly conservative. With regards to some specific claims, Blu-ray players have to support BD-J which is used to for bonus content on Blu-ray disks which is why Blu-ray players must support Java. One of the biggest areas of use of Java is in Java Cards which are smart cards containing embedded Java based programs that can be run on various devices. While Oracle cited a number of 1 billion units manufactured in 2007 back in 2008, others have noted total cumulative sales of about 5 billion units in 2007. This is another point that leads to the 3 billion devices claimed perhaps being a conservative estimate. In truth the number of Windows PCs sold by year isn't the best number, but generally OEM machines generally ship with Java installed by default so this is a soft number to work with. | {
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9,903 | My brother claims that a person will get less wet walking through rain that is falling vertically than running through it. He says that when running less rain may fall on top of the head and shoulders, but far more rain will come in contact with the front part of the person's body. Therefore, the best way to get the least wet in a rainstorm is to walk slowly through it. Can anyone confirm this? | Cecil Adams at the Straight Dope tested it with a small experiment, and then cited Thomas Peterson and Trevor Wallis of the National Climatic Data Center, who also did an experiment: "One rainy day the two men donned identical sweat suits and hats, which they'd weighed before the test. For added accuracy, they wore plastic garbage bags underneath the sweat suits to keep their underclothes from wicking away any water. They then set out through the downpour on a 100-meter course. Wallas ran; Peterson walked. "When they finished, the men weighed their clothes again to find out how much water they'd soaked up. Peterson's had absorbed about seven and half ounces (212 g), while Wallis's sopped up only four and a half (127 g)." In short, running will keep you drier than walking. The original paper is: Peterson, T. C. and Wallis, T. W. R. (1997), Running in the rain. Weather , 52 : 93–96. doi:10.1002/j.1477-8696.1997.tb06281.x MythBusters also tried it... twice , and the second time they confirmed it | {
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9,937 | A very popular videogame character, which is famous for his sonic speed, is depicted breathing underwater by using air bubbles. Now since I've never heard anyone complaining about this, despite the large amount of people I see complaining about the lack of reality in fiction media, I assume many of them believe it's possible. I hope that's enough to constitute a popular claim by omission. Anyway, considering the air flowing at the bottom of a swimming pool is the same as the ground atmosphere's, is it possible for a human, not a hedgehog, to breath in it? References It's been discussed in the Mythbusters forum. Can you breathe underwater using air bubbles? Underwater breathing air bubbles? Animals reportedly breathing underwater with air bubbles. Diving Bell Spiders Whirligig Beetles | As a scuba diver I can assure you it's possible. One thing you need to do to get your licence is to breathe from a stream of bubbles from a free-flowing (faulty) regulator. That kind of fault causes the air to flow freely from the air tank, generating a major stream of bubbles. By placing your mouth over that stream you can breathe from it. Even though we were less than 1 meter under, to me it was by far the hardest of all the tests, but I did it, and so did everyone else in my class. I just hope I never have to do this deep underwater! This page explains how to do it. | {
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10,020 | National healthcare spending in the USA consumes more than 18% of GDP and is growing rapidly. Europeans criticise the expense and relatively poor quality of the US system (for example, see this question: Is the US Newborn Mortality Rate higher than 40 Countries? ); Americans seem to like it, though, and the majority seem opposed to anything that restricts choice. As a recent economist article put it: TO SUGGEST curbing an American’s health care is like threatening to kidnap his child. More care, he believes, must be better care. On Mr Obama’s watch new attempts have been made to weigh evidence for different treatments. But the notion that evidence might be used to limit care remains heretical. http://www.economist.com/node/21556928 The article goes on to discuss how other countries judge which treatments are effective but claims, in passing, that a large proportion of US spending is waste (my bold highlight in the following quote): To an outsider, it might seem helpful to know which services are worthwhile. America, after all, spends 18% of its GDP on health, far more than other rich countries. About one-third of that spending is waste. But it isn't just the Economist making such claims. A recent BBC story contains the following passage (my bold highlights a quote from Dr Brent James, Chief Quality Officer of Intermountain Healthcare in Utah): In America, the rising cost of healthcare has the capacity to bankrupt the nation. National healthcare expenditure is expected to top $3tn in 2012. Some estimates see it reaching $4.6tn by 2020. But Dr James claims that a little under 50% of that is technically waste, through a combination of inefficient payment mechanisms and poor quality control . So that is two recent claims that much US health spending is waste. Does the evidence support these views? NB a clear definition of what constitutes waste will probably make for a better answer. | Short answer: Yes. Annual waste estimates of between 21% and 47% are supported . The OED defines waste, n. as a... Useless expenditure or consumption, squandering (of money, goods, time, effort, etc.). The following categories of waste in US Health Care fit this definition : Failures of Care Delivery: the waste that comes with poor execution or lack of widespread adoption of known best care processes,
including, for example, patient safety systems and preventive care
practices that have been shown to be effective. The results are
patient injuries and worse clinical outcomes. Better care can save
money. We estimate that this category represented between $102 billion
and $154 billion in wasteful spending in 2011. Failures of Care Coordination: the waste that comes when patients fall through the slats in fragmented care. The results are
complications, hospital readmissions, declines in functional status,
and increased dependency, especially for the chronically ill, for whom
care coordination is essential for health and function. We estimate
that this category represented between $25 billion and $45 billion in
wasteful spending in 2011. Overtreatment: the waste that comes from subjecting patients to care that, according to sound science and the patients' own
preferences, cannot possibly help them—care rooted in outmoded habits,
supply-driven behaviors, and ignoring science. Examples include
excessive use of antibiotics, use of surgery when watchful waiting is
better, and unwanted intensive care at the end of life for patients
who prefer hospice and home care. We estimate that this category
represented between $158 billion and $226 billion in wasteful spending
in 2011. Administrative Complexity: the waste that comes when government, accreditation agencies, payers, and others create
inefficient or misguided rules. For example, payers may fail to
standardize forms, thereby consuming limited physician time in
needlessly complex billing procedures. We estimate that this category
represented between $107 billion and $389 billion in wasteful spending
in 2011. Pricing Failures: the waste that comes as prices migrate far from those expected in well-functioning markets, that is, the actual
costs of production plus a fair profit. For example, because of the
absence of effective transparency and competitive markets, US prices
for diagnostic procedures such as MRI and CT scans are several times
more than identical procedures in other countries. We estimate that
this category represented between $84 billion and $178 billion in
wasteful spending in 2011. Fraud and Abuse: the waste that comes as fraudsters issue fake bills and run scams, and also from the blunt procedures of inspection
and regulation that everyone faces because of the misbehaviors of a
very few. We estimate that this category represented between $82
billion and $272 billion in wasteful spending in 2011. Source: Eliminating Waste in US Health Care, JAMA, 2012 This interview with Matthias Rumpf of the OECD has some information as to why Americans might be resistant to change (other than general politics)... NEWSHOUR: How do Americans compare with other nations in terms of general health? MATTHIAS: The United States has the highest proportion of adults -- 90
percent -- reporting that they are in good health, far above the OECD
average of 69 percent. ...snip... NEWSHOUR: Are there any health care areas in which the U.S. system is faring better than other countries? MATTHIAS: When we look at the quality of cancer care, the United States stands out as having excellent results. Screening rates for
breast and cervical cancer are excellent, so problems can be diagnosed
early on. Your chances of living five years after being diagnosed with
breast cancer, or cervical cancer, or indeed several other cancers,
are better in the United States than almost anywhere else in the
world. Source: Why Does Health Care Cost So Much in the United States?, PBS
Newshour, 2011.11.25 Of course this does not negate the known problems as mentioned above, but it does at least have a hint of reason. In sum... Claims of "a little under 50% of that is technically waste" and "About one-third of that spending is waste." are supported (and without invoking " Death-panels " no-less:). | {
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10,116 | A story on the BBC News website makes the following claim: Brown rats are one of the planet's most serious mammalian pests, ruining crops and harbouring disease. Expert jumpers, climbers and swimmers, a single pair can multiply to 200 within a year. Can rats multiply this quickly? | According to this site rats: reach sexual maturity at 4 months (for females, who are the limiting factor here) can give birth seven times a year have litters of about 8 Starting with two sexually mature rats (and assuming averages of all the above throughout), the original pair will produce 7 litters of 8 rats in a year - 56 rats. The first litter in the second generation become fertile at 4 months after birth (5 months from the start of the year), and so the four females in that litter will have around 7/12*7 = 4 litters each in the year - 128 rats. 128 + 56 = 184. That's so close to the 200 that we don't need to worry about the remaining 6 litters or further generations. Rats are clearly capable of becoming at least 200 within a year. | {
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10,150 | I have heard claims from several people in relation to the occasional donation my wife or I make: that some charities have so much waste in their organization, or use so much money to market their charity work in order to get donations, that only x% of the donated money goes to the advertised cause, where x% varies from 10% to 50%. I thought I might get some good results by Googling, but wasn't too successful: I seem to encounter specific numbers only in un-cited sources, like this one which is where I got the UNICEF/14% claim from. Only pennies from the actual donations go to the UNICEF cause (less than $0.14 per dollar of income) On the one hand, a charity might need to pay their employees at least something , but on the other hand requiring lots of employees to do the same work as another charity can do with a third of the cost is certainly a waste of the donated money. Have there been proper studies of how much of the money donated to UNICEF in particular (since it is claimed to be the worst offender) is used wastefully, in the sense that the same charity work could actually be done without spending that money? | This is not the case. All charities in the United Kingdom ( excluding Scotland ) are under the remit of the Charity Commission . As part of a charities registration, they are required to submit annual financial returns to the regulator, which in the case of large charities such as Unicef UK ("The United Kingdom Committee for Unicef", Charity Number 1072612) are made public for transparency. 2010 Having looked up the records for Unicef, in summary for the year 2010 (there is some delay) Unicef received £81,312,000 and spent £81,246,000. Of the £81.25M that they spent, £63.17M was classified as charitable spending. This equates to 78% of spending reaching charitable causes . Of the remainder, only 22% was spent on further fundraising and governance whilst <1% was retained for future use. 2012-13 2012 : To illustrate that this trend is continuing, the spending percentages for 2012 recorded 67.4% on charitable spending . Screenshot of funding for 2012 2013 : In 2013 70% of spending was charitable spending : Source of data for current financial year (with links to previous years accounts) What counts as charitable spending? The definition of this charitable spending that the Charity Commission provide ( this help page ) indicates that this figure only includes : Costs incurred by the charity in supplying goods or services to meet the needs of its beneficiaries. Grants made to meet the needs of the charity’s beneficiaries. Therefore costs to simply raise awareness would be counted as "Generating voluntary income": Costs incurred in encouraging other parties to make grants, gifts or legacies to the charity (e.g. mailshots, collection costs, assembling funding applications). Meaning that the figure quoted above seem accurate - the percentages of spending given in this answer is directly helping people . As you mentioned employees, it is worth mentioning that Unicef UK has 216 paid employees, the remainder being volunteers. | {
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10,253 | Christopher Robinson , who calls himself the Dream Detective on his web-site and book by the same name , claims that he has worked with police, assisting their investigations with his psychic visions. He came to the attention of Scotland Yard, London England’s Police Department in 1984 and has had regular contact with either police or Intelligence officers from Customs and National Criminal Intelligence ever since. He has been able to provide then with warnings of serious crimes and terrorist activities on the UK mainland. Police officers with who he has worked have confirmed in public, that they evaluate the content of his dream messages and have monitored him for many years. Are these claims true? | The organisation UK Skeptics looked at this issue in 2003. They wrote to all of the different police commissioners in the UK asking: would it be possible for you to provide details of where, when and at what cost such psychics have been used - if at all - within your force’s jurisdiction? They received replies from 26 forces. All of them, apart from the Metropolitan Police (i.e. Scotland Yard) varied from "No, we don't use them.", "No, we are not aware of using them," to "No, the information we have received from them has been no value." They received two from Scotland Yard. The first stated: Thank you for your email - I have passed this to the Freedom of Information Unit but as far as I know we have not and do not use psychics. The follow up stated: We have conducted a search of our indexes but have been unable to identify any relevant records relating to any official use of psychics. There is, however, a historical case where this played a major part. This case related to the disappearance of Thomas Alfred MARKS in 1965. The records relating to this case are now held by The National Archives at Kew under the references MEPO 2/10551 to MEPO 2/10558. The tape recording is under the last reference, MEPO 2/10558. This particular record is available but some parts of the record are closed as it remains an unsolved case. In conclusion, Scotland Yard denied, in 2003, that Christopher Robinson helped them in 1984. | {
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10,279 | The common knowledge goes that cats, in general, have a particular dislike of water compared to other animals. Is this true? | San Diego Zoo: Not all cats hate water. The leopard cat Prionailurus bengalensis , fishing cat Prionailurus viverrinus , flat-headed cat Prionailurus planiceps , and Geoffroy’s cat Oncifelis geoffroyi all swim and hunt for amphibians and fish in streams and rivers. Animal Planet: Cats' aversion to water is widely accepted as fact - but in truth, not all cats feel the same about taking a dip. One domestic breed, the strikingly beautiful Turkish Van cat , actually delights in getting wet. Scientists contend that cats’ dislike of water comes from house cats’ owners shielding them from the elements since the earliest periods of domestication and from their ancestors -- wild cats in Europe, Africa and China’s desert cat -- whose limited experience with water did not require adapting and evolving to deal with it. Lions and leopards avoid river-dwelling predators (like crocodiles) by staying away from water. University of Wisconsin-Madison: There are plenty of cats that love water , according to Sandi Sawchuk , a clinical instructor at the School of Veterinary Medicine . Big, wild cats, especially those that live in hot, arid areas, often love to swim. An Asian species known as the fishing cat uses webbed paws to dive for fish, frogs and crayfish. Among domestic breeds, the Turkish Van is known for swimming. But most house cats shy away from water. “ Because cats groom themselves, we as owners tend not to introduce them to bathing like we do our dogs ,” Sawchuk says. “ Ask somebody who has show cats, which have to be bathed regularly and have been in the water since they were young. Those cats will tolerate it. There’s no fight at all. ” More: New Scientist: The amphibious Asian mystery cat The Boston Globe: Cats and water Daily Herald: Why do cats hate water? Life's Little Mysteries: Why Do Dogs Love Water But Cats Hate It? | {
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10,312 | For some species, the Darwin's theory of evolution makes perfect sense to me. I can easily imagine how, for example, the giraffe has evolved to its current appearance: the natural selection was favoring individuals that could consume more vegetable food from trees using longer necks, and some individuals were getting at birth necks longer than average by pure genetic randomness and the long neck trait was being propagated to descendant individuals by means of genetic inheritance. I have no problem with understanding this kind of evolution. Now let's have a look at the bat and its relatives. The bat is one of the few mammals that have something to do with flying and the only one that took flying to the bird level. Paleontologically, first mammals date to the dinosaur era and initially looked similar to the present-day shrew (which looks much like a mouse). The question is: how in the world prehistoric mouse-like creatures could grow wings over time? It impossible to believe that some mouse-like individuals were getting wing-like limbs by mutation and the "wings" were growing out accompanied with the knowledge of how the "wings" can actually be used. Ok, then maybe first wings were tiny moth-size wings and then grew larger? But where natural selection would come into play in this case? Such mouse-like individuals would have no advantage over their wingless relatives and thus would not be able to transfer those wing-growing genes to their descendants, quite the contrary, such individuals with useless mutations that interfere with their ability to walk would be suppressed by natural selection and therefore "weeded out". As noted by Ron Lyttle of Oregon's "Design Science Association", an organization that studies creation/evolution issues: When you ask an evolutionist to show you the ancestor of a bat, he will, in all likelihood (as does the ZooBooks volume on "Bats"), show you a mythical creature with elongated limbs connected by stretched skin gliding from branch to branch like a modern flying squirrel. It will have paws on all four limbs, and may be seen perching on a branch with skin folds hanging down (Wood and Rink, p. 6). What the evolutionist will not show you is any kind of transition between paws used for standing and running, and hand-wings used for flying. He won't show you because there is no fossil of such a creature, and he can't imagine what one would look like. He also can't explain how "survival of the fittest" would produce it. At some point elongating front toes would interfere with quadrupedal (four-footed) movement long before they could become the ribs of functional wings. So what is the story behind the bat's wings and is the Theory of Evolution really able to support it? | There is nothing about bat evolution that is a threat to the theory of evolution. First, the part of the claim that speaks of "moth-like wings" is not what elongated digits would look like. They might look more like those of a tarsier: Source: http://tarsieruk.homestead.com/tarsier.html#anchor_113 Second, the claim that there is no incremental benefit in having either elongated digits or glide-enhancing (pre-powered) surfaces is incorrect, as demonstrated by the flying squirrel . Third, " Understanding of bat wing evolution takes flight " acknowledges the challenge of fossil gaps : Darwin recognized that the most serious challenge to his new theory of natural selection was its inability to explain the apparent sudden emergence of evolutionary novelty in the fossil record, and he appreciated the evolution of flight by bats to be one such problematic example .... But the fossil record appears to have a long gap: [T]he ancestors of modern bats that first appear in the fossil record ∼50 million years ago during the Eocene already have elongated digits, extensive interdigital membranes, and robust anterior forelimb muscles indicative of powered flight (Thewissen and Babcock 1992; Speakman 2001; Sears et al. 2006). This has led to speculation that bat evolution occurred rapidly... [but] recent systematic studies based on molecular and paleontological data suggest that the common ancestor of modern bats likely originated ∼64 million years ago at the Cretacious/Tertiary boundary, indicating that there is at least a 14-million-year gap in the existing fossil record. [Ibid.] And it appears that researchers are seeing clear pathways that could lead to the important mutations: [O]ur results suggest that an up-regulation of the Bmp pathway is one of the major factors in the developmental elongation of bat forelimb digits, and it is potentially a key mechanism in their evolutionary elongation as well. Development of bat flight: Morphologic and molecular evolution of bat wing digits | {
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10,384 | Via word-of-mouth, I have twice heard claims that speedometers are deliberately designed to read high, so manufacturers would not be subject to litigation for speeding. When I first heard this claim, I thought it was simply an excuse to justify speeding. However, I've noticed that this claim is even on Wikipedia ( ref. ), albeit unreferenced: Vehicle manufacturers usually calibrate speedometers to read high by an amount equal to the average error, to ensure that their speedometers never indicate a lower speed than the actual speed of the vehicle, to ensure they are not liable for drivers violating speed limits. So my question is, simply, is this true? Question : Do manufacturers deliberately calibrate speedometers to read high? There seems to be plenty of such claims online, but I didn't find any trustworthy evidence to support the claim. Moreover, this claim seems inconsistent with government-enforced accuracies on speedometers (i.e., if speedometers were deliberately designed to be incorrect, then they would be less likely to meet government standards). | In the EU, speedometers are not allowed to display a speed that is lower than the speed the vehicle is traveling. Manufacturers calibrate speedometers to comply with this regulation as they would not be allowed to sell their cars if they did not. Reference - EU Regulations for Speedometers (75/443/EEC) The speed indicated must never be less than the true speed. At the speeds specified for the test in 4.3.5 above and between these speeds, there shall be the following relationship between the speed indicated on the dial of the speedometer (V1) and the true speed (V2): | {
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10,400 | (Copied from http://www.theliberaloc.com/2012/05/14/traditional-marriage-according-to-the-bible/ ) Relevant portion of the text: Marriage = Rapist and His Victim (Deuteronomy 22:28-29) Virgin who is raped must marry her rapist. Rapist must pay victim's father 50 shekels of silver for property loss I'm skeptical of this claim. If anything, I assume it's that the rapist is forced to marry the victim, rather than vice versa. Likewise, this answer on Mi Yodeya (the Stack Exchange for Judaism) claims that marriage is only if the victim wants to marry the rapist. Are rape victims forced to marry their rapist, according to the Old Testament? | Modern Western culture sees rape as a crime in which the woman is the victim. But many cultures, including the ancient Hebrew culture that produced Deuteronomy 22:28-29, view rape as an insult against the woman's family and her father in particular. So when we read the passage we focus on: If a man comes upon a virgin who is not engaged and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are discovered,... she shall be his wife. Because he has violated her, he can never have the right to divorce her. —Deuteronomy 22:28-29 ( NJPS ) But the father of a rape victim would have been most concerned with recovering the honor of his family. For him, the critical bit is: the man who lay with her shall pay the girl’s father fifty [shekels of] silver You may find 550 grams of silver petty and trivial compared to the weight of the crime, but in the culture that produced the text, it would have signaled a return of honor to the father from the perpetrator who had shamed him. If the shame could be further removed by arranging a suitable marriage, that would be even better. Later Jewish interpretation did not require the girl to marry the rapist. We can only speculate if that was the original intention of the text, however. I know of no examples such a marriage, but by the same token the Bible does not mention an cases where the rule was not enforced either. It's also important to remember that Deuteronomy represents a transition from a culture of honor to a culture of law . The clans represented in Genesis consisted of less than a thousand people , in all likelihood. The nation that is depicted in Exodus was much larger, if not as massive as the straight reading of the text might lead one to believe. In an honor culture, the shame brought about by the rape would be the most important consideration. However, in a legal culture, such as what we see represented in the Talmud and Mi Yodeya, the injustice and harm done to the woman would be primary. But that perspective to the text fails the hermeneutical Golden Rule : Do unto authors as you would have them do unto you. Of all the possible candidates for a universal morality, the Golden Rule seems the most promising. It only seems fair to understand a text in the context of the culture that produced it first and then, maybe, critique it in terms of our own cultural biases. The claim the chart is making is that the Old Testament defines marriage in these various ways. The article linked in the original question states : Take a look at the chart above which tracks the Bible’s definition of traditional marriage . Let’s talk about it. So is "Rapist + His Victim" a definition of traditional marriage in the Bible? On the one hand, it was written into the legal system and almost certainly was enforced. But on the other, it's clearly not a desired model by anyone's standards . It could be argued that the consequences of rape in that society were more far-reaching than in ours as the entire family was considered a victim. To give you an idea of the seriousness of the crime in the ancient world, the Babylonian legal code required a rapist to be put to death. So while there were almost certainly rapists married to their victims by force, in no way was this an ideal. | {
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10,408 | It is said that an adult human needs around 7-9 hours of sleep per day. Do human beings need around 8 hours of consecutive sleep a day? Is it prejudicial to the body and brain that you don't? Or is that a myth? | There are actually two parts that need to be covered when addressing this question. One part pertains to the question if we even need 8 hours of sleep? Another part, if we need 8 hours of sleep, is there a need for them to be consecutive? I want to split up this question, because when people talk about different types of sleep patterns, like polyphasic sleep, it is often in an attempt to reduce the total amount one spends sleeping. We want to spend our days being more productive, and sleep is considered an unproductive part because we don't consciously do something during this part of our day. When googling polyphasic sleep this becomes evident with for example some titles referring to "Polyphasic Sleep Cycles Trick Your Body into Needing Less Sleep", "Alternative Sleep Cycles: You Don't Really Need 6-8 Hours!"... I however want to approach the issue of amount of sleep and consecutive sleep separately. Do we need 8 hours of sleep? So about the first part... do we need 8 hours of sleep? I have answered this question before [1], in which I cite a (freely accessible) article of Van Someren [2]. My answer based on this article (along with other studies that point in this direction) is "yes"... or as the title of Van Someren's article states " Doing with less sleep remains a dream ". Studies have shown that when one gets deprived from their sleep need, this can have negative daytime consequences (e.g. in terms of concentration, mood, sleepiness, cognitive performance...) [3-4]. Or as Van Dongen et al. (2003) conclude from their study [5]: Since chronic restriction of sleep to 6 h or less per night produced
cognitive performance deficits equivalent to up to 2 nights of total
sleep deprivation, it appears that even relatively moderate sleep
restriction can seriously impair waking neurobehavioral functions in
healthy adults. Sleepiness ratings suggest that subjects were largely
unaware of these increasing cognitive deficits, which may explain why
the impact of chronic sleep restriction on waking cognitive functions
is often assumed to be benign. Sleep duration doesn't even have to be reduced in itself to have effects on cognitive function, as a study of Van Der Werf et al. (2009) has shown [6]. In this study an acoustic-perturbation setup was used to reduce the amount of slow-wave sleep (these are the deeper stages of sleep), while keeping total sleep duration intact. When talking about chronic sleep deprivation, e.g. as in insomnia, health outcomes can even be more detrimental, although it becomes harder to disentangle the contribution of sleep in itself, due to higher comorbidities and more health concerns in general at older age. Do we need 8 hours of consecutive sleep? There are several arguments in favour of why we would need 8 hours of consecutive sleep: the alignment of our circadian rhythm (24-hour rhythm) and homeostatic process (increased wakefulness increases sleep pressure, while sleep results in a dissipation of this pressure this process also has physiological markers ). These are the two main widely accepted processes regulating our sleep-wakefulness and one of the most important things when trying to understand our sleep-wake rhythm [7]. the importance of light in regulating sleep/wakefulness and with it a lot of other hormonal/physiological processes (this relates to the aforementioned circadian rhythm). The timing of our sleep during the hours of darkness seems to be ideal in this sense, or the other way around, because of this darkness one could claim that from an evolutionary perspective it would have been more beneficial to sleep during this part of the day. Sleep could be seen as a very vulnerable state, but sleeping during darkness, could reduce these risks. although a lot of research focuses on certain stages of sleep (e.g. slow-wave sleep, REM sleep, or even events at a microlevel, like spindle activity...) it is also believed that the cyclic alteration of different sleep stages might allow certain processes to take place (e.g. Diekelman & Bjorn on the memory function of sleep [8]). Splitting sleep patterns might interfere with these cyclic processes. Within the framework of Borbély's two-process model a deviation from the 8 hours of consecutive sleep would result into problems, either because homeostatic sleep pressure is too low, or because the circadian rhythm doesn't promote sleep. So what about the people that claim they can do on far less sleep? one can use stimulants to overcome sleepiness, the most familiar one being caffeine. Caffeine acts upon the adenosine receptors (normally adenosine builds up during wakefulness, parallel to our homeostatic rhythm, and binds to adenosine receptors subsequently promoting sleep, caffeine however blocks the binding of adenosine to these receptors). cognitive arousal: the two processes by Borbély don't tell the whole story... when one is mentally very engaged/aroused/stressed one can overcome sleepiness. Also discomfort (a term that however might be linked back to arousal as well) or sitting upright can prevent one from falling asleep (e.g. when trying to sleep during a bus ride...). Bouts of sleep however will intrude wakefulness and might reduce performance, even though one might not always notice this subjectively. some people only comply to an altered sleep schedule for a limited amount of time (not long enough to experience negative health consequences) people might misperceive the amount of time they sleep as metabolism decreases when one ages, it could be that sleep need decreases as well [9] although one often talks about 8 hours of sleep... this still is a general guideline based on a normal distribution, thus one's sleep need can deviate from this and their might be extreme cases as well The BBC article about biphasic sleep has received some attention in the answer by James Riley and some comments a well. For a more elaborate opinion on this article, I refer to [1]. Bottom line of my comment on the article, is that the study cited to support the claim, isn't representative since people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month, and that our current society and technological advancement could pose some additional problems in maintaining the biphasic sleep pattern that was claimed to be the prevailing sleep pattern during the 16th century. References http://www.quora.com/Do-humans-need-8-hours-of-sleep-per-night-or-is-this-a-myth/answer/Sarah-Moens Van Someren, E. J. W. Doing with less sleep remains a dream. PNAS 107, 16003-16004 (2010). Meerlo, P., Sgoifo, A., & Suchecki, D. (2008). Restricted and disrupted sleep: Effects on autonomic function, neuroendocrine stress systems and stress responsivity. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 12(3), 197–210. doi:10.1016/j.smrv.2007.07.007 Goel, N., Rao, H., Durmer, J. S., & Dinges, D. F. (2009). Neurocognitive consequences of sleep deprivation. Seminars In Neurology, 29(4), 320–339. doi:10.1055/s-0029-1237117 Van Dongen, H. P. A., Maislin, G., Mullington, J. M., & Dinges, D. F. (2003). The cumulative cost of additional wakefulness: dose-response effects on neurobehavioral functions and sleep physiology from chronic sleep restriction and total sleep deprivation. Sleep, 26(2), 117–129. Der Werf, Van, Y. D., Altena, E., Schoonheim, M. M., Sanz-Arigita, E. J., Vis, J. C., De Rijke, W., & Van Someren, E. J. W. (2009). Sleep benefits subsequent hippocampal functioning. Nature neuroscience, 12(2), 122–123. doi:10.1038/nn.2253 Borbély, A. A. (1982). A two process model of sleep regulation. Human neurobiology, 1(3), 195–204. Diekelmann, S., & Born, J. (2010). The memory function of sleep. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(2), 114–126. doi:10.1038/nrn2762 Siegel, J. M. (2009). Sleep viewed as a state of adaptive inactivity. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(10), 747–753. doi:10.1038/nrn2697 | {
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10,490 | I have read from quite a few sources stating that there was a mistranslation in the Bible, calling Mary a "virgin" instead of a "young, marry-able woman". It would be interesting to know about such a big mistake in popular literature (that is, if it really is a mistake). Edit: Here are some sources, but I will look for the more reliable sources I read earlier after a night's sleep. http://carm.org/isaiah-7-14-virgin http://fuzzyquark.comxa.com/marynotavirgin.html | Firstly, I want to point out that the original passage being debated is actually in Matthew and not in Luke as your second link suggests. Their argument is around the translation of the Hebrew word alma . They are taking issue with the fact that when the New Testament was written the Greek word for "virgin" was chosen. It doesn't say elsewhere in Matthew that Mary was a virgin, but it does call Mary a virgin parthenos in Luke 1:27 ( see Greek translation here ) when not linking to any past text. So, Isiah's prophecy aside, the Bible still says Mary is a virgin. So the people who are trying to make the argument are cherry picking. | {
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10,507 | Pro life Rep. Todd Akin , who was running for Senate in Missouri, said : “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Needless to say, this claim is quite controversial. Is there any truth to it? | NO WAY! There are a few sticky issues here that I will try to address. First of all Mr. Akin is only talking about "legitimate rape" while not defining which rapes he considers legitimate. It could be the only rapes he considers legitimate are the ones where the victim doesn't get pregnant and if she does get pregnant, she must have been "asking for it," or maybe he feels she should have fought back harder. I don't know this is the exact case, but the use of "legitimate" is very telling, that he considering some specific cases of rape not legitimate. He could be using the word "legitimate" to exclude false accusations of rape, but by definition those are not cases of rape. I'm wondering what Mr. Akin wants to define legitimate rape as. Others continue to use their own definition of what a real legitimate rape entails: Rape, ladies and gentlemen, is not today what rape was. Rape, when I was learning these things, was the violation of a chaste woman. (1) - Tennessee State Senator Douglas Henry Second of all, we do know rape victims get pregnant . One study (2) found that there the pregnancy rate of rape is 5% in women age 12-45, and 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year in the United States. The conclusion of the study even reads: Rape-related pregnancy occurs with significant frequency . It is a cause of many unwanted pregnancies and is closely linked with family and domestic violence . As we address the epidemic of unintended pregnancies in the United States, greater attention and effort should be aimed at preventing and identifying unwanted pregnancies that result from sexual victimization. Even though there was a link between rape and violence, perhaps Mr. Akin doesn't consider those people surveyed to have experienced "legitimate rape." Perhaps he would consider what these women went through "legitimate": During the conflict in the former Yugloslavia in the early 1990's, rape was used as a highly systematized instrument of war . Women were kept in various detention centres where they had to live in intolerably unhygienic conditions, where they were mistreated in many ways including, for many of them, being raped repeatedly. Serb soldiers or policemen would come to these detention centres, select one or more women, take them out and rape them …. All this was done in full view, in complete knowledge and sometimes with the direct involvement of the local authorities, particularly the police forces. The head of Foča police forces, Dragan Gagović, was personally identified as one of the men who came to these detention centres to take women out and rape them. (3) A Croatian Medical Journal study of 68 of these victims (4) found that 29 got pregnant as a result of their sexual assault. That is 42.64% of them. Forty-four of them were raped more than once, 21 were raped every day during their captivity, and 18 were forced to witness rapes. Most of the rapes (n = 65) were accompanied by physical torture . I've established that rape victims, even in extreme cases, get pregnant. We come back to the question of: Is it less likely for sex as a result of rape to lead to a pregnancy? It is at least plausible that stress will in some way affect ovulation. Catecholamines, prolactin, adrenal steroids, endorphins, and serotonin all affect ovulation and in turn are all affected by stress. (5) ... The biological interaction between stress and infertility is the result of the action of stress hormones at the brain level, especially on the hypothalamus-pituitary and on the female reproductive organs. Stress hormones such as catecholamines (adrenalin, nonadrenaline and dopamine) and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis interact with hormones which are responsible for normal ovulatory cycles: i.e., gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH), prolactin, LH and FSH. Endogenous opiates and melatonin secretion are altered by stress and interfere with ovulation. (6) Stress can interfere with ovulation, but in practice, this doesn't prevent pregnancy in cases of rape . In fact, the study (7) I found on the topic came to the conclusion that rape is more likely to produce a pregnancy than consensual sex . Is a given instance of rape more likely to result in pregnancy than a given instance of consensual sex? This paper undertakes a review and critique of the literature on rape-pregnancy. Next, it presents our own estimation, from U.S. government data, of pregnancy rates for reproductive age victims of penile-vaginal rape. Using data on birth control usage from the Statistical Abstract of the United States, we then form an estimate of rape-pregnancy rates adjusted for the substantial number of women in our sample who would likely have been protected by oral contraception or an IUD. Our analysis suggests that per-incident rape-pregnancy rates exceed per-incident consensual pregnancy rates by a sizable margin, even before adjusting for the use of relevant forms of birth control . So while technically Mr. Akin's comment might have some merit based on the abstract idea of stress affecting ovulation, based on the data, I can't call it at all correct. Raped women do get pregnant in large enough numbers, even moreso than women who have consensual sex. In addition, the claim is very dismissive and insulting to rape victims, particularly those who were impregnated. Not to mention it is just a tasteless thing to say. References: (1) Valenti, Jessica, writ. The Purity Myth: The Virginity Movement's War Against Women. 2011. Film. (2) Holmes, Melisa, Heidi Resnick, Dean Kilpatrick, and Connie Best. " Rape-related pregnancy: Estimates and descriptive characteristics from a national sample of women ." American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. 175.2 (1996): 320-325. (3) " ICTY: Kunarac, Kovač and Vuković judgement ". United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. 2001-02-02. (4) Lončar, Mladen, Vesna Medved, Nikolina Jovanović, and Ljubomir Hotujac. " Psychological Consequences of Rape on Women in 1991-1995 War in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina ." Croatian Medical Journal. 47.1 (2006): 67-75. (5) Seibel, MM, and ML Taymor. " Emotional aspects of infertility ." Fertility and Sterility. 37.3 (1982): 137-145. (6) Schenker, JG, D Meirow, and E Schenker. " Stress and human reproduction ." European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology. 45.1 (1992): 1-8. (7) Gottschall, Jonathan, and Tiffani Gottschall. " Are per-incident rape-pregnancy rates higher than per-incident consensual pregnancy rates? ." Human Nature. 14.1 (2003): 1-20. | {
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10,522 | Wikileaks' twitter account states that Julian Assange doesn't face charges (as well as not being charged with anything) UK Foreign Minister falsely states Julian #Assange faces "charges",
despite him not being charged with any crime https://twitter.com/foreignoffice/status/236134553431969794 By contrast, this pro-Assange editorial (written in 2010) talks about charges: According to The Raw Story and Crikey, Swedish prosecutors charge that ...
That is the basis for a reinstitution of rape charges against WikiLeaks
figurehead Julian Assange ... that the rape charges read of a smear campaign Is he "facing charges", or isn't he? If there's no such thing as "facing charges", that'd be a useful answer as well. | The problem here is that the Swedish legal system is different from the more familiar Anglo-American system, and a term of art like "charges" can't be relied on to correspond one-to-one between them. Formally, "An arrest warrant was issued on the basis that Julian Assange is accused with probable cause of the offences [of coercion, molestation, and rape]." 1 However, in the Swedish system, this step precedes the opening of a criminal prosecution, which is what "facing charges" would normally mean in English. There is as of yet no criminal case R. v. Assange (or whatever it would be called.) Under Swedish law he has to be arrested before there are "charges" in this sense. Bottom line: Assange has been formally accused of a crime, and a warrant issued for his arrest, by a legal system which is widely recognized to meet international standards of due process. "Hasn't even been charged" is an attempt to fog the issue – one of many you'll get from his legions of fans on the Internet. Source: Assange v Swedish Prosecution Authority 20111 EWHC 2849, paras 131-154 | {
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10,541 | With a credit-card number, validity date and CVV-code, people can make purchases, so this information should be strictly protected. But if I post my bank account details online (IBAN + BIC/SWIFT), does this put me at any risk at all? In my understanding, this allows people to transfer money to my account; not from my account. But with direct debit, companies may be able to withdraw people from my account. Can they? Am I at risk? On Yahoo Answers the answer is "not safe", whereas on Money.SX the answer is "it depends", but neither answer is sourced very well. In fact, many different websites say different things ... Does anyone have a reliably sourced answer laying out the risks of doing so in different banking systems and different parts of the world? | An experiment was conducted by Jeremy Clarkson in 2008 to test the hypothesis that it was safe. He published his bank details in the newspaper. The Top Gear host revealed his account numbers after rubbishing the furore over the loss of 25 million people's personal details on two computer discs. He wanted to prove the story was a fuss about nothing. But Clarkson admitted he was "wrong" after he discovered a reader had used the details to create a £500 direct debit to the charity Diabetes UK. [...] "I opened my bank statement this morning to find out that someone has set up a direct debit which automatically takes £500 from my account," he said. "The bank cannot find out who did this because of the Data Protection Act and they cannot stop it from happening again. "I was wrong and I have been punished for my mistake." From a report in The Guardian : The charity is one of many organisations that do not need a signature to set up a direct debit. My personal recollection of the incident (that I haven't been able to verify with references) is that, while it was legally possible for Clarkson to dispute the charge and demand that the bank reverse the transaction, he elected not to because the money went to a worthwhile charity. | {
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10,606 | I recently came across this fact: There's enough DNA in the human body to stretch from the sun to Pluto and back. A couple of "Bollocks!" alarms began to chime in my head. While I expect that it will stretch a long way, Pluto seemed a little far-fetched. Looking this up further led me to this page which actually calculates the figure in some detail. The final result came to around 2x10 13 metres or ~ 134AU . In the interest of keeping things manageable, I'm going to use AU from here on in. Discover Magazine might be the source of the Pluto analogy: Don’t try this at home: If uncoiled, the DNA in all the cells in your body would stretch 10 billion miles—from here to Pluto and back. 10B miles = 10B * 1.62 / 150M = 108AU The mean distance between Pluto and the Sun = 39AU. Distance between the Earth and Pluto and back = (39 - 1) * 2 = 76AU Another page claims: If you could unwrap the DNA you have in all the cells in your body, you would be able to reach the moon and back 6,000 times. This would be a distance of: 384000 * 2 * 6000 = 4608M Km ~= 31AU Unless my calculations are ridiculously flawed, something is amiss here. While I'm flabbergasted that just the DNA in a human body can stretch to, well, almost three times the distance of Pluto from the Sun, it appears that most, if not all these analogies are incorrect. So, my question is: If all the DNA in an adult human body were to be uncoiled and stretched out, how long would it actually stretch for? | Data Estimated number of eukaryotic (human) cells in the human body: 1.0×10 14 — Wolfram Alpha The haploid human genome (23 chromosomes) is estimated to be about 3.2 billion base pairs long. — Human Genome – Wikipedia The full DNA content of a cell is therefore 6.4 Gbp. Average base pair size: one bp corresponds to approximately 3.4 Å of length along the strand — Base Pair – Wikipedia Average Pluto distance from Earth: 6.09×10 12 meters — Wolfram Alpha Average Pluto distance from Sun: 6.09×10 12 meters — Wolfram Alpha Note: Why are these basically the same distance? Think about it: 50% of Earth's orbit is behind the Sun so it adds to the distance, but the other 50% the Earth is in front of the Sun so it subtracts. On average, it's a very similar distance. A Pluto round trip is approximately: 1.2×10 13 meters Average Moon distance from Earth: 3.85×10 8 meters — Wolfram Alpha A Moon round trip is approximately: 7.7×10 8 meters Calculation Total length of DNA in 1 cell: 6.4×10 9 × 3.4×10 -10 meters ≈ 2 meters Total length of DNA of all cells in human body: 2 meters × 10 14 = 2×10 14 meters The total length of the DNA strands in the human body in units of Pluto roundtrips is: 2×10 14 meters / 1.2×10 13 meters/Pluto roundtrip ≈ 17 Pluto roundtrips 10 billion miles are 1.6×10 13 meters (assuming statute miles for "miles" – you never know exactly with uncommon units) The total length of the DNA strands in the human body in units of 1x10 10 statute miles is: 2×10 14 meters / 1.6×10 13 meters/10 10 statute miles ≈ 12×10 10 statute miles The total length of the DNA strands in the human body in units of Moon roundtrips is: 2×10 14 meters / 7.7×10 8 meters/Moon roundtrip ≈ 2.6x10 5 Moon roundtrips Claims verification There's enough DNA in the human body to stretch from the sun to Pluto and back. True . It can be done 17 times If uncoiled, the DNA in all the cells in your body would stretch 10 billion miles—from here to Pluto and back. Incorrect . Surely the DNA would stretch 10 billion miles (which is approximately the distance to Pluto and back). However it would do so 12 times. If you could unwrap the DNA you have in all the cells in your body, you would be able to reach the moon and back 6,000 times. Incorrect . You would be able to do so 260,000 times, not 6,000. | {
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10,698 | I found the following post on Google+ : So it Turns Out LG Released a Linux Based Tablet Called iPad 9 Years Ago Apparently iPad was first introduced by South Korean hardware
manufacturer LG Electronics at the CeBIT computer fair in Hanover,
Germany 9 years ago. Also the name iPhone and iOS was licensed from Cisco. Sources: Apple stole the iPad trademark from LG Apple stole the name iOS from Cisco Apple stole the name iPhone from Cisco Story Via Reddit PS: Don't forget to follow the discussion on Reddit Are the allegations true? | Apple acquired the iPad trademark from Fujitsu . Apple now owns the iPad trademark. The trademark (Serial No. 76497338) was filed by Fujitsu in March of 2003 for their iPad wireless handheld computing device used by retailers. Records at the U.S. Patent and Trademark office show that the trademark was assigned to Apple on March 17. Apple licensed the iOS trademark from Cisco . Cisco has agreed to license the iOS trademark to Apple for use as the name of Apple’s operating system for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. The license is for use of the trademark only and not for any technology. Apple and Cisco reached an agreement on use of the iPhone trademark . Cisco and Apple® today announced that they have resolved their dispute involving the “iPhone” trademark. Under the agreement, both companies are free to use the “iPhone” trademark on their products throughout the world. Both companies acknowledge the trademark ownership rights that have been granted, and each side will dismiss any pending actions regarding the trademark. | {
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10,763 | I've heard it said (on the YouTube channel vsauce ) that the earth is smoother than a billiards ball if it's scaled down. Is this true? Of course the earth is relatively smooth: Mt. Everest: ~10km+ Mariana Trench: ~13km- Earth's Diameter: 12,750km But a billiards ball feels as smooth as a mirror! | This strongly depends on definition of what smoothness is. The Discover Magazine blog addressed this in 2008 OK, first, how smooth is a billiard ball? According to the World Pool-Billiard Association, a pool ball is 2.25 inches in diameter, and has a tolerance of +/- 0.005 inches. In other words, it must have no pits or bumps more than 0.005 inches in height. That’s pretty smooth. The ratio of the size of an allowable bump to the size of the ball is 0.005/2.25 = about 0.002. The Earth has a diameter of about 12,735 kilometers (on average, see below for more on this). Using the smoothness ratio from above, the Earth would be an acceptable pool ball if it had no bumps (mountains) or pits (trenches) more than 12,735 km x 0.00222 = about 28 km in size. The highest point on Earth is the top of Mt. Everest, at 8.85 km. The deepest point on Earth is the Marianas Trench, at about 11 km deep. Hey, those are within the tolerances! So for once, an urban legend is correct. If you shrank the Earth down to the size of a billiard ball, it would be smoother. I disagree with definition of smoothness used by Discovery Magazine. By that definition, medium sandpaper (grit particle size of 0.005 in) is also smooth, which doesn't quite go with my definition of smoothness. In fact I find claim that sandpaper is smooth to be ridiculous. With mountains reaching in excess of 8,000m, scaled down that would be 0.0015 in. which means, that scaled down Earth's "smoothness" is equivalent to that of 320 grit sandpaper . How does it compare with actual billiard ball, woliveirajr's answer is helpful: What does ball surface look like: Note, that variation is about 0.55μm, while 0.005 inches official tolerance for shape is 127μm. 0.55μm scaled up to Earth size would be less than 125 meters . As for shape, which is really what the ±0.005 inches regulation is about, Earth is non-spherical, it's oblate spheroid with: Equatorial radius: 6,378.1370 km Polar radius: 6,356.7523 km Mean radius: 6,371.009 km
(sources: WGS-84 and IUGG ) Just the non-spherical shape already disqualifies scaled down Earth as official billiard ball, allowable tolerance in diameter would be 28,326 m while difference between Earth's polar diameter and mean diameter is 28,513 m. Although it is quite close call. | {
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10,831 | Many sites on the internet cite this coincidence as ether a prof to a conspiracy by the gov. or a message that the terrorists wanted to pass to the American People. Here are just some exmples from around the net: Yahoo Questions: Q: I just got wondering, is it a coincidence that the terrorist attacks on the WTC towers was on 9/11? The emergency number to dial in the US is 911 after all. I always thought the number was chosen after the attacks, but I just read it has existed for a few decades already. So, did the terrorists pick 9/11 on purpose because 911 is the US emergency phone number, or is this just a coincidence? The accepted answer: Haven't you heard about the " the artificial accident of Pentagon " ??? more often than not that it was a " fabricated " accident rather than a pure coincidence or even a proceed of a smart planning of so called " the terrorist and Bin Laden" ....they probably have cooperated with each other( US government with bin laden ) to make that tragedy ....Bin Laden has never presented Islam in any way ... actually you should rephrase that Q to this way: have ""US government" chosen that day deliberately? just google it and you will find thousand sites talking about this ... And some of the other answers: A1: I always thought that. Their idea of a joke or something. A2: I don't believe in "coincidences." ask.com question: Does the emergency number 911 have anything to do with the 9-11 terrorist attacks? And one of the answers said: The emergency phone number 911 has been around for a very long time. I'm fairly sure the attacks occurred on 9/11 just to add insult to injury. From www.abovetopsecret.com: I was wondering of the coincidence or not of September 11 as called 9/11 & the emegency phone number for America being 911. Was this just a coincidence? Was this day chosen to teach America the fear of a real emergency from the "alledged" terrorist point of view? Was this day chosen by the "alledged" TPTB to instill a date that could be easily remembered due to it being so close to an already well known number 911 phone number? Was this day chosen to be an ironical slap in the face of the general populace? Just always seemed to much of a coincidence of 9/11 & 911 being chosen. I say this because many other countries use different dating systems for example 9/11/2001 is dated 11/9/2001. Also the 911 emergency phone number is differnet for other countries where numbers like 000 or 999 are used instead. Anyone ever thought this as too much of an ironical coincidence? Many of the answers in that thread also think the same: A1: The date was absolutely chosen on purpose. Regardless of who you think did the deed, there was months
if not years of planning that went into the 911attack. With all that must have gone into putting all that together, the numeric symbol is to apparent and powerful to be by chance. A2: Options 2,3 and 4 seem more likely than 1. But the number may be significant for other reasons. Numerology is extremely important to the Illuminati according to most of the people who study them. (How does one study a secret organization? Is it even organized enough to study?) Many of the sites google listed seem kooky, but something might make sense. | No it wasn't, While the terrorists used the Gregorian calender to communicate the date of the attack, they used it in its form known throughout the rest of the world: dd/mm/yyyy and not the American form mm/dd/yyyy. So that it forms the 11/9 and not 9/11. Here is how Mohamed Atta transmitted the date of the attack to the operatives ( source ): As the Saudis were arriving in the U.S. in July, Atta was taking off, flying into Madrid and driving 500 miles to a Spanish coastal resort for a working vacation. Joining him was Ramzi Binalshibh with a message from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. The final date for the operation was in Atta's hands. Atta had Shaikh Mohammed's complete trust. Then, on Aug. 29, the phone rang in Binalshibh's Hamburg apartment at three in the morning. It was Atta with an important, but cryptic message: "He said to me, 'One of my friends related a riddle to me and I cannot solve it, and I called you so that you can solve it for me.'" Binalshibh is heard saying. Atta goes, "Two sticks, a dash and a cake with a stick down." Binalshibh said, "I said to him, 'Is this the riddle? You wake me from a deep sleep to tell me this riddle? Two sticks and I do not know what?'" Eventually, Yosri Fouda says, Binalshibh realized what Atta meant. So he says to him, "OK. Tell your friend, he has nothing to worry about. It's such a sweet riddle." Binalshibh explained it: "The two sticks represent the number 11, then the dash, and then the cake from which a stick dangles represents number nine. Thus, the picture becomes complete: the 11th of September." Binalshibh left Hamburg on Wednesday, Sept. 5, for Pakistan. From there, he sent a messenger into Afghanistan with news for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Osama bin Laden: Tuesday, Sept. 11, would be the day. | {
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10,906 | There is a popular aphorism in Russia, translated as "one drop of nicotine kills a horse": , which is widely used on the anti-tobacco posters etc. Can 0.05 ml of nicotine really kill a healthy 400-kg horse? What could be the origin of this phrase? | Toxicity : 30–60 mg (0.5–1.0 mg/kg) can be a lethal dosage for adult humans. As a rough estimate, a horse can be 400kg, so a lethal does of 200mg-400mg for a horse. Density from wikipedia 1.01 g/cm³. This means a lethal dose would take up 0.25-0.5 cm³ which is a drop of diameter 0.8-1 cm. This is quite a large drop, approximately 5-10times the dose you stated (0.05ml), but isn't too far from being a drop. If horses are particularly susceptible to nicotine, then it could well be a lethal dose at 0.05ml. Edit: This puts the LD50 (The dose where half the subjects die) in horses as 100-300 mg/animal, so if 2.5 0.05ml drops kill 50% of horses, its possible that 1 drop could kill a horse, even if it didn't kill most horses. | {
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10,954 | [ Source ] In an episode of the BBC show QI - Quite Interesting (Series J, Episode 1) Stephen Fry said : How much information do you think is in the DNA of one little sperm...? It's 37.5 MB... ...a normal male ejaculation, if there is such a thing, is equivalent of 15,875 GB. That's about 7500 laptops worth of information... The shows Twitter page summarized it: A sperm has 37.5 MB of DNA info. One ejaculation transfers 15,875 GB of data, equivalent to that held on 7,500 laptops. (with "200 million sperm per ejaculation" one would actually get 7150 TB; but I'm more interested in where the 37.5 MB number comes from) My Question: Does the DNA of one sperm contain 37.5 MB of information? | I am not sure where these numbers come from and the answer depends on how you encode the genome data and if you define all the redundancy (unnecessary, repetitive data) as "information". First of all, the humane genome contains somewhere around 3.1 (men) to 3.2 (women) billion base pairs. Since the X chromosome is three times longer than the Y chromosome, women have a higher total genome length than men. Source: "Human Genome Assembly Information" from the "Genome Reference Consortium" A base pair is made of two of the four nucleobases adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine, but only the four combinations AT, TA, CG and GC are possible as the A and T nucleobases won't bond with the C and G nucleobases and vice versa. These four combinations can be encoded with two bits, so that 6.2-6.4 gigabits or about 750 megabytes are required to store an exact copy of the genome. Now, even if you need 750 megabytes to store the "raw data" from a human genome, at least a computer scientist will have a hard time defining all of this as "information". E.g. if you record 74 Minutes of complete silence on a CD, the disc contains roughly 750 megabytes of "data" as well, but actually no "information". Large parts of the human genome are repetitive, only a very small part actually differ between different individuals and from the difference, several base pair sequences only occur in a few well-defined varieties. There is actually some research in the field "how to store a human genome as compact as possible", since genome databases most likely are going to expand rapidly and scientists need efficient ways to share data. Some tools are available for this purpose, e.g. DNAzip, which using a ~5 gigabyte dictionary (permanent data) can compress a human genome down to roughly 4 megabytes. Source: "Human genomes as email attachments" | {
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10,989 | I've seen a few places online ( example ) that lays out a statement, essentially with two claims. The statement: "Windmills always turn counter-clockwise. Except for the windmills in Ireland." So there are two claims to check: "Windmills always turn counter-clockwise" - true or false, with references? "Irish windmills turn clockwise" - true or false. A couple of the sites I've seen claim it might be a local custom or design, but that's hypothetical; none of them provide proof of this, or where the 'facts' come from. Can anyone provide some insight into these claims? | Short answer: "Windmills always turn counter-clockwise" - False, it depends "Irish windmills turn clockwise" - False, it depends too Long Answer: The older windmills have any spinning CW or CCW, in fact in the district of Cambridgeshire, England, you have an example of nearby similar mills whose sails rotate in opposite directions in Cambridgeshire at Bourn (anticlockwise) and Great Gransden (clockwise). reference , here are some not so great pictures: Cambridgeshire at Bourn (anticlockwise) Reference: Here Reference: Here Great Gransden (clockwise) Reference: Here As you can check in my studies (for the fun), and in this Website , the spinning depends of the shape of the blade... and the likes of the owner. Why?, well because... In olden times all of the 'dutch' type of windmills turned left and there was a reason for that. The sails were rigged on long pegs that were driven right through the spars and stuck out a long way beyond toward the trailing edge. The windmiller would hammer these pegs through the main spar, climbing up them like a ladder from the tip as he went. Being mostly right handed, they preferred if the pegs went in from the right hand side and so the trailing edge was on the left of the sweep. This made the sails turn anticlockwise. Reference: Here, discussion board Modern Windmills enforce this, for the practical reason, the nuts and the force: If your prop is attached to the generator using a Single Bolt or Nut, then you would want it to rotate Clockwise which would keep it tightened up. Reference: Here, same discussion board For a VAWT, a clockwise rotation will create a force in the downward direction and an anti clockwise rotation will create a force is the upward direction. The greater the spin, the larger the force. For a HAWT, a clockwise rotation will create a force with the wind and an anti clockwise rotation will create a force into the wind. The forces are created by the angular momentum of a spinning object. If you want a visual, do a youtube search for the topic "angular momentum". Reference Here, the same discussion board So for both types of windmill/wind turbines the clockwise rotation "keep the system in place" but lastly the proper design of the blades instead of just "put the blades in the opposite direction" will reverse this effect. CW as seen on this video here , here or there . CCW as seen in this Video , also here or here and here . A weird mix CW and CCW turbines in this video (Seconds 0:30 - 0:40) Lastly in a related question Physics SE , we can see that the latest wind turbine generators take great care to prevent "reverse spinning" and have two sets of turbines (CW and CCW type) will just add cost and work overhead. Conclusion "Windmills always turn counter-clockwise" - False, it depends of the design and construction of the wind mill or wind turbine. Mainly right handedness of the builder/fixer in the older ones for CCW and Bolt/nuts design for CW in the-not-so-old windmills. Wind turbines can go either way, but company/market policies dictate a CW or CCW for supplies (blades and generators), maintenance manuals, personal training and connection to the power grid (see physics SE). "Irish windmills turn clockwise" - False, it depends too, same reason as above. Reference:
Civil Engineering University course UTFSM, Chile. So trust me, I'm a engineer | {
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10,996 | This video gives instructions on building a circuit to harvest energy from radio waves in the air using some pretty straightforward circuitry. The creator has another video showing such a circuit powering a wall clock. Is it possible to harvest enough energy from radio transmissions to power small devices? | Yes , but from a practical standpoint, don't expect much from them as you aren't going to be getting that much electricity from the antenna. First off, to address the basic claim that you can harvest electricity through the air and use it to do some sort of practical work. This is an emphatic yes as crystal radios are passive devices that are able to convert the radio waves over to electrical power that drives the earpiece so you can hear sound. As for the more robust claim of being able to power non-specialized equipment such as the clock in the example. This can also be done , and is well publicized as a research area but the amount of electricity being harvested tends to be very low, as the one article notes: Engineers demoing the two devices say electricity produced by the WiFi
version is in the microwatts at a distance of just 10cm from the
source, not a lot of course, but enough to power a small sensor or
tag, they say. As for the terrestrial version, they were able to
generate about 1.2mV and 0.06µW of power inside the exhibition hall,
where the video was made, at the Tokyo Big Sight. The signals received
were from a digital terrestrial broadcast sent from the Tokyo Tower
which was about 5.5km away. This tends to be enough to drive small electronics which is why there are some applications in sensor networks but you aren't going to get nearly enough electricity from passive sources to do much beyond the small applications. | {
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11,071 | It first ran across the notion with this meme Every year Louis Vuitton burns all their unsold bags A google search yields lots of results but none of them seems credible.
Snopes yields nothing. Any credible info? | I work nearby the flagship LV shop in Paris, and I am pretty surprised by this kind of rumours. In fact, there is a constant line to enter the shop, like an Apple store if they were releasing a new iPhone every day of the year. Does Apple burn unsold iPhones? No because there are none. For the record, 2 years ago, Louis Vuitton had to close all shops 1 hour early during fall season, in order to avoid stock shortage during Christmas holidays, despite raising price (yes, raising already over-priced items), according to Le Figaro , a credible French newspaper. I honestly don't see why LV could not sell all their production. | {
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11,162 | I have heard that a man can fall faster than the speed of sound, and survive, by jumping from 36,000 meters; a free fall that, it seems, lasts ten minutes after the jump. Is it true? | Can a man fall faster than the speed of sound? Update (15 Oct 2012): Definitely , yes - 372.8 m/s, or Mach 1.24, Yes, almost certainly, though none have yet (7 Oct 2012) in any well-published verified account. on Aug. 16, 1960, Capt. Kittinger jumped from a height of 102,800 feet, almost 20 miles above the earth. With only the small stabilizing chute deployed, Capt. Kittinger fell for 4 minutes, 36 seconds. He experienced temperatures as low as minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit (-70 degrees Celsius) and a maximum speed of 614 miles per hour. … The 28-foot main parachute did not open until Capt. Kittinger reached the much thicker atmosphere at 17,500 feet. From http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=562 That is 274 m/s at some point during a descent from 31333 m to 5333 m altitude. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_sound From this graph we can see that if you start at 36000 metres, when you have fallen 16000 metres to 20000 metres height, the speed of sound is 295 m/s. Kittinger's maximum speed was 274 m/s at unstated altitude. It seems plausible that someone might be able to travel 7.6% faster oriented head down with no stabilising chute. There are reports that say Kittinger in 1960 reached supersonic speeds - e.g. Airforce Magazine - but in a BBC video (at 02:10) Kittinger says he was "very nearly supersonic"). | {
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12,264 | Many times when the religious permisibility of alcohol is debated (especially in substances with small amounts of alcohol in it) people will claim that even bread has traces of alcohol. How valid is that claim? Is there a published survey of the amount of alcohol found in bread in general? | Baker's yeast is capable of fermentation, so it can certainly produce alcohol. In 1926 it was reported in the Canadian Medical Association Journal that bread can contain between 0.04 and 1.9% of alcohol. This is just a short report, not a full scientific paper. In "Ethanol Content of Various Foods and Soft Drinks and their Potential for Interference with a Breath-Alcohol Test" the alcohol content of certain kinds of bread are reported. The highest alcohol content is found in Rosemary's onion bread with 0.98%, and lower values for other kinds of breads. So, bread certainly contains at least traces of ethanol, and possibly even rather significant amounts. | {
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12,438 | In the movies falling elevators aren't rare. However, given that elevators are protected by safety devices, is it even possible for elevator to fall? | Falling Elevators There are examples of elevators falling with fatal consequences On the night of May 22, 1903, in Pittsburgh, PA, a large group of mostly young people who attended the Pennsylvania Electric Mechanical Institute were having a celebration party on the fifth and sixth floors of the Donnelley building. About 700 people packed the two floors for the ball, and at around 10 PM another group of seventeen passengers was loaded into the elevator on the first floor, bound for the party on floor six. Just as the elevator reached the floor, it suddenly let go and fell six stories, crashing into the elevator pit. The multi-ton elevator cable and assembly came crashing down onto the elevator, crushing the occupants. When the party goers heard the crash, they rushed to the elevator. In the panic, some nearly fell into the open shaft. Four bodies were pulled from the rubble and taken to a morgue. They were so badly mangled it was not until the next day they could be identified. So mangled were the bodies, they could only be identified by the cloths they were wearing. The others in the elevator, the youngest being only 3 years old, somehow survived. The accident was blamed on overloading of the elevator with 17 people when the maximum weight allowed for only 10-12. From Ten Tragic Elevator Accidents Also described in Pittsbugh Donnelly Elevator Accident 1903 Reports attributed to Weekly Sentinel, Fort Wayne, IN, 27 May 1903 The Atlanta Constitution, Atlanta, GA 24 May 1903 Packed elevator goes into free fall at trendy NYC hotel A late-night party at Gramercy Park Hotel in New York City for indie film "Janie Jones" last Thursday turned into a horror flick for 14 people - including the movie's star and director, the New York Post, New York magazine and others report. Party goers had packed into the elevator on the hotel's rooftop terrace and then made one more stop on another floor, when the elevator went into free fall - with the door partially open. It plunged eight stories before the emergency brakes stopped it, the stories say. Safety Devices Elevators do have many safety devices, however maintenance workers will sometimes disable them to facilitate their work. Suzanne Hart's Midtown Elevator Death Due To Disabled Safety Device - Huff Post, New York, October 30, 2012 Elevator Work Blamed in Death of Suzanne Hart - New York Times January 23, 2012 It seems possible that, in recent decades, being crushed or decapitated in an elevator doorway by unexpected elevator motion is more likely than dying in a falling elevator car. | {
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12,450 | I came across the following unsourced claim: When a male penguin falls in love with a female penguin, he searches the entire beach to find the perfect pebble to present to her. And when he finally finds it, he waddles over to her and places the pebble right in front of her. Kind of like a proposal. Is this true? | A quick search on Google brings up lots of pages like "The Penguins FAQ" stating it is just a myth: I heard that when Adelie penguins are choosing a mate the male searches for the perfect pebble and presents it to the one he wants as his mate. It's a myth based on the fact that Adelie penguins build nests out of pebbles. And they build the nest while they do the courting, so it's actually partly true. I guess a penguin who doesn't bring any pebble wouldn't stand a chance, but any pebble will do and both mates bring them in! -- I could not find any specific peer reviewed study on this, aside from a couple of papers showing that (very unsurprisingly) hormonal levels play an important role in courtship and nest leaving in Adélie penguins. Sex steroid and corticosterone levels of Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) during courtship and incubation. - Gen Comp Endocrinol. , 1999 Should I stay or should I go? Hormonal control of nest abandonment in a long-lived bird, the Adélie penguin. - Horm Behav. , 2010 Seaword.org gives a few clues (with refs) about courtship a. Courtship varies among the species. It generally begins with both
visual and auditory displays. In many species, males display first to
establish a nest site and then to attract a mate. b. Most penguin species are monogamous (one male breeds with one
female during a mating season) (del Hoyo, et al., 1992); however,
research has shown that some females may have one to three partners in
one season and some males may have one or two partners (Davis and
Speirs, 1990). c. Mate selection is up to the female, and it is the females that
compete for the males (Davis and Speirs, 1990). d. A female usually selects the same male from the preceding season
(Sparks and Soper, 1987). Adélie penguins have been documented
re-pairing with the previous year's mate 62% of the time. Chinstraps
re-paired in 82% of possible cases, and gentoos re-paired 90% of the
time (Trivelpiece, 1990). In one study of Adélies, females paired with
males within minutes of arriving at the colony (Davis and Speirs,
1990). e. When a female selects a different mate it is usually because her
mate from the previous season fails to return to the nesting area.
Another reason may be mistiming in returning to the nesting area. If
they arrive at different times and miss each other, one or the other
penguin may obtain a new mate (Davis and Speirs, 1990). Again, the idea that the male builds a pebble nest first and then starts the courtship fits in very well and Occam's razor would favour this one rather than some forced antropomorphisation of penguins. According to the same page: One medium-sized gentoo nest was composed of 1,700 pebbles and 70 molled tail feathers (del Hoyo, et al., 1992). So, it seems the male would have to go on and on bugging the female a couple of thousand times to show her yet another pebble he collected...
This seems unrealistic and this behaviour seems not to have been reported. We can conclude that, lacking further scientific proof, this is just another myth. | {
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12,520 | I read and heard a lot about the Reproducibility Initiative recently, claiming that the data of many scientific studies cannot/was not/is not be reproduced . “In the last year, problems in reproducing academic research have drawn a lot of public attention, particularly in the context of translating research into medical advances. Recent studies indicate that up to 70% of research from academic labs cannot be reproduced, representing an enormous waste of money and effort ,” said Dr. Elizabeth Iorns, Science Exchange’s co-founder and CEO. “In my experience as a researcher, I found that the problem lay primarily in the lack of incentives and opportunities for validation—the Reproducibility Initiative directly tackles these missing pieces.” Unfortunately I was not able to find those studies (where these reproduced!?) proving this statement. I want to know where these studies where carried out, medicine, biology, psychology, but couldn't find anything. I'm also somehow skeptical that science is in that bad shape, considering that studies are often used/mandatory here on skeptics.se for good answers and to get license for pharmaceutical products. 70% looks a bit too high to me. | ALS Therapy Development Institute re-tested 70+ drugs from 221 independent studies: 0 reproduced (1) Minocycline: effective in four separate ALS mouse studies worsened symptoms in a clinical trial of more than 400 patients (2) National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) conducted sponsored replication of 12 spinal cord injury studies: 2/12 successfully reproduced (3) Bayer conducted in-house target validation studies 14/67 reproduced (4) Amgen attempted to reproduce 53 “landmark” oncology publications: 6/53 reproduced (5) References Scott et al. Amyotroph Lateral Scler. 9, 4-15 (2008). Gordon et al. Lancet Neurol. 6, 1045–1053 (2007). Stuart et al. Experimental Neurology 233, 597–605 (2012). Prinz et al. Nat Rev Drug Discov. 10, 712 (2011). Begley and Ellis. Nature. 483, 531-3 (2012). | {
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13,550 | While everyone is telling us that we should brush our teeth twice a day, the human species has evolved for several million years without any teeth brushing. Apes don't brush their teeth, and they don't have a mechanism to change their teeth like sharks and crocodiles . So why do human need to brush their teeth? If we do, do we only need to brush them to clean and remove food stuck in them, or is the use of Fluoride based toothpaste is needed as well? | Do we need to brush our teeth? Yes, there are health benefits from brushing your teeth. Done correctly, it reduces the incidence of caries and periodontitis. When you brush your teeth, you help remove plaque — a sticky film that forms on your teeth because of bacteria in your mouth. The bacteria in plaque causes the two major tooth-related diseases, cavities (dental caries) and gum disease (periodontitis). Mayo clinic In normal use it must be concluded that the benefits of tooth brushing far outweigh the potential harm. Can tooth brushing damage your health? Effects on oral and dental tissues. The Cochrane Collaboration performed a meta-analyses of several studies : The review of trials found that children aged 5 to 16 years who used a fluoridated toothpaste had fewer decayed, missing and filled permanent teeth after three years (regardless of whether their drinking water was fluoridated). Twice a day use increases the benefit. In another meta-analysis , they looked at young children, and found that may be side-effects of fluoride toothpastes - a risk of fluorosis/mottling of teeth - especially in children younger than 12 months or under 5-6 years with high fluoride levels, but that for children at high-risk of tooth decay, this risk may be outweighed. the human species has evolved for several million years without any teeth brushing. ... So why do human need to brush their teeth? From EPIDEMIOLOGY OF DENTAL DISEASE As others have pointed out We don't eat what people ate 5000 years ago (let alone 150000 years ago) We need our teeth to last longer as we mostly don't expect to die before age 40. Studies of the dentitions of ancient English populations show that a change in the prevalence and distribution of caries took place between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries and was closely associated in time with an increase in the consumption of refined carbohydrates, especially sugar. From The role of sugar in the etiology of dental caries via Wikipedia Bacteria in a person's mouth convert glucose, fructose, and most commonly sucrose (table sugar) into acids such as lactic acid through a glycolytic process called fermentation. Apes don't brush their teeth That doesn't mean they wouldn't benefit from so doing. Caries is moderately common among the great apes, particularly the chimpanzees. Of the great apes, chimpanzees have a diet most similar to our own; EPIDEMIOLOGY OF DENTAL DISEASE Caries in great apes is usually observed later in life when occlusal enamel is lost through wear and approximal enamel that maintains a tight contact between teeth breaks down and allows food and plaque stagnation between teeth. Dental Biology and Disease is the use of Fluoride based toothpaste ... needed as well? Many medical professionals believe there is adequate evidence to support this. Most toothpastes also contain fluoride, which helps to prevent and control cavities. NHS Multivariate analysis disclosed fissure sealants, early start of tooth brushing and topical fluoride application to be associated with the prevention of dental caries. Evaluation of a preventive program aiming at children with increased caries risk using ICDAS II criteria. | {
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13,606 | In Flight , to prevent the plane from diving, the pilot puts it upside down before flipping it back over just before landing. This is supposed to be loosely based on flight 261 from Alaska Airlines which unfortunately crashed without survivor after attempting a similar desperate manoeuvre. Let's just focus on the inverted flight part. Can a commercial airliner (50+ passengers) fly inverted for more than a few seconds before aerodynamics and/or propulsion problems arise? What are these specific problems? | Absolutely. As a matter of fact, one of the first commercially successful aircraft (the Boeing 707) did a barrel roll during a demonstration flight. In case you don't believe my claim, here is a video to back up my claim: Boeing 707 Barrel Roll - Pilot Tex Johnston Performs Roll In Dash-80 Prototype Aircraft In 1955. In 1994, FedEx Flight 705 (A DC-10), was put into a barrel roll during a rather insane hijacking attempt. Captain Sanders joined the fray as Jim Tucker struggled to control the airplane. By now, Tucker’s right arm was nearly useless as the grave injuries to his skull brought on paralysis. He knew that his wounded crewmates could not last long against Calloway, so he assisted the only way he could. He pulled the control yoke all the way back to his chest, and rolled it to the left. The DC-10 was executing a barrel-roll at nearly 400 miles per hour—something the aircraft had never been designed to do. Peterson and Sanders were shouting “Get him! Get him!” to each other, as the three struggling men were tossed about the galley area, alternately weightless and pressed upon by three times their weight in G forces. By now, the aircraft was inverted at 19,700 feet, and the alarmed air traffic controllers in Memphis were desperately calling for Flight 705. (EDITORIAL NOTE: I take exception to the part where the NatGeo writers state "something the aircraft had never been designed to do" because a perfect barrel roll is a constant 1G maneuver (generally with anything between .5G to 3G, well within most aircraft design parameters), and doesn't stress the aircraft in any way, although this particular execution was probably not per any aerobatics manual due to the actual fight going on.) Basic aerodynamics doesn't really care what the orientation of the aircraft is as long as you are able to balance the forces. The basic forces you have to deal with are weight, lift, thrust and drag. In an inverted position, you may think that the combination of lift and weight would be detrimental to flight, however you can tilt the angle of attack of the wing so that even in an inverted position you can get the lift to be opposite of the "top" surface of the wing. Otherwise an aircraft would have a hard time descending. The Smithsonian Air & Space museum has a nice web page that explains how inverted flight works . Aircraft are basically the same on a meta level. The thing to keep in mind, that many subsystems of the aircraft may not operate well for extended inverted flight. However, (and keep in mind I have not seen the movie in question) most systems will maintain operation for at least some time due to residual fluids and such in the oil and fuel systems. Depending on the aircraft make and model, the fuel and oil lines should provide at least 30 seconds to a minute of uninterrupted operation. For aircraft that do fly inverted, you can check out any airshow and see all manner of aircraft fly inverted for extended periods of time. Jets and propeller aircraft have well understood physics . You can learn more about aerodynamics at this page if that helps . If you look at this image: All you have to do is get the angle of attack to be negative for the right-side up wing (thus if the wing is upside down, it's creating a net up force against gravity). So again, it's quite possible and doesn't violate any flight dynamics. | {
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13,628 | The Tea Party Facebook page posted this Monday night. Is it accurate that: There are exactly 900135 registered voters in Cuyahoga County Ohio for the 2012 predidental election There were 900135 voters that cast votes in the 2012 election 100% of them cast votes for Obama | Here are the results of the Nov 6th 2012 election for Cuyahoga county Ohio. . A simple Google search found this. Registered voters 927,996 Votes Cast 650,437 Votes for Barack Obama 447,273 Votes for Mitt Romney 190,660 I apologize in advance for the the language but - why do people think they can get away with spreading this bulls**t? P.S. I've updated for the official certified results, which were not significantly different from the 'unofficial' results published on the day. | {
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13,638 | The issue of voter fraud comes up very often at election times. In the media, it is nearly always pictured as a really important and urgent problem. It ranges from whether photo identification should be required, to rigged voting machines, to corrupt officials, to blatant lies (such as Was there 100% turn out and 100% Obama support in Cuyahoga County in 2012 Presidential Election? ) However Stephen Colbert stated on his show that voter fraud is for all intents and purposes non-existent in the United States , citing a MinnPost article which states: “There is absolutely no evidence that [voter impersonation fraud] has
affected the outcome of any election in the United States, at least
any recent election in the United States,” Schultz said. So, is the problem way overblown? Is there even a problem? | Well, after a quick search it seems that Stephen Colbert is probably correct. First, it's good to mention that according to the Department of Justice most Voter Fraud will fall under state jurisdiction and not Federal jurisdiction unless there are threats or discrimination based on race, religion, or national origin. There is a popular figure oft-cited by The Daily Show and other sources who make arguments against certain Voter ID laws, which is 10 cases of "in-person" Voter ID fraud over the last decade or so. This seems technically correct, according to this article by ABC : Over the past decade Texas has convicted 51 people of voter fraud, according the state's Attorney General Greg Abbott. Only four of those cases were for voter impersonation, the only type of voter fraud that voter ID laws prevent. No doubt you noticed, though, that Stewart and other critics of Voter ID laws specifically mention cases that Voter ID laws would have prevented - although the total amount of Voter Fraud is higher. Is it enough to matter? Well according to Google's statistics the difference in votes between the candidates was 3,378,662. A much closer race is the infamous 2000 Elections, where the FEC's statistics show a difference of 350,428 between the Democrat and Republican candidates. It would have taken 7,009 cases of voter fraud per state in 2000 to make that gap, and over 67,500 cases of voter fraud per state to close the gap in 2012. I could not find a source for the total cases of voter fraud, but one of PolitiFact's articles attempts to address this: To get the data, News21 reporters sent records requests to elections officers in all 50 states seeking every case of fraudulent elections activity, including registration fraud, absentee ballot fraud, voter impersonation fraud and casting an ineligible vote. News21 said it received no useful responses from several states. With some states, including Massachusetts, Oklahoma, South Carolina and South Dakota, the cases included in the database came from a survey of alleged election fraud conducted by the Republican National Lawyers Association. And in some states, some but not all local jurisdictions responded, and some responses were missing important details about each case. Despite those issues, News21 defends its work as "substantially complete" as the largest collection of election fraud cases gathered by anyone in the country. They also go on to say that News21 found 307 cases of Voter Fraud (en totale, including Impersonation) in Georgia - which is 6x higher than Texas and over 10x higher than Pennsylvania (who News21 said had 29 cases). The Republican National Lawyer's Association challenged the analysis, saying Georgia had 375 cases . Given that I've no baseline or average to work from, but Georgia appears to be one of the more rampant offenders - every state in the nation would have to have eighteen times the amount of voter fraud that Georgia had in a single year to make up the gap in the 2000 elections. It would take over 9,000-fold Georgia's cases per state in 2012 alone to have made up the gap in the 2012 elections. Basically, even if all states had as much voter fraud as the RNLA said Georgia had per year (which they don't), it would still only represent .0155% of the total vote. I'd agree with Stephen Colbert and other pundits; for all intents and purposes, Voter Fraud is practically a non-issue. | {
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13,651 | I have recently read Ethiopian kids hack OLPCs in 5 months with zero instruction which claims that children who never saw a book before and didn't know how to speak English learned how to use an Android phone and hacked it. Is this true? The article simply states that they have enabled the camera on the tablet which was previously disabled. Would what the children did really be considered hacking? The article also states that they began learning English. If someone could verify what is meant by that it would be great. | The source MIT Technology Review article seems to answer your questions Earlier this year, OLPC workers dropped off closed boxes containing the tablets, taped shut, with no instruction. “I thought the kids would play with the boxes. Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, found the on-off switch … powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child, per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs in the village, and within five months, they had hacked Android,” Negroponte said. “Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera, and they figured out the camera, and had hacked Android.” Elaborating later on Negroponte’s hacking comment, Ed McNierney, OLPC’s chief technology officer, said that the kids had gotten around OLPC’s effort to freeze desktop settings. “The kids had completely customized the desktop—so every kids’ tablet looked different. We had installed software to prevent them from doing that,” McNierney said. “And the fact they worked around it was clearly the kind of creativity, the kind of inquiry, the kind of discovery that we think is essential to learning.” So, learning English consisted, at least, of learning to sing the Alphabet song. The hacking consisted of working around an OEM attempt to limit the settings. Whether you consider discovering and using a bug to unlock existing functionality to be "hacking" depends entirely on your definition of "hacking". It is quite different from, say, developing a technique to "jail-break" an iPhone or rebuilding a kernel. | {
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13,652 | There's a common folklore among Texans that Texas was the only state to specifically have it written that Texas may secede, although I've heard that other states have that right as well. In 2009, Gov Rick Perry of Texas also made that threat at a rally. All politicians know what they are talking about and don't lie, right? As of recently, a petition to secede has appeared, but many critics are claiming that it's simply fiction playing it off as a form of protest. Still, there are many other petitions to secede for other states. I am not an expert in government research, and all I have been able to find are news articles. Is there proof that Texas can or cannot secede in accordance to US Law? | Regarding the claim that Texas has the right to secede, as implied by Gov. Rick Perry in 2009: “When we came into the nation in 1845, we were a republic, we were a stand-alone nation. And one of the deals was, we can leave anytime we want. ” From FactCheck.org : [Rick Perry] is wrong when he claims Texas has some unique arrangement that would allow it to secede at will . Perry's comments suggest the deal was part of the Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas to the United States, which was approved March 1, 1845. But the document neither talks about nor conveys any such right to secede. From Politifact : Sanford Levinson , a professor at the School of Law at the University of Texas at Austin , says that between the Texas Constitution, the U.S. Constitution and the 1845 Joint Resolution Annexing Texas to the United States, there is no explicit right for the state to return to its days as a republic. Even Texas Secede! acknowledges: Q: Doesn't the Texas Constitution reserve the right of Texas to secede? A: This heavily popularized bit of Texas folklore finds no corroboration where it counts: No such provision is found in the current Texas Constitution (adopted in 1876) or the terms of annexation . Reasons to Secede is also straightforward about this: Q: Does Texas have the right to secede? A. No... but yes, not explicitly. There is no verbiage in the Texas Constitution, the US Constitution, or the Texas Annexation Agreement that expressly grants the State of Texas the right to secede from the Union. | {
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13,777 | There's an image going around Facebook, showing Israel's occupied territory over the last few decades: I have seen at least two people (both Christian Zionists) criticize this map as "very biased" because it was created by an anti-semite. My follow-up questions to these critics have gone completely unanswered. Personally, I don't care if it was created by Adolf Hitler himself, if the map is accurate. Is this map accurate? If not, or if there is some sort of room for interpretation, what are its chief failures? | TL;DR : There are inaccuracies and biases in the map, however it seems to be based on facts. There is a well sourced infographic, which is very similar. Cartographic Regression: Good.Is Prior to 1917, the region was part of the Ottoman Empire. The area shown as "1917 Palestine" was then the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem, the western part of the Vilayet of Syria and the southern part of the Vilayet of Beirut. In 1917, during the first world war, in response to an attack on a British Protectorate by the Ottoman army, Ottoman Syria was invaded and occupied by British and French forces, this became the Occupied Enemy Territories . The OETA south region corresponds with the area identified as "1917 Palestine". In 1920 the borders of "mandatory Palestine" were defined by the League of Nations. This area is what is shown in the infographic as "1917 Palestine" 1920-1948, Palestine under British Mandate Your infographic for Palestine in 1946 shows some parts under Israeli control. That doesn't make sense. The Population of Palestine Prior to 1948 Palestine 1878 - 1927 In 1946, as far as I can tell, the boundaries were exactly the same. In 1947 a plan was proposed. Your infographic correctly mentions it is the "UN plan". UN GA 181 - Annex A In 1949, after the first Arab-Israeli War (which Israel won) Palestine was reduced to two territories, Gaza and West Bank which were under control by Egypt and Jordan, respectively. Your infographic does not show this map. Detailed Map of Palestine Showing Armistice Lines of Israel and Jordan (1949) 1949 Israel/Palestine Map In 1967, after the Six-Day War , Israel militarily occupied these territories. Your map shows them as "Palestine", but doesn't mention they were occupied by Israel. Israel and the Occupied Territories At present, Israel has given back control of part of the territories to Palestinians. The map shows areas "A" and "B" (according to UN terminology), which means zones under at least civil control by the Palestinian Authority. UN Map of West bank (2008) B'TSELEM Map of West bank (2008) CIA map of the Palestinian Authority controlled areas As a personal note, it is a very well known fact that Israel has annexed more and more lands as a result of political pressure and winning wars. It would be wildly misleading, though, not to mention that Israel was involved in many of these wars as a defending party and that they have been giving back control to the Palestinian National Authority of some of the land. | {
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13,874 | There is a common claim that India hasn't invaded any other country in the past 10,000 years. It has been repeated in chain mails and various web-sites: Example , Example . India never invaded any country in her last 10,000 years of history Other variations exist, such as 5,000 or 1,000 or 100,000 years. Are these claims true? If 10,000 years is too much into the infancy of civilization, what about 5000 years when civilization was more established? | 1971 I have the Impression India did a little bit of invading in 1971 From Wikipedia After building tensions during the Bangladesh Liberation war, Pakistan launched a pre-emptive attack against India, which responded with air-strikes. This marked the official start of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered the immediate mobilisation of troops and launched the full-scale invasion . This involved Indian forces in a massive coordinated air, sea, and land assault. Indian Air Force started flying sorties against Pakistan from midnight. The main Indian objective on the western front was to prevent Pakistan from entering Indian soil. There was no Indian intention of conducting any major offensive into West Pakistan. The invasion didn't last long but troops crossed international borders and engaged in armed conflict with the government of a foreign nation, forcing its surrender. 1948 And as Richard Terret points out above, [In 1948] the Indian Armed Forces invaded the State of Hyderabad and ended the rule of Nizam, annexing the state into the Indian Union. See The Fall of Hyderabad and Indian annexation of Hyderabad (Operation Polo). 1944 Since the question asks about the last 10,000 years, we can consider examples prior to the establishment of India as a fully independent state. In 1944 Indian troops participated in the invasion of Italy it was hoped that the invasion would distract German attention and forces from France. The next attempt or Second Battle of Cassino
was made by Lieutenant-General Sir Bernard
Freyberg’s newly formed New Zealand Corps,
consisting of Major-General Tuker’s 4th Indian
Division and the 2nd New Zealand Division. From The Battles for Monte Casino Maybe this is a case of irregular verb conjugation: I liberate; You invade; He, She or It fight a border war ? Terminology A number of commenters have attempted to dispute the inclusion of the events above on several grounds: It's not an invasion if your motives are good. It's not an invasion if the target is somehow not a country. Invasion Motivation Motivation is irrelevant. In 1944 Britain and the USA invaded France†. At that time France was governed by a French government (the Vichy government) put in place by the Nazis. The British motivation was the liberation of France from Nazi occupation. They invaded France at the request of the Free-French government in exile. Their motives were good and their actions after 1945 proved this. However it was still an invasion and described as such. Example Target The word invasion can validly be used where the target is not a country. For example, when a burglar enters my house, it is described as a home invasion. When a journalist listens to the phone messages of a member of the public it is described as an invasion of privacy. However the intent of the question obviously is aimed at violent military takeover of foreign territory. (foreign meaning outside the internationally recognised borders of the invading force) Country In English, the words Country, Nation and State are often used interchangeably. There is a great deal of dispute about what constitutes a country and how many exist. For example which of England, Britain, Great Britain and the United Kingdom are or are not countries? If I invade London, am I simultaneously invading one, two, three or four countries? Another example: Is the Principality of Monaco a country? Would it be nonsense to ask whether Monaco has ever been or could be invaded ? Would any violent military takeover of Monaco by a foreign country not count as an invasion under any circumstances? The intent of the above question is best addressed by interpreting country to mean something like the kind of independent sovereign states recognised by the U.N. We should not get hung up over terms like "principality" or "princely state" - we should consider whether they meet common criteria such as internationally recognised borders, independent government and so on. Footnotes † A great many other nations participated in the invasion of France (or in its liberation if you prefer), I haven't listed them all for brevity - not from a lack of recognition or respect for the scale and value of their contribution and losses. | {
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13,959 | Source: CBS NEWS . "If you look in a spider web, if you just took one single strand of that spider silk, that strand is stronger than steel as well - a lot like Kevlar," said Mr Tucker Norton, a ballistics expert at duPont. I'm skeptical of this claim. What are the facts? | It depends on what spider you are measuring, what sort of silk from that spider, and what properties you want to measure. Ingi Agnarsson, Matjaž Kuntner, and Todd A. Blackledge Bioprospecting Finds the Toughest Biological Material: Extraordinary Silk from a Giant Riverine Orb Spider , PLoS One. 2010; 5(9): e11234, 10.1371/journal.pone.0011234 The toughness of forcibly silked fibers averages 350 MJ/m3, with some samples reaching 520 MJ/m3. Thus, C. darwini silk is more than twice tougher than any previously described silk, and over 10 times better than Kevlar®. [...] Caerostris darwini major ampullate silk is, on average, about twice as tough as typical silks spun by other orbweavers (Figs 3–4, Table 1, Table S1). Spider dragline silk is already deservedly renowned for its high toughness of ∼150 MJm∧-3, which outperforms both steel and Kevlar [32]. Yet, C. darwini silk is far higher performing, absorbing about ten times more kinetic energy before fracturing than does Kevlar. Wikipedia covers many different mechanical properties of spider silk, including strength (same as some steels, less than Kevlar), strength per weight (where it beats steel and Kevlar), ductility and toughness. This may help you understand how silk beats Kevlar in some measures but not others. | {
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13,994 | It is known that the human eye anatomy makes it so that all images we see with our eyes are flipped upside down .
Without noticing it, at an early age, the brain is adjusted to this. What I mean is that we at an adult stage don't walk around troubled with everything we see being upside down, even though this is the technical reality. My question is that I remember hearing somewhere that if a person, at a later age (adult), were to start wearing glasses that flipped everything back around (so that the eyes now captures the image of how the reality actually looks in our mind) that person would eventually after some time be totally adjusted. The person would eventually see no difference between how his vision worked before he started wearing the glasses compared to how it works now after. Is this feasible? | Yes. You are referring to a classic experiment in Perceptual Adaptation from 1896: George M. Stratton, Some Preliminary Experiments On Vision Without Inversion of the Retinal Image (Read at the Third International Congress for Psychology, Munich, August, 1896.) Here's a video from a BBC documentary reproducing the experiment. You can also check this book as it might contain other examples. There have been more advanced experiments, such as J.P. Rolland, Frank A. Biocca, Virtual Eyes Can Rearrange Your Body: Adaptation to Visual Displacement in See-Through, Head-Mounted Displays , doi:10.1162/105474698565703, Presence, June 1998, Vol. 7, No. 3, Pages 262-277 These days, the inversion goggles are easily available - I found several examples on Amazon, Ebay and Etsy by searching for that term. | {
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14,134 | Recently this I09 article about wheat made the rounds and there was a part in it that stood out to me: According to Alessio Fasano, the Medical Director for The University
of Maryland's Center for Celiac Research, no one can properly digest
gluten. "We do not have the enzymes to break it down," he said in a recent
interview with TenderFoodie. "It all depends upon how well our
intestinal walls close after we ingest it and how our immune system
reacts to it." His concern is that the gluten protein, which is
abundant in the endosperm of barley, rye, and wheat kernels, is
setting off an aberrant immune response. I am not an expert in the matter, but my understanding is that the very etiology of celiac involves the breakdown of gluten (specifically the gliadin) by tissue transglutaminase, which is definitely an enzyme*. However , in some instances, TG2 can react with water in preference over an amine, leading to the deamidation of glutamine residues. 118,119 Gluten proteins, the immunological trigger of gluten sensitivity, are glutamine-rich donor substrates amenable to deamidation. TG2 contributes to disease development in at least two ways: fi rst, by deamidating gluten peptides and thereby increasing their affi nity for HLA-DQ2/DQ8, which potentiates the T-cell response, 120,121 and, second, by haptenisation of self-antigens through crosslinking with gliadins. 122 This latter activity has been implicated in autoantibody development (fi gure 4). Activation of TG2 and deamidation of gluten peptides seems to be central to disease development and is now well understood at a molecular level. In fact, it's my understanding that testing for celiac often involves looking for those Anti-transglutaminase antibodies. So it's an enzyme that normally breaks down gluten and the process has gone haywire. If we have an enzyme able to do this, wouldn't that allow normal people to break down gluten? Am I misunderstanding things? I do find info that gluten tends to be hard for the human digestive system to break down** Because human gastric and pancreatic enzymes lack postproline cleaving
activity, the abundance of proline residues in gluten renders it
highly resistant to complete proteolytic degradation in the human
gastrointestinal tract, a feature that is most likely linked to the
disease-inducing properties of gluten. But no evidence that this has negative effects on healthy people since most plant foods contain things we can't break down *Gluten sensitivity: from gut to brain. Marios Hadjivassiliou, David S. Sanders, Richard A. Grünewald, Nicola Woodroofe, Sabrina Boscolo, Daniel Aeschlimann
Lancet Neurol. 2010 March; 9(3): 318–330. doi: 10.1016/S1474-4422(09)70290-X ** Combination Enzyme Therapy for Gastric Digestion of Dietary Gluten in Patients With Celiac Sprue Jonathan Gass, Michael T. Bethune, Matthew Siegel, Andrew Spencer, Chaitan Khosla
Gastroenterology 1 August 2007 (volume 133 issue 2 Pages 472-480 DOI: 10.1053/j.gastro.2007.05.028) | Yes, healthy people are capable of digesting wheat gluten. C E Bodwell, L D Satterlee, and L R Hackler, Protein digestibility of the same protein preparations by human and rat assays and by in vitro enzymic digestion methods. Am J Clin Nutr March 1980 vol. 33 no. 3 677-686, PDF In this study they were attempting to compare the digestibility of several proteins in humans and rats. We are only interested here in gluten and humans. Here's an extract from Table 4. It shows that, depending on which measurement system they used, wheat gluten protein was 80-100% digestible by (healthy) humans. A paper from back in 1949 calculated gluten digestibility using a fairly new (at the time) technique: Nitrogen Balance Indices, to see whether consuming Lysine would help. William S. Hoffman and Gordon C. McNeil The Enhancement of the Nutritive Value of Wheat Gluten by Supplementation with Lysine as Determined From Nitrogen Balance Indices In Human Subjects J. Nutr. July 1, 1949 vol. 38 no. 3 331-343 The mean nitrogen balance index for gluten was 0.62. For
gluten plus lysine, it was significantly higher, 0.76, approach
ing the value for casein. Thus lysine, was shown to enhance
the nutritive value of gluten for humans, as it had previously
been shown to do for lower animals. | {
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14,190 | I recently stumbled across the following article: Sorry, men ARE more brainy than women (and more stupid too!) It's a simple scientific fact, says one of Britain's top dons , in which the author claims: 1. That men are on average smarter than women: one of the main reasons why there are not more female science
professors or chief executives or Cabinet ministers is that, on
average, men are more intelligent than women. Boys and girls may start out with the same IQ but by 16 or so boys are
starting to inch ahead. The ever-growing success of girls at GCSE,
A-level and now at university would seem to refute this - but the
blame lies with our exam system, with its emphasis on coursework,
which rewards diligence more than it does intelligence. The undeniable, easily measurable fact remains that, by the time both
sexes reach 21, men, on average, score five IQ points higher than
women . 2. That very-high-IQ men are much more common-place than very-high-IQ women: For not only is the average man more intelligent than the average
woman but also a clear and rather startling imbalance emerges between
the sexes at the high levels of intelligence that the most demanding
jobs require. For instance, at the near-genius level (an IQ of 145), brilliant men
outnumber brilliant women by 8 to one . That's statistics, not sexism. In this context, Professor Greenfield's indignation that only one in
ten science professors is female doesn't seem all that bad. It also
goes some way to explaining why, in almost 110 years of Nobel Prize
history, only two women have ever won the Prize for physics, only four
have won the Prize for chemistry and why no women at all have ever won
the coveted Fields Medal for mathematics in eight decades of trying. This perplexed me, as I thought women and men were intellectually on par with each other. Is the article right or wrong: about the relative average intelligences of adults, and the ratios of exceptional intelligences? The article makes other claims as well, related to personality, for example: Consequently, ambitious, high-achieving men typically work harder, compete more aggressively and become totally immersed in their careers, while even the most high-achieving women will often admit to finding themselves distracted by their genetically preconditioned aptitude for nurture and support. To keep this question focussed, please ignore such claims about personality, and about what may cause gender imbalance in the job markets, and focus only on the claims about "intelligence" as made above. | The title of the article is "Sorry, men ARE more brainy than women (and more stupid too!) It's a simple scientific fact, says one of Britain's top dons" - note the bolded part. The article makes two independent claims, only one of which is relevant to the social/political topic being discussed (lack of women in top positions): There are more males with extremely high IQ compared to female (which is counterbalanced with having a lot more men with extremely low IQ compared to women) . In scientific terms, the IQ distribution has fatter tails in males. There are astonishingly few studies (due to political sensitivities of the topic) either confirming or denying that, but the main one cited is usually the Scottish early 20th century survey, which is exceptional in that it looked at a vast majority of children of the studied age group. Note that there are virtually identical amount of men and women with "normal" IQ (85-120 IQ) - the differences are +/- 2% one way or the other. But on a gifted level (typically considered to be 130-160) there are 15-20% differences at low end. The graph doesn't even show true genius levels (160+) but extrapolating the trend, it's likely that the differences are even higher (I've seen mentions of 1:8 ratios but couldn't find a reliable source on short order). The second one is that on average, male IQ is higher than female . Frankly, I'm somewhat skeptical of this claim myself, but don't have time to dig out studies (as the topic under discussion is imbalance of women in top positions that typically involve 130+ IQ, I see the claim as irrelevant even if true). | {
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14,231 | VillageOfJoy claims that: 14 Interesting Facts about North Korea You can’t turn off the government radio installed in your home, only reduce the volume. [...] There are many of web-sites with similar claims: 1 , 2 . This photo by photographer Eric Lafforgue purports to be an example of such a radio. Is this true now? Did it used to be true? What sort of messages are/were sent over these radios? I am not sure if it is technically a radio or rather a speaker. Most areas are not connected to the electricity grid. And I could not find telegraph poles on aereal pictueres yet, so it is interesting how this things work. Perhaps a fixed frequency radio on batteries is included. Edit: I found this BBC video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRuqustZzKM at 1:43 min one can hear the speaker. It seems to be installed in flats in the cities. | Does every North Korean home have a radio ... No, North Koreans in a changing media environment Photo by AP photographer David Guttenfelder A communal farm compound near Kaesong ...
Ordinary North Koreans rarely have access to electricity Daily Mail Of course, this doesn't rule out battery-powered radios, but it does support the notion that some N Korean homes might be too poor to own their own radio. ... that can't be turned off? A commenter to the linked photo photo by Eric Lafforgue says well, In South Korea, those kind of speakers in apartment home only use for public announcement of apartment managing office. but in north korea, government took control to whole apartment.... So, to speculate a little: the pictured N korean home "radio" is probably also not a radio receiver but a loudspeaker for a communal system for relaying announcements. To be of value in emergencies, such loudspeaker units would probably not be equipped with an off-switch. ... that can't be retuned? As pointed out by Oddthinking in a comment below: All radio frequencies are fixed to the official broadcasting service channels and sealed. If the seal is found broken, the person involved is assumed to be guilty of listening to South Korean or other foreign broadcasting services and is treated as a political prisoner." From Korea Institute for National Unification's White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea 2012 It is possible that a reporter has accidentally transformed "can't retune" to "can't turn off". This might not apply to whatever report included the photo of a wall-mounted "radio" that lacks any obvious off-switch. | {
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14,247 | In the book The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi made a claim: Researchers have proven that chess did not appear until after the
death of the Prophet Did chess not appear until after the death of the Prophet? | Well, I guess it would depend a lot on what you consider the first chess game, really. If we're talking about the modern chess game, then yes, chess didn't appear until after the death of the Prophet. In The Oxford Companion to Chess , Hooper and Whyld explain that the modern chess rules evolved from the game of shatranj (or chatrang) between 1200 and 1500, way after the coming of the Prophet. However, if we are talking about the concept of chess and accept chess-like games as evidence for the development of the modern chess game, then it is safe to assume that chess-like games existed way before the coming of the Prophet. According to chess historian Gerhard Josten , the three core types of pieces found in chess can be traced to games played in different regions of the world way before the rise of the Muslims. Type 1: A relatively immobile central piece, the goal of the game being to paralyse this
piece. The way in which it can be paralysed varies. In the modern game of chess, the King is the only type 1 piece. Its role is crucial, as it provides the means to victory. Such pieces were found in Liubo , a game that was very popular in the Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD) in China, even though it was probably invented a few centuries before that time. As such, the core concept of chess, the key to victory, is borrowed from games that existed in China between 2000 and 3000 years ago, definitely before the Prophet's time. Type 2: A number of pieces which can make various longer moves and – with some exceptions
– can move in all directions without restriction. In modern chess, these pieces would include the bishop, the rook, the queen and, if stretched a bit, knights. Josten believes that these pieces are inspired by tools used to divine the future in ancient Mesopotamia. The pieces were used in conjunction with an astrolabe, and probably greatly influenced the development of the byzantine chess game that played on a circular board, a game that also appeared before the coming of the Prophet. Type 3: A number of pieces which can only move forwards, and if needs be sideways too. The pawn would be the best example of this type of pieces. Josten believes that these simpler pieces come from the old race-type games that were very popular throughout the ages in India. In pachisi, the Indian national game, the pieces advance on a fixed track to reach the end goal, capturing the adersaries' pieces along the way. In such games, the pieces usually can't diverge from their original course and it is impossible for them to move backwards, much like the chess' pawns. Josten concludes that a tri-parallel development must have been possible. The Near Eastern astrolabe with its differentiated pieces assimilated
the Chinese central piece and the Indian race pieces. The result in
the Near East would have been a game of chess played on a circular
board: a game like Byzantine chess. The game did not survive in this
form. Whether and how its circular board was replaced by a square grid
in a further phase and became the predecessor of the Western game of
chess will have to be clarified at a later date. The Near Eastern differentiated pieces and the Chinese central piece
were added to the Indian 8x8 board for Asthapada with race pieces and
the use of dice. The result in India would thus have been four-handed
chess, the first Indian type of chess at all, a game that practically
no longer exists today. The dice and the game for four was retained
whilst the Chinese central piece lost its function. The Near Eastern differentiated pieces and the Indian race pieces were
adopted in the as yet unknown, early form of the Chinese chess game
Xiangqi. This led to a game in China which, under the influence of
Liubo and Weiqi, experienced its own separate development, the
individual phases of which we still know little about. The river on
the Xiangqi board, unknown in all other chess games, almost certainly
came from Liubo, the central field of which according to Röllicke
was called "Water". I regard this a further, very important indication
of the kinship of old games. These games evolved in parallel and influenced each other. Chess historian Isaac Linder suggests that the Kushan Empire, a region located at the crossroads of the places that gave birth to the games Josten suggests as being the core influences on chess' development, might be the birthplace of the chess game. Linder has presented pieces of a game that clearly resembles chess but predate shatranj. It is not impossible that the game of shatranj itself was influenced by this game, as elephant-like pieces were among those uncovered. By combining those two sources, it is possible to conclude that the game of shatranj evolved from an earlier game that appeared in the Kushan Empire between 50 BC and 200 AD as a result of the combination of concepts borrowed from sophisticated games found in nearby regions. Chris' answer relates very well how the Muslim world came upon the game of chess/shatranj, and also hints at the fact that the muslims probably did not invent it, but rather propagated it. I hope this answer helped you understand the birth of this wonderful game. I highly suggest reading the Josten article , as it is well documented and referenced, as well as being a fascinating read. | {
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14,306 | U.S. Government Retirement Program SADDAM HUSSEIN
"FRIEND" 1983 "RETIRED" 2006 OSAMA BIN LADEN
"FRIEND" 1979 "RETIRED" 20?1 MUAMMAR GADDAFI
"FRIEND" 2009 "RETIRED" 2011 The photos to the left seem to depict Americans who posed with them: Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein Osama Bin Laden with an unknown American. Muammar Gaddafu and Barak Obama While this image exists to "make a point", are the photos on the left true and represent a strong alliance as stated by "friend"? Did these alliances start (or were strong) on the mentioned dates? | TL;DR; Faked image Not bin Laden Much less interesting than it seems First Image: Rumsfeld and Hussein Donald Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad in 1983 is described in Wikipedia . source unknown, allegedly 1983 A meeting between Rumsfeld and Hussein did take place in 1983 but the alleged photo of Rumsfeld+Hussein is almost certainly not a true record of that encounter. Iraqi TV coverage shows Hussein in army uniform. The (then secret) reports of the meeting describe Hussein as being in army uniform. Personally I think Photoshop may have been involved here, look at the "shadow" round Hussein's head, consider Rumsfeld's true appearance in 1983 and 2011. Hussein elsewhere elsewhen Rumsfeld in 2011 Rumsfeld in 1983 There is a declassified report Rumsfeld mission: December 20 meeting with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on Rumsfeld's visit which describes the matters discussed by Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein. I assume the report is genuine and that the National Security Archive have reproduced it faithfully. The Archive's summary is At a 90-minute meeting with Donald Rumsfeld, Saddam Hussein evinces "obvious pleasure" at a letter Rumsfeld brought from President Ronald Reagan. The two discuss common U.S.-Iraqi interests, including Lebanon, Palestine, opposition to an outcome of the Iran-Iraq war that "weakened Iraq's role or enhanced interests and ambitions of Iran," and U.S. efforts to cut off arms sales to Iran. Rumsfeld says that the U.S. feels extremely strongly about terrorism and says that it has a home - in Iran, Syria, and Libya, and that it is supported by the Soviet Union. He encourages arrangements that might provide alternative transshipment routes for Iraq's oil, including pipelines through Saudi Arabia or to the Gulf of Aqaba in Jordan. The State Department calls the meeting a "positive milestone." If you read the full text, there was clearly an exchange of views on a large number of regional issues but no mention (that I can see) of any new strong alliance between the USA and Iraq. Conclusion (re image 1) This faked photograph does not represent the forging of a strong alliance between Rumsfeld and Hussein or between the USA and Iraq. In 1983 there was a slight thawing in diplomatic relations due to shared national interests in opposing Syrian and Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Iranian expansion etc. Second image: Brzezinski and unnamed Pakistani army major The second picture is one of a series available from the Corbis Agency © Bettmann/CORBIS The caption there is Original caption:Kyber Pass, Pakistan: United States Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski looks into Afghanistan through the sights of a machine gun at a Pakistan Army outpost here on the border 2/3. Brzezinski toured the area and then continued talks with the Pakistan delegation in regards to an aid package. Stock Photo ID: U1993539-24
Date Photographed: 03 February 1980
Model Released: No Release
Property Released: No Release
Location: Pakistan
Credit: © Bettmann/CORBIS
Licence Type: Rights Managed (RM) It seems questionable whether Osama bin-Laden would have been present in a Pakistani border post in 1980 in the uniform of a major in the Pakistani army and employed to hand weapons to visiting dignitaries. This is well covered in 911 Myths which identifies an article in the Washington Post on February 4, 1980, which says President Carter's national security adviser peered resolutely with gun in hand at Soviet controlled Afghanistan from the top of a Pakistani military outpost high above the strategic Khyber Pass.
...
Zbigneiw Brzezinski, high White House aide, hesitated for a second and then declined an offer to fire the Chinese-made light machine gun toward Afghanistan. ... The tour started with an early morning helicopter visit to a remote refugee camp in the Kurram Agency ... 12 miles from the Afghan border.
...
Brzezinski was careful not to promise military assistance to the rebels, but he told them of America's support for the efforts and said, "The entire world is outraged," by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The reporter was Stuart Auerbach . Conclusion (re image 2) This photograph of Brzezinsky and an unidentified Pakistani army major does not represent the forging of a strong alliance between Brzezinski and bin-Laden or between the USA and Saudi-Arabian led groups opposing the Soviet invasion. Third Image: Gadaffi and Obama. Handshakes Here's the photo in the Washington Times on July 9, 2009 The article says Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, who former president Ronald Reagan once denounced as a "mad dog," supped on pasta just two seats away from President Obama at the Group of Eight summit today and even secured a handshake with the U.S. president. Gaddafi is attending the summit in his role as president of the African Union So the president of the USA shook hands with the president of the African Union. There is nothing in the report to indicate that this particular handshake committed the USA to a strong and enduring alliance with the African Union. The article continues Denis McDonough, a White House official, said before the meal that Obama would not hesitate to greet Gaddafi. ''He doesn't intend to choose which leaders he'll shake hands with and which he won't: he'll be very happy to greet everyone he meets," he said, adding: ''He wants to see cooperation with Libya continue in sectors such as Tripoli's decision a few years ago to give up its nuclear program, an absolutely voluntary decision that we consider positive." It can be plausibly argued that the president of the USA viewed his shaking hands with the then ruler of Libya as helping to encourage or reward a process of nuclear disarmament and a cessation of sponsorship of terrorism. Alliances If we look for an alliance using the dictionary meaning of "a formal agreement or treaty between two or more nations to cooperate for specific purposes." One list of arms-control related agreements and treaties at http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/LibyaChronology includes January 3, 2008: Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgam pays an official visit to the United States and signs a Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement. This is the first official visit by a Libyan Foreign Minister to the United States since 1972. August 14, 2008: The United States and Libya sign the U.S -Libya Claims Settlement Agreement, providing full compensation for victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and the bombing of the Berlin disco. Under the terms of the agreement, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice certified to Congress that Libya paid $1.5 billion to cover terrorism related claims against Tripoli. The agreement also addressed Libyan claims arising from U.S. military actions in Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986 to the amount of $300 million. Note Barack Obama was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. November 20, 2009: Libya unexpectedly halts the shipment of the remaining 5.2 kilograms of HEU in spent fuel from its Tajoura research reactor. The material was scheduled to be flown to Russia for disposal that same month as part of an agreement between the Libya, Russia, and the United States. there's no mention of any bilateral USA-Libya agreement or treaty signed on or around July 9 2009. According to the state department , the following USA-Libya treaties are currently in force Agreement relating to the termination of
outstanding agreements with Libya. Exchange of notes at Tripoli February 5, 1972. Entered into force February 5, 1972. 23 UST 82; TIAS 7275. Agreement regarding grants under the Foreign
Assistance Act of 1961, as amended, or successor
legislation, and the furnishing of defense
articles, defense services and related training,
including pursuant to the United States
International Military Education and Training
(IMET) Program. Exchange of notes at Tripoli May 2 and December 8, 2009. Entered into force December 8, 2009. NP SCIENTIFIC COOPERATION
Agreement on science and technology
cooperation, with annexes. Signed at Washington January 3, 2008. Entered into force April 4, 2008. TIAS 08-404. ATOMIC ENERGY
Agreement to facilitate the provision of
assistance for the transfer of spent high-enriched
uranium nuclear fuel to the Russian Federation. Signed at Tripoli October 28, 2009. Entered into force October 28, 2009. TIAS 09-1028. CLAIMS
Claims settlement agreement, with annex. Signed at Tripoli August 14, 2008. Entered into force August 14, 2008. TIAS 08-814. DEFENSE
Military assistance agreement.* Signed at Tripoli June 30, 1957. Entered into force June 30, 1957. 8 UST 957; TIAS 3857; 284 UNTS 177. Note * Terminated February 5, 1972, except that Article I,
paragraphs 2 and 4, arrangements under Article I, para
graphs 3, 5, and 7, and under Article II remain in force. Arrangement for return of equipment and
material no longer needed in the furtherance of
the mutual defense assistance program. Signed at Tripoli June 30, 1957. Entered into force June 30, 1957. 8 UST 963; TIAS 3858; 284 UNTS 188. Agreement relating to the termination of
outstanding agreements with Libya. Exchange of notes at Tripoli February 5, 1972. Entered into force February 5, 1972. 23 UST 82; TIAS 7275. Agreement regarding grants under the Foreign
Assistance Act of 1961, as amended, or succes
sor legislation, and the furnishing of defense
articles, defense services and related training,
including pursuant to the United States
International Military Education and Training
(IMET) Program. Exchange of notes at Tripoli May 2 and December 8, 2009. Entered into force December 8, 2009. NP SCIENTIFIC COOPERATION Agreement on science and technology
cooperation, with annexes. Signed at Washington January 3, 2008. Entered into force April 4, 2008. TIAS 08-404. None of those was signed in July 2009 at, or near, the date of the handshake. Conclusion (re image 3) This photograph does not represent the forging of a strong alliance between Obama and Gaddafii or between USA and Libya. Significance of Handshakes Here's another handshake There is no indication that this handshake commits the Democratic Party and the Republican party to a strong alliance. Overall conclusion The image in the question is a sloppy piece of propaganda that relies on fabrication, false identification and an exaggerated interpretation of the meaning of handshakes between politicians. | {
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14,418 | This is somewhat of the converse of the question Is Gun Control Effective : A quote of famous musician and gun advocate Ted Nugent has been making the rounds on the Internet again lately: Where you have the most armed citizens in America, you have the lowest violent crime rate. Where you have the worst gun control, you have the highest crime rate. Do larger numbers of legally armed citizens correlate to lower violent crime rates? I'm not as interested in the converse portion of his quote, as the effectiveness of gun control is covered under the question I linked earlier. Instead, I'm looking for any evidence that an increase in private gun-ownership acts as a deterrent for violent crimes within a given geographic region. | In order to answer this question, I don't see any reason to restrict ourselves to comparison between states. The variation in gun laws between states are quite small, and the ease of crossing state boundaries make it easy for crime to flow across those borders. Instead lets look at comparison between countries, where there is marked different in gun laws and less likelihood of cross-border crime. Fortunately there is a study by Mark Reid, a machine learning researcher at Australian National University that does exactly that . The graph is for OECD countries, i.e. those with reasonably developed economies. There is a clear correlation between gun ownership and gun deaths. The outlier of Mexico is due to an ongoing drug war of course gun deaths covers a lot of things other than homicides, including suicide, and it is possible that the prevalence of guns causes people to use a gun for a suicide that they would use something else for if it wasn't available. So let's restrict the analysis to gun homicides. Again Mexico is the exception, but so is the US. It has a much higher level of gun ownership and gun homicide than any of the other countries. So much so that it obscures any trends in the graph. Let's replot without those two countries. Now the trend is much less pronounced, but still detectable (especially if you consider Israel a special case, given its ongoing conflict). Without Israel there are certainly few countries with low gun ownership and high gun homicide. And it's probably worth restating that the US has rates of both gun ownership and gun homicide more than double any other country on that chart. EDIT: I haven't been able to make a chart, but the figures for all homicides (more than just gun-related) follow a similar pattern to gun-related homicides. The US has double the homicide rate of the next highest country in the OECD, and four times the rate of most (with the strange exception of Luxembourg, whose homicide rate is very slightly higher than half the US). EDIT:Several people commented that the questions was asking about violent crime, not just homicide. I found what look like reasonable figures for assaults at Nationmaster Encyclopedia . Plotting those against gun ownership gives this graph: The US is the data point at the top centre of the chart. Now it appears that high gun ownership is not correlated with high levels of assault. But that wasn't the claim. The claim was that high gun ownership reduced levels of violent crime. This graph certainly indicates there is no inverse correlation between gun ownership and assaults . | {
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14,487 | This picture is making the rounds on Facebook: [Picture of George W. Bush] 32% [Picture of Barack Obama] 5.2% Percentage of presidency spent on vacation. Guess which one conservatives call "The Vacationer in Chief"? facebook.com/CrazyAssShit While I do recall hearing about the large number of so called vacation days George Bush took on Meet the Press, I am slightly skeptical that President Obama's vacation days were counted in the same manner. Are these figures accurate? What method was used to arrive at these figures? | There is abundant evidence that Obama takes less vacation than past presidents. George W Bush was notorious for taking a lot of time away from the Whitehouse, most of it at his ranch. Here are some articles and quotes: Factcheck.org . Obama spent 26 days on vacation in his first year in office: Reagan 42, George W Bush 77, George HW Bush 40. CBS News Obama spent 61 days on vacation in his first 31 months in office: George W Bush 180, Reagan 112, Clinton 28. MSNBC Obama took 84 days vacation in his first term. George W Bush took over 1000 days vacation in his two terms. This equates to 5.7% for Obama and 34% for Bush (we'll use 365 days a year as the basis on the assumption that the President works 7 days a week) | {
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14,813 | This questions on Politics SE introduced me to the concept of the red shift . In short, the claim of a red shift boils down to a statistically significant difference between outcome of final exit polls and results of elections, which would then imply fraud. Some quotes of (effectively identical) claims from different sources: America's Media Just Made Vote-Rigging Easier. By Victoria Collier, Truthout The Red Shift has been detected in both state and federal American elections, where computerized vote totals have consistently "shifted" - often by a 5 percent to 7 percent margin disparity (sometimes less, but sometimes much greater) - in comparison to hand-counts and polling data. This mysterious seismic lurch invariably pushes votes to the right, and when the dust settles, it has inordinately benefitted GOP candidates and ballot issues Wisconsin: None dare call it vote rigging. By Bob Fitrakis, The Free Press One of my favorite mathematicians is Richard Charnin, who on his website using readily available public information, calculates the odds of the so-called ‘red shift" occurring from the 1988 to 2008 presidential elections. The red shift refers to the overwhelming pick up of votes by the Republican Party in recorded votes over what actual voters report to exit pollsters. And perhaps the strongest claim of all, one used as a source for many others: Election Fraud: An Introduction to Exit Poll Probability Analysis , Richard Charnin : 123 of the 126 exit polls in which the MoE was exceeded moved to the recorded vote in favor of the Republican (the “red shift”). Just 3 moved in favor of the Democrat (” the blue shift”). There is a ZERO probability that this one-sided shift was due to chance. It is powerful evidence beyond any doubt of pervasive systemic election fraud. The titles of the three posts all state this implies fraud or vote-rigging, but a comment in the third link begs to differ: The statistical analysis here is impressive, but it fails to address one major flaw in almost all statistics that involve exit polling and polling in general; there is an inherent demographic of individuals who willingly choose to take polls and that same demographic tend to lean more Republican/Conservative in nature. That factor alone can account for everything in your model suggesting fraud. My question therefore consists of two parts: Is there such a "red shift"? If so, can this only be explained by fraud, or is there any evidence suggesting that this can be explained by other, such as demographic, factors? Studies addressing this question could look if such a "red shift", if measurable at all, depends on voter demographics, voting method (paper vs. machine), or other factors. | There is a so-called "red shift", but it's caused by unreliable exit polls leaning blue, not fraud causing the actual results to shift red. If you had asked whether polls in general showed a Democratic lean compared to the results, you would be getting a very different answer. But since you specifically asked about exit polls, this is all about them. This article , which dates from shortly before the 2008 election, discusses 10 reasons that exit polls aren't reliable. They may be informative , but you can't draw any statistical conclusions from them, even for something as basic as who won. I'll quote sections that specifically address the "red shift" issue below. 1. Exit polls have a much larger intrinsic margin for error than regular polls. This is because of what are known as cluster sampling techniques. Exit polls are not conducted at all precincts, but only at some fraction thereof. Although these precincts are selected at random and are supposed to be reflective of their states as a whole, this introduces another opportunity for error to occur (say, for instance, that a particular precinct has been canvassed especially heavily by one of the campaigns). This makes the margins for error somewhere between 50-90% higher than they would be for comparable telephone surveys. It's a fact of life that almost no media coverage of poll results ever discusses the error margins. But that's where almost all the fluctuation in polling comes in. If one poll predicts a candidate will get 47% of the vote +/- 1%, and another predicts that candidate will get 52% of the vote +/- 5%, then when the second poll is released all the media coverage will be about how much the candidate's position has improved, even though the error margins are so high that (in the absence of any other information), the candidate is really getting closer to 48% of the vote (and is thus likely losing). Because exit polls have even higher error margins than normal polls, their numbers are that much less reliable. Error bars on statistical results are of huge importance. I can say right now, over a year out from the next presidential election, that the Republican candidate will receive 51% of the vote, +/- 49%. If the media were reporting on my prediction, they'd say that I said the as-yet-unnamed Republican was ahead... but I really said that it was way too uncertain to say anything at all (other than that the Republican will get votes, because my floor was 2% total). 2. Exit polls have consistently overstated the Democratic share of the vote. Many of you will recall this happening in 2004, when leaked exit polls suggested that John Kerry would have a much better day than he actually had. But this phenomenon was hardly unique to 2004. In 2000, for instance, exit polls had Al Gore winning states like Alabama and Georgia (!). If you go back and watch The War Room , you’ll find George Stephanopolous and James Carville gloating over exit polls showing Bill Clinton winning states like Indiana and Texas, which of course he did not win. This builds on the first point. Exit polls are unreliable, and (for reasons discussed below) lean Democratic. Thus if the unreliable numbers are skewed one way, then the actual results will appear to be skewed the other in comparison. Thus what's really happening is not that the votes are suddenly going more red than they should, but the exit polls are bluer than they should be . 4. Exit polls challenge the definition of a random sample. Although the exit polls have theoretically established procedures to collect a random sample — essentially, having the interviewer approach every nth person who leaves the polling place — in practice this is hard to execute at a busy polling place, particularly when the pollster may be standing many yards away from the polling place itself because of electioneering laws. 5. Democrats may be more likely to participate in exit polls. Related to items #1 and #4 above, Scott Rasmussen has found that Democrats supporters are more likely to agree to participate in exit polls, probably because they are more enthusiastic about this election. These two mostly stand by themselves, but together they sortof explain why exit polls lean Democratic. In a busy polling place, even one where there's an even mix of people, if someone makes themselves more approachable by the pollster, they're more likely to be polled. If more Democrats than Republicans are willing to be polled (the link to the proof of which is dead in the article, and the reasons are not discussed), then the results will obviously skew Democratic. 6. Exit polls may have problems calibrating results from early voting. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, exit polls will attempt account for people who voted before election day in most (although not all) states by means of a random telephone sample of such voters. However, this requires the polling firms to guess at the ratio of early voters to regular ones, and sometimes they do not guess correctly. In Florida in 2000, [absentee votes were substantially Republican], leading to an overestimation of Al Gore’s share of the vote, and contributing to the infamous miscall of the state. 7. Exit polls may also miss late voters. By “late” voters I mean persons who come to their polling place in the last couple of hours of the day, after the exit polls are out of the field. ... this adds another way in which the sample may be nonrandom, particularly in precincts with long lines or extended voting hours. So both people who voted before election day itself and those who come close to closing time aren't necessarily well represented. I couldn't find any statistics on how these groups tend to vote overall, but they're certainly enough to introduce even more error into the exit poll results (even if they balance out from one year to another). In short, any claims that are based off of the difference between exit poll results and the actual results of an election are only showing how unreliable exit polls are. The article I quoted from finishes with a good summary: 10. You’ll know the actual results soon enough anyway. Have patience, my friends, and consider yourselves lucky: in France, it is illegal to conduct a poll of any kind within 48 hours of the election. But exit polls are really more trouble than they’re worth, at least as a predictive tool. An independent panel created by CNN in the wake of the Florida disaster in 2000 recommended that the network completely ignore exit polls when calling particular states. I suggest that you do the same. | {
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14,925 | There's a popular story that describes a programmer having altered a program at a bank so it diverted fractions of a cent from every transaction to another account (or some variation like multiple accounts) so he could collect it later. The story has been so popular that variations have been referenced in a Superman movie and Office Space . Was this based on an actual story, or is it simply a myth? If it did happen, what happened to the programmer? | There is a significant amount of anecdotal evidence that supports the claim that, not only did this happen once, but that it happens rather frequently. Unfortunately, most of these claims appear to come from members of the security industry, which may have a vested interest in convincing people that this type of activity is taking place. The type of theft you're talking about is called salami slicing . There have been a number of papers published on this attack by security researchers (not peer reviewed, mind you), such as this one and this one . This second paper repeats a variation of what is probably the most famous claim: a former bank employee in Canada who stole $70,000 using this type of attack. Unfortunately, the papers are lacking in details, and the references don't match the contents. The most often quoted (and not cited) source for these claims seems to be this Network World article , which recites a list of supposed convictions based on salami-slicing techniques. Again, it's lacking in details, though it does give dates and jurisdictions for several purported cases of salami slicing. Overall, my intuition tells me that micro-theft of this sort has certainly occurred at some point in the past. It's really nothing more than a modernized version of clipping coins, which certainly happened on a regular basis. However, I cannot find any evidence of any single, famous, and verifiable case of salami slicing that matches the circumstances usually supplied in the anecdotes you mentioned. On a related note, there's much better evidence regarding similar kinds of salami attacks, just not ones involving bank employees. For example, this Wired article describes a man who allegedly defrauded E*Trade using a variation of a salami attack (related to how the brokerage firm verified that it could deposit money into your account), including links to a Dept. of Justice affidavit describing the attack. There was also a case in Florida of a rental car firm overcharging customer for tiny amounts of gasoline on returns. | {
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14,983 | This is a common prejudice in my social environment, but is it true? Are educated people more likely to vote for a social/left wing party? Examples: [1] ; [2] . | TL;DR: To answer the question title, people with no higher education at all in USA voted 51%/47% (+4% margin for Obama) for D/R in 2012 Presidential election. So no, they are not tending "more" to conservative based on Exit Polls in US Presidential election. For educated (college+postgrad), they voted virtually identical with total population averages (51% D/ 48.8% R), with college education being slightly correlated to be pro-R (-4% margin, 47%D/51%R) and postgrad education more so (but not overwhelmingly) with pro-D (13% margin, 42R/55%D) If we do restrict ourselves to people who were mostly educated in the West? There, there is some correlation at postgraduate level, and no correlation at all below it, but nowhere as strong as a typical "common prejudice" among liberals would have you believe. Stolen shamelessly from Sven Clement's Politics.SE answer , NY Times demo breakdown from 2012 election exit polls shows: | Who | % Population | Obama | Romney | Obama's Margin |
===========================================================================================
| People with no higher education at all | 53% | 51% | 47% | 4% |
| People with some college | 29% | 49% | 48% | 1% |
| College educated | 29% | 47% | 51% | -4% |
| Postgraduate | 18% | 55% | 42% | 13% | Note that while Postgraduates did break for Obama, they did not do so in an overwhelming manner - 42% postgrads voted "R"; and people with a college degree voted "R" at slightly over 50%. In my defense of stealing, I contributed significantly to helping format that answer :) Even more significantly, "education" by itself doesn't mean much without taking a major/concentration into account. Courtesty of SamIAm's answer on Politics.SE: This looks like a pretty decent study as far as studies found on the internet go . It measures liberalism vs conservatism as opposed to Democrat/Republican, but it's close to what you're looking for. (pdf) It suggests that Engineering and Business majors tend to hold more conservative views on both social and economic stances, and that Bio/Lab, social sciences, and fine arts majors have more liberal views. In addition, merely "a level of education" does NOT make one vote for a social/left wing party. There's a correlation (see the second part of the answer) with "education obtained at liberal-leaning Western universities", but not "a level of education" per se. A very clear experiment showing this to be true has been historically run in USA since 1990s, with a large demographics of highly educated people who have NOT been subjected to Western universities immigrated to USA, as part of 4th wave of Russian/Soviet emigration. Let's see how that demographic breaks out: 60% of the demographics holds 5+ years of higher education. This compares to 27% US overall and ~60% of all American Jews ( src ) (the latter serve as a good control group since 4th wave of USSR immigrants are similar in ethnic/religious composition - being overwhelmingly Jewish - AND similar education level). American Jews tend to vote 70-90% Democrat in Presidential elections. An overwhelming majority of educated immigrants from former Soviet Union are hard-anti-liberal (technically speaking, they usually vote "R", but if you go into nuance, most are libertarianish politically - most of them not so much as vote "for Republicans", as "against Democrats"). 2004: 77% of Russian-speaking Jews in New York voted for the Republican incumbent GW Bush over his Democratic challenger John Kerry who got 9% ( src ) Similar pattern in 2008: McCain 65%, Obama 10% In 2011, in special Congressional election to replace Anthony Wiener (NY Congressman who resigned prematurely due to a sex scandal), Russian Jews voted 90% for the Republican candidate (Note: "D" candidate was Jewish; "R" candidate was not). This clearly shows that mere "level of education" is in no way predictive of political leanings, although the source of education is a different story. | {
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14,984 | In the book Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi, one of the characters falls into crude oil and state that one cannot swim in crude oil. The character can swim in water. If true, why would you not be able to swim in crude oil? | Density and Buoyancy Density of Fluids Dead Sea† 1240 kg/m3
Sea Water 1025 kg/m3
Water 1000 kg/m3
Crude oil, Mexican 973 kg/m3
Crude oil, 48° API 790 kg/m3 The Human body has an average density of 1062 kg/m3 ‡ This is why (most) humans float in the Dead Sea without any swimming effort and do not sink. Lighter forms of crude oil would support the human body less, this can make staying afloat difficult or impossible. Buoyancy depends on the weight of the volume of displaced fluid compared to the weight of the object displacing the fluid. To stay afloat you have to provide a swimming force that is equal to the force of gravity on the mass difference. The greater the deficit in density, the greater force you have to provide, at some point this force exceeds that which a human can provide for any significant time. Oxygen Lighter forms of crude oil should have a greater proportion of volatile hydrocarbons. The vapours of these hydrocarbons will displace air at the surface of the oil and make it difficult or impossible to obtain oxygen by breathing. Reports In general, oil on seawater (for example) quickly spreads into a thin film, so buoyance may not be an issue. But the difficulties in swimming and breathing can be potentially fatal Man rescued from drowning in China oil spill Engineer drowns in crude oil storage tank † Wikipedia:Dead Sea ‡ Wikipedia:Orders of Magnitude | {
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15,004 | Does being in an anechoic chamber cause hallucinations? According to several blogs (that likely copy each other), it does. The Orfield Laboratory in Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States is reported to be the quietest room in the world with a rating of -9.4 dB sound pressure level (SPL) . Several sources on the internet claim that this causes hallucinations and that nobody can stay there for long. It seems the blogs just copy each other. A selection: From incredible-pictures.com : Apparently it's so quiet, staying in there for a time will drive you insane.
Nobody has been able to be in the room for more than forty five minutes. From geekslop.com : Even Mr. Oldfield, the owner of the sound chamber, admits that he can stay in the room for no more than 30 minutes. The sound of his heart valve drives him crazy. Geekslop goes on to quote Mr. Oldfield, but do not provide any real citation. From an article in TCB Magazine , Patricia Kelly, September 2008: With no reverberation in the room, you have no spatial orientation cues. After about half an hour in the dark, you can become disoriented. Eventually, you might experience visual and aural hallucinations. Huffington post : The quiet chamber amplifies even the slightest noise, making people accurately aware of anything, including the sound of their heart beating. In fact, the sensation is so intense -- including the possibility of hallucinations -- that no one has been able to stay in the room longer than 45 minutes, according to the Deccan Chronicle. This news has a link to the Deccan Chronicle which is now dead. Is there any evidence for those claims? Does being in such a quiet room cause hallucinations, to such a degree that nobody is able to be there for long? | The first reports of hallucinations during perceptual isolation were in 1953, by Heron, Bexton, and Hebb. 3,4 In 1960, Vosberg et al. found that an anechoic chamber produced a high incidence of auditory and visual hallucinations even within an hour. 1,2 Brady and Mason 1 aimed to "establish whether brief sensory deprivation in an anechoic chamber can elicit psychotic-like experiences, and perceptual distortions in particular, and whether these are related to hallucination proneness". Their procedure was to have a subject spend "15 minutes in the chamber in complete darkness". They concluded that "short-term sensory deprivation was found to lead to increases in several aspects of psychotic-like experience including perceptual disturbances, anhedonia, and paranoia. Hallucination prone participants experienced greater perceptual disturbances than nonprone participants". 1 A meta-study by Zuckerman and Cohen analyzed the experiments on perceptual isolation pre-1964. 3 In my opinion, this was a very thorough review, examining "methods of confinement and restriction, conditions
of illumination, duration of isolation, set, instructions and suggestions,
reporting or verbalization instructions, sleep, subject populations,
prior knowledge and expectations, intelligence and personality characteristics
of subject's, stress response, and methods of obtaining reported visual and
auditory sensations". Anechoic chambers and auditory restriction were not the focus of this study but were covered briefly. Zuckerman and Cohen reviewed the wide range of reported visual sensations and argued that the term "hallucinations" should only be applied to visual sensations that are "meaningful" (people, objects, scenes) as opposed to idioretinal responses (light flashes, spots, shapes). Auditory hallucinations have been obtained in both darkness and diffuse light settings. Their review also showed several studies that reported the highest incidence of reported visual sensations during the first hour of isolation, with incidence dropping off after that. (I'll add more to this answer later.) References 1. OJ Mason, F Brady. The Psychotomimetic Effects of Short-Term Sensory Deprivation . The Journal of nervous and mental disease, 2009 2. R. Vosberg, N. Fraser, J. Guehl. Imagery Sequence in Sensory Deprivation . AMA Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1960; 2(3):356-357 3. M. Zuckerman, N. Cohen. Sources of Reports of Visual and Auditory Sensations in Perceptual Isolation Experiences . 4. W. Heron, W.H. Bexton, and D.O. Hebb Cognitive effects of a decreased variation to the sensory environment. . Amer. Psychologist, 1953, 8, 366. | {
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15,008 | I have the greatest respect for the work of the Rocky Mountain Institute, but this recent blog post triggered my general scepticism towards electric cars, or more specifically, their fuel efficiency. This is how the RMI calculates the payback for a Nissan LEAF: I'm assuming their numbers for mpg and kWh/mi as well as the respective fuel prices are sound. Then, an almost 75% cost saving on the fuel indicates a vastly superior fuel efficiency of the electric car. This seems very counterintuitive to me, as I would think producing the electricity, transporting and storing it and then using it to drive the wheels loses a lot of energy along the way, compared to going from thermal directly to kinetic energy. Now, if we used the same kind of fuel to drive the shaft at the power plant and the one in the car's motor, I guess the large motor at the power plant can be built more efficiently, but I have a hard time imagining that this outweighs all the losses of distributing the power plant's energy via wires and batteries. Conversely, if we took the electric car and replaced only its motor with the most efficient combustion engine we have, would that show the same superiority over conventional cars, meaning the electrical car's advantage is not the motor technology but that it's generally more efficient? Intuitively, I would think that distributing the fuel and generating the power in the car makes more thermodynamic sense. Note that I'm well aware of the fact that there might be other reasons for electric cars (less pollution locally, ability to use things like wind turbines as the energy source etc.). But just focussing on the fuel-to-motion analysis, aren't electric cars much less efficient? Since the comparison is a financial one, what might be reasons for the great price difference, if the electric really is less efficient thermodynamically? | The short answer is that no, electric cars are most definitely not at a thermodynamic disadvantage compared to a combustion engine . Quite the reverse, they have the advantage. Electric cars are about 4x as efficient as fossil-fuelled combustion engines, tank-to-wheel: ICE engine efficiency is around 20%. Electric engines tend to be around 80-90% . And the fuel prices in the article are tank prices, so tank-to-wheel is the right measure in this case. If you were interested in the whole-cycle energy efficiency (which is not what your linked claim refers to), then well-to-wheel would be the efficiency you were after, and then it would be very sensitive to how your electricity would be generated. For the nitty-gritty of the energy consumption of electric, fossil and hydrogen cars, see this paper from George Wallis of the Claverton Energy Group (pdf, 317kb). Note that pretty much all electric cars benefit from regenerative braking, and very few fossil-cars do. Efficiencies do depend on the drive cycle: and whereas ICEs tend to be optimised for speeds around 85km/h, the efficiency of electric cars decreases with increasing speed, just as the core physics would lead you to expect: (source) For more information on efficiencies power-station to wheel of electric vehicles, which you ask about, but which is not what the claim you've cited refers to, see the US Gov Fuel Economy site. And please do come over to the new Sustainability Stack Exchange where we take this sort of question too. | {
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15,235 | In several places I've seen the claim that some people have at some point in history paid more than 100% taxes in Sweden. The Economist on the Nordic Countries : Astrid Lindgren, the inventor of Pippi Longstocking, was forced to pay more than 100% of her income in taxes Escapist Magazine webforum : For a few years, Sweden had a 102% tax rate on its highest income bracket. Everyone got so pissed off at the government that they were voted out of power the next election. Any socialists want to defend this nonsense? This Straight Dope thread quotes a South African Business Report magazine that is unfortunately a broken link, but the quote is claimed to be: Lobbying really started taking off when Astrid Lindgren, author of the world famous Pippi Longstocking books, pointed out that it was ridiculous for her to be paying accumulative tax to the tune of 105 percent. None of the quotes are really convincing to me. Considering the ludicrosity of the idea of paying more than 100% taxes, I wonder — is this really true? Did anyone in Sweden ever pay more than 100% in income tax? | In her essay "Pomperipossa i Monismanien" , Astrid Lindgren writes about a marginal tax rate of 102%. She does not claim an effective tax rate >100%, but gets quite close (99.75%) as she describes how only 5,000 kroner are left from a 2,000,000 income. The relevant part of the essay roughly translated: From the first 150,000, you can keep 42,000. The rest, 108,000 goes to
the welfare cake. 100% of the rest is 1,850,000 and then the 2% you
did not believe existed, that is 37,000, all in all 1,995,000. Left to
Pomperipossa ... 5,000. There are no references in her essay to where these numbers come from, but she claims that the 102% comes from adding her income tax to the social fees, which have to be paid by the employer, but due to how these taxes are calculated, it is actually impossible to exceed 100% effective taxation. The employer tax is paid "on top" of the regular income (and not deducted from it) and the income tax is only calculated from the regular income. Let's assume a Swedish employer has an income of 100,000 kroner, the employer tax is 20% and the income tax is 40%. In this fictional case, the employer has to pay 20,000 kroner tax on top of the 100,000 kroner income and the employee has to pay 40,000 in income tax out of the 100,000 kroner income. The employer pays effectively 120,000 for the employee, which is left with 60,000 after paying income tax. The effective tax rate is hence 50% and not 60%, as it might seem by adding 20% employer tax and 40% income tax. | {
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15,361 | I was at lunch today and the conversation turned to almonds and their cyanide content. One co-worker said almonds contain a lot of cyancide and the number of almonds that can kill you surprisingly low. My question is "how low"? They couldn't answer, except to say it's low. After a quick google search I found this link that says the number is 15. FIFTEEN !!! I've had about that many almonds today... so that can't be right. And that link is from a questionable source (google+) but I've heard this urban legend before. How many almonds will it take to kill a human? I'm looking for LD50 of a 70kg person. | With bitter almonds, 8 - 32 almonds will give you the lethal dosage of cyanide. Bitter almonds yield about 6.2 mg of cyanide per almond and the LD50 for cyanide is 50 mg - 200 mg. This applies only to bitter wild almonds: considering that you're not dead, you most likely ate domesticated sweet almonds, which apparently do not have this problem. The sale of wild almonds may be illegal, in fact, though I can only find blogs and internet comments alluding to this. From wikipedia Wild almonds are bitter, the kernel produces deadly cyanide upon mechanical handling, and eating even a few dozen at one sitting can be fatal. ... While wild almond species are toxic, domesticated almonds are not; | {
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15,386 | A popular image going around Facebook claims it to be true. The image was found on the Anti-Theists blog page, currently with 65,000+ followers. The picture reads, Women are naturally unfit for political office. Both the natural order and facts show us that the political being par excellence is male; that Scripture shows us that woman has always been the helper of man who thinks and does, but nothing more. - Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio The sources goes on to say, This was said in a speech against Argentina presidential candidate Cristina Kirchner given in 2007. Another one reads much the same, "las mujeres son naturalmente ineptas para ejercer cargos políticos", refiriéndose a la candidatura presidencial de la Senadora Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. "El orden natural y los hechos nos enseñan que el hombre es el ser político por excelencia; las Escrituras nos demuestran que la mujer siempre es el apoyo del hombre pensador y hacedor, pero nada más que eso". - Jorge Bergoglio "Francisco I" | These statements were not made by Cardinal Bergoglio. A Spanish-speaking blogger identified this hoax. ( via , English version ) The quote above begins with: “Women are naturally inept to exercise political office..the order of nature and human activity teach us that a man is superior in the realm of politics…” [...] the quote was invented out of thin air and posted in a “Yahoo Answers” by an Argentinian who went by the name “Bumper Crop” and who at the time did not cite a link because the entire phrase was posted to smear Cardinal Bergoglio and make him look like he was attacking Cristina Kirchner. In addition, the phrase completely contradicts Bergoglio known friendship and admiration for various Argentine women who have held political office and who were congratulated by him upon election. Furthermore, these statements contradict Catholic teaching that "women have the same right as men to perform various public functions" ( John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, par. 23 ) | {
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15,416 | I've always thought that "women are weaker 1 than men in general" was a biological fact (supposedly stemming/evolving from the social structure of prehistoric humans) Is there any reputable research done which demonstrates (or disproves) that the average woman has the same strength as the average man? 1 In this post, "weaker" means "physically weaker", and refers only to cis women (not transgender women) | What do we mean by weaker, or by stronger? "Women really are stronger than men, according to study" Is the title of a BBC article which says A recent academic study has shown that under extreme conditions such as famines, epidemics and enslavement, women are able to survive for longer than men. Across modern populations, women outlive men in almost all instances The study says this Abstract Women in almost all modern populations live longer than men. Research to date provides evidence for both biological and social factors influencing this gender gap. Conditions when both men and women experience extremely high levels of mortality risk are unexplored sources of information. We investigate the survival of both sexes in seven populations under extreme conditions from famines, epidemics, and slavery. Women survived better than men: In all populations, they had lower mortality across almost all ages, and, with the exception of one slave population, they lived longer on average than men. Gender differences in infant mortality contributed the most to the gender gap in life expectancy, indicating that newborn girls were able to survive extreme mortality hazards better than newborn boys. Our results confirm the ubiquity of a female survival advantage even when mortality is extraordinarily high. The hypothesis that the survival advantage of women has fundamental biological underpinnings is supported by the fact that under very harsh conditions females survive better than males even at infant ages when behavioral and social differences may be minimal or favor males. Our findings also indicate that the female advantage differs across environments and is modulated by social factors. Now this type of strength might not be what the question refers to. Perhaps some people might prefer to label this attribute as (biological) toughness rather than strength? At the very least, we should be aware that when one person says group A is stronger than group B or another person disputes that statement, we should consider carefully what type of strength is being referred to. Types of Strength/Weakness The question quotes a video as saying The belief that women are somehow a naturally weaker gender ... but it may be that the author of the video is, perhaps in part, perhaps mostly, referring to other kinds of historically perceived weakness: emotional and intellectual. This answer doesn't address that but we probably shouldn't assume the author was only referring to muscle size and not to strengths like toughness, determination, perseverance and so on. We can put the above concerns to one side and consider muscular strength. Sexual dimorphism in primates Age and gender comparisons of muscle strength in 654 women and men aged 20–93 yr in the Journal of Applied Physiology contains this graph Fig. 1.
Regression analysis of age- and gender-related differences in concentric (Con; A) and eccentric (Ecc; B) peak torque of knee extensors at slow (0.52 rad/s) velocity. Both Con and Ecc peak torque declined significantly (all P < 0.001) for men (r 2 = 0.30 for Con and 0.19 for Ecc) and women (r 2 = 0.28 for Con and 0.11 for Ecc). We can see that many women are stronger than many men (i.e. there is considerable overlap in the data) but that the average strength for women is lower. Sexual dimorphism in Humans is relatively small according to anthropologist Clark Spencer Larsen of Ohio State University writing in PNAS Humans today display relatively limited sexual dimorphism (≈15%), whereas
some of the other hominoids (gorillas and orangutans) are highly dimorphic
(>50%) Causation According to Kirchengast S. Although sexual size dimorphism has a clear evolutionary basis and is caused by genetic and hormonal factors, socio-cultural factors such as gender role in society and gender typical workload influence the degree of sexual size dimorphism too. So some of the differences we perceive may be the result of cultural forces of the sort which change over time and from place to place. When is using averages (mean or median) useful and when inappropriate The question asks about the strength of the average woman vs the average male but in most situations (e.g. interviewing job candidates) we are not interacting with the average person we are more likely interacting with a person whose physical characteristics may be anywhere on the spectrum above. If you select two people at random, one male, one female, there is a significant probability (less than .5 but far higher than 0) that the female is stronger than the male. Focussing on small differences in overall averages for a large population is inappropriate for most situations which involve only a few individuals. It would be bizarre to say to a candidate, you are strong enough to do this job but you are ineligible because you are a member of a group whose average strength is lower than the average of some other group. However this is exactly the sort of discrimination that has occurred in the past and that is part of the context for the video which stimulated the question above. We should note that the quotation in the question doesn't use the word "average". Social implications It may be that the video referenced in the question is concerned whether this perception (true or not) contributes to an unreasonable bias against one part of our population. The better question may be what do we do with this information. David Haye may be stronger than Stephen Hawking. Should we skew society to benefit people with large muscles at the expense of the others? | {
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15,452 | Bill Bryson in his book The Mother Tongue: English And How It Got That Way , on page 110, writes: An equally useful advantage of written Chinese is that people can read the literature of 2,500 years ago as easly as yesterday's newspapers, even though the spoken language has changed beyond recognition. If Confucius were to come back to life today, no one apart from scholars would understand what he was saying, but if he scribbled a message people could read it as easily as they could a shopping list. The fact that a modern Chinese can read texts written 2,500 year ago " as easily as they could a shopping list " seems rather surprising, at least to me. In my language, and — as far as I know — also in English, that would be impossible. So, I'm skeptical of that claim. Question: Is it true? | I agree with @RedGrittyBrick's negative answer to the strict interpretation of @Carlo_R's question, i.e. whether reading Classical Chinese is no more difficult than reading modern Chinese for a person educated in modern-day China. However, I think that the question, in spirit at least, admits a looser, but still interesting interpretation, that is " Whether a person educated in modern-day China or Taiwan can read ancient Chinese texts with an unusual fluency compared to speakers of other language systems and of comparable educational backgrounds reading ancient texts in their language ?" I'll ignore the Ship of Theseus paradox as to whether we can meaningfully talk about a single "language" encompassing both its modern and ancient variations as it changes over time. I'll hand-wave it by saying that modern linguistics seems perfectly fine with labels such as "Old Chinese" or "Old English" and leave it at that. To my looser interpretation of the question, I would answer yes . The Evidence There's also some details in this section that I will elide initially and save for later. The strongest piece of evidence for this comes from (PRC) China's infamous gaokao exam (taken by all secondary school graduates applying for university), whose Chinese language section contains reading comprehension questions on Classical Chinese texts in their original wording without an accompanying modern commentary to help . As a result, it is a fair extrapolation to say that the typical graduate from the (PRC) Chinese secondary school system can read Classical Chinese texts and be able to understand them in broad strokes, if not necessarily in minute detail. The 2011 gaokao exam questions concerning Classical Chinese can be found here (it's the link on the first row and comes as a RAR archive that needs to be unpacked). The Shandong version of the test (each province gets its own version), which starts on page 13, has a section from Guanzi , an anthology dating from the first century B.C.E. (so 2100 years ago, not quite 2500). There are multiple-choice questions such as question 9 "对下列句子中加点词的解释，不正确的一项是," which translated into English is Among the explanations given for each of the marked phrases in the following sentences, the incorrect one is... and a short response question (question 13) which asks "把文言文阅读材料中加横线的句子翻译成现代汉语," which translates into Translate the underlined sentences of the Classical Chinese text into modern Chinese. Although Taiwan does not have the gaokao exam, its education system has a comparable amount of material dealing with Classical Chinese. This dubious link has some information talking about policies in place to increase students' exposure to Classical Chinese. I include it because it happens to be English and it more or less echoes what Xinhua states here , namely that 65% of the humanities curriculum in secondary school will be devoted to Classical Chinese (a source direct from the Taiwan government's mouth would be appreciated here). The absence of treatments of equally ancient documents in their original form (even with a modern English transcription) used as widely in secondary schools for speakers of most other languages is unfortunately the best evidence I can find that this kind of familiarity with the ancient language is unusual to Chinese (I know absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence... but if anybody can give me examples, I'd be happy to see them). I don't think it's unique to Chinese (I suspect that modern Greeks' comprehension after a typical secondary school education of varieties of ancient Greek is comparable), but I do think such a familiarity is rare among languages used today. Details I Elided and Background/Context This section is light on evidence and is more an illumination of exactly how "fluent" fluency is and why this relatively unusual linguistic phenomenon came about An interesting background note to this question is if you asked it a century ago, the answer, even for the strict interpretation of this question, would have been an emphatic yes for the typical educated Chinese person and a definite no overall (due to significantly lower literacy rates). The fact that only a century ago the question would have been much easier to answer for an educated Chinese person is actually an indication of why modern Chinese people might have an unusual grasp of Classical Chinese as compared to speakers in other languages (see "What Exactly is Classical Chinese"). Traditional vs. Simplified One of the details that I skipped over is that the gaokao test is written in Simplified Chinese, as are the Classical Chinese texts it presents. @RedGrittyBrick brings up a good point that the original Chinese texts would have been written in Traditional Chinese and not Simplified Chinese and hence someone brought up in the PRC apart from Hong Kong would have difficulty reading the texts. In fact even someone intimately familiar with Traditional Chinese might have some difficulty with recognizing, let alone reading, the characters of text written 2500 years ago (but perhaps not those written several hundred years later) . The difference between scripts as written > 2500 years ago and modern scripts is much larger than the difference between Traditional Chinese script and Simplified Chinese script. Different scripts of ancient Chinese can have radically different levels of readability . Indeed I wouldn't surprised if there were a non-trivial number of scholars specializing in the study of Confucian texts who would be unable to read the oldest scripts and cursive scripts (probably because there's little need since usually our most complete copies of these texts don't extend as far back in time as the authorship of those texts). As an example, take the character for "year" as it is written currently in both Traditional and Simplified (Image 1) and how it would have been written in "seal script", the dominant script of 2500 years ago (Image 2). Image 1: Image 2: The difference in these scripts is immense, arguably even more so than the difference between Simplified and Traditional. Hence, I would argue that when writing a Classical Chinese text using Simplified Chinese instead of Traditional Chinese we are merely transcribing the text from one script to another as one would do when comparing cursive English to non-cursive, printed English, especially because we can preserve a (practically speaking) one-to-one correspondence between the characters of each script that is no less severe of a change than transcribing from the original script of the text itself to a printed book fit for a modern audience to read. Even Clerical Script, the script that @RedGrittyBrick refers to in the comments, would have looked significantly different from modern Traditional Chinese in its earliest stages. I won't include an image since I couldn't find any examples that had an explicit license that would allow me to copy the picture, but this site has a nice picture of the Wufeng Inscription from the Western Han Dynasty (below the big banner on top). The big characters on the far right (note that they read top-bottom then right-left) written in modern Traditional script would look something like However, I wanted to add some additional details to @RedGrittyBrick's account of the difficulty someone brought up in the Simplified Chinese system would have reading Traditional Chinese. Even people brought up in the PRC's education system have a passing knowledge of Traditional Chinese characters. Ceremonial uses of Chinese characters still tend to use Traditional characters even in mainland China. Perhaps the most prominent example of this is the practice of 春联 (New Year's couplets), short phrases written on decorative paper which are hung and shown often enough to be known by heart. Although people may not be fluent, readers of Simplified Chinese are also not completely lost when trying to navigate Traditional Chinese . Incidentally, this is also purely anecdotal and hardly strong evidence, but Baidu's "Knowledge" forums have a slew of questions asking things like "为什么我们中国大陆人认识繁体字而台湾人不认识简体字" ("Why is it that mainland Chinese people can recognize Traditional characters, but Taiwanese people can't recognize Simplified characters?") and "台湾人看简体和大陆人看繁体，哪个更困难些？" ("Taiwanese people reading Simplified Chinese and mainland Chinese people reading Traditional Chinese, which is harder?") to which the top-rated answer is "I believe it's harder for Taiwanese people to read simplified Chinese." Keep in mind there's probably some nationalistic fervor going on here, but at least there's evidence of some comprehension of Traditional Chinese. An image of New Year's couplets from Yunnan, China is below, written entirely in Traditional Chinese characters (credit Peter Morgan, posted on Wikipedia here ). As a side note, much of (but not all) Simplified Chinese is the codification of some simplifications that were already in use informally for at least a millennium. For a compilation of some these simplifications see (Editors Liu Fu, Li Jiarui. 宋元以來俗字譜/A Glossary of Popular Chinese Characters Since Song and Yuan Dynasties. Nanjing: Academia Sinica, 1930.). The first example that I could find when just flipping through was a document on page 18 where ("話" becomes "话"). Thus in the event that a Chinese visitor from thousands of years in the past was hastily scribbling a message rather than formally writing something out, it is possible that knowing Simplified Chinese rather than traditional Chinese might even be beneficial! So in the hypothetical situation that a sufficiently literate unfortunate soul from ancient China is blasted into modern-day China, literary communication would still probably be possible even if he or she is met by a PRC adult who has been brought up in the Simplified Chinese system. How Fluent is Unusual Fluency? The other point I initially neglected is "how fluent is unusual fluency?" The questions on the gaokao exam give us a hint. They are similar in flavor to the questions that a side-by-side commentary on Shakespeare might answer for the reader for particularly difficult sections of his works. Hence I would peg the difficulty of a Classical Chinese text for the average Chinese secondary school graduate as in the ballpark of a secondary school graduate English reader reading a difficult (linguistically, not necessarily from a literary perspective) section of Shakespeare. Another analogy for native English speakers might be people who have taken one or two French (or any other language that shares many orthographically similar cognates with English) classes in high school trying to read a French newspaper. They'll be able to read it, albeit it perhaps with some difficulty. They will also recognize a lot of the words (although sometimes they will be tripped up by words that have different meanings in English than in French even though they are cognate and are spelled similarly) just because they are in English as well. Finally, they should be able to give a fairly accurate description of what the article is talking about, although the details might be off. Also of note, although Chinese secondary school graduates would have some grasp of how to read Classical Chinese, it is far from the case that they would be able to write Classical Chinese. The other thing that inhibits understanding of Classical Chinese texts is the heavy reliance on historical events, people, nations, and works. These would probably be the most difficult for modern readers to grasp; these are, however, reasons extrinsic to the language of Classical Chinese. For the original question of somebody teleported from the future, it is unlikely that the notes they scribble to the modern day Chinese speaker will have flowery literary references, but for most of the extant literature, this is a major reason for why vernacular glosses for the literature exist. Several commentators pointed out that the fact that professional translators wrestle over the translation of words to be evidence that Classical Chinese is clearly an extremely difficult language for modern Chinese speakers to grasp. Like the problem of allusions, this is really more an artifact of philosophical movements which use Classical Chinese rather than the language itself. Although translation is clearly difficult, I don't believe that this reason by itself is evidence either way. For the most part the reasons behind why certain words are difficult to translate into modern English hinge either on non-linguistic reasons or are based on inherent difficulties in translating any language into English. For example Wittgenstein's Tractatus is difficult to translate not because German from the first half of the 20th century is incomprehensible to the modern German speaker, but because of the vast philosophical baggage behind the Tractatus . Likewise, if we look at the most common "difficult to translate" terms that pop up in Classical Chinese works, the words are not difficult in the sense that a modern Chinese reader would not understand what the word means linguistically, but rather difficult because of the philosophical background and connotations that the word carries which are specific to a single philosophical movement. Two such terms are “道" (the dao in Daoism) and "仁" ( ren , Mencius' favorite catchphrase). “道" would be universally recognized by any modern Chinese speaker and its modern meanings are more or less indistinguishable from English translations of Daoism (e.g. the "way," the "path," the "direction," the "word" or "to speak"). The difficulty in translation comes not from the fact that its meaning in Classical Chinese is drastically different from its modern meaning nor is it an obscure character that nobody can read. Its translation-related complexity arises simply because of the insane amount of nuance that Laozi and Daoists have attributed to the word rather than its meaning in Classical Chinese. "仁" ( ren ) follows a similar pattern. It is a word with which virtually any modern native speaker of Chinese is familiar and its use in ancient texts in a non-Mencius context largely agree with its modern meaning (which carries tones of love, acceptance, and compassion). However, both its meaning in Mencius as well as its modern word are both difficult to translate. The former because, like dao in Daoism, Mencius' assigns a special meaning to ren predicated on his own philosophy, and the latter because, like any other modern language, it's one of those words that just happens to lack a single, nice equivalent in English. Note that this does not imply by any means that the vast majority of Chinese words' everyday meanings have failed to changed from their ancient roots (they have). However, difficulty of translation is a rather poor metric of this change. What Exactly is Classical Chinese So far I've been talking about "Classical Chinese" (文言文), a category which encompasses everything from Confucius to the early 20th century and is widely used in China to mean such (the gaokao exam certainly did). This categorization is fairly problematic because it implies that Chinese did not change over this 2400 year period when in fact it did and in fairly significant ways (loan words from Buddhism, new poetry styles, natural mutations in the language, etc.). However, the fact that China tries to fit this huge swath of time period under a single umbrella of "Classical Chinese" is indicative of the active effort during this time to preserve the writing style of Confucius. The Imperial Examination system which held sway over this time from the Han to the Qing dynasties focused almost exclusively on the Chinese used by Confucian texts (for a direct quote see the book review, China's Examination Hell. The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China. by Ichisada Miyazaki; Conrad Schirokauer
Review by: C. P. FitzGerald
Pacific Affairs , Vol. 50, No. 1 (Spring, 1977), pp. 128-130 , which contains "The other developing defect was the strictly classical content of the passages to be answered")*. Of course new syntax, new vocabulary, and the general shifts in literary style still affected the language despite efforts to the contrary, but the fact that there was a concerted and systematic effort for thousands years has led to the current situation where Chinese from 2000 years ago is still at least generally intelligible from the viewpoint of a modern Chinese reader, who is only 100 years removed from the last effort to preserve the written Chinese language. It also had the rather drastic side effect that by the 20th century, it was impossible to understand any formal literary work when spoken aloud. The written language and the spoken language had become widely divergent, hence why Classical Chinese is generally not used today. For example, Hu Shih, one of the leaders of the modernizing May 4th movement, wrote a polemic called "A Preliminary Discussion of Literature Reform" in which he railed against what he perceived to be a reprehensible disconnect between written Chinese of his time and comprehensible written communication. See here for an online version in Simplified Chinese of the article (the original citation is 胡適. "文學改良芻議." 新青年: 1917); unfortunately I can't seem to find an authoritative English translation. Tellingly, among 8 points that he laid out, three of them dealt with an overuse of Classical Chinese. 不摹仿古人 (Do not imitate ancient writers) 不用典 (Do not use allusions, in particular Hu Shih is referring to the tendency to use historical and literary allusions that are characteristic of Classical Chinese texts) 不避俗字俗语 (Do not avoid the vernacular) These demonstrate both an appreciation of the difficulty in reconciling the written language with the spoken language of Chinese as well as the strong adherence to Classical Chinese followed by even fairly modern writers. As a somewhat amusing addendum, Hu Shih's original article reads as extremely formal and Classical in modern Chinese just one century later. So in Summary According to the exact wording of the question, @RedGrittyBrick is right. Not only is reading Classical Chinese significantly more difficult for a modern Chinese reader of a typical educational background, even students of Traditional Chinese would have a hard time recognizing the characters of works 2500 years ago, let alone read what a time-transported Confucius might confusedly scrawl for a modern passer-by. However, if we look at works written in the last 2000 years rather than the last 2500 years, and allow the modern Chinese reader some leniency in not having to get the details, he or she could probably do an adequate job of deciphering the text, all the more so if he or she learned Traditional Chinese along the way. Also, wow, this turned out a lot longer than I expected. *That unfortunately was the best piece of evidence I could gather up; I'll see if I can get the actual book and pull a quote from there as necessary. Addendum Articuno's generous bounty donation led me to revisit this question and I realized that another subtlety to the question as implicitly framed by Bill Bryson is whether it is the knowledge of modern Chinese language that imparts some ability to read Classical Chinese or whether it is simply the modern Chinese education that yields this ability . Of course, to some degree the two are inseparable; if a language speaker goes through a certain education process, that education process is bound to have a profound influence on his or her language. As such if an entire people go through the same education, then that people's language will also be similarly affected by that education. Nonetheless, there is still a meaningful difference between the two. The 19th century university curricula of English and American universities generally still required knowledge of Latin, indicating a heavy reliance on Latin. See as a representative example the 1851 University of Pennsylvania catalog here , which indicates that to be admitted, a student must have read Caesar, Ovid, Vigil, Cicero, Horace, Xenophon, and Homer and must also be proficient in "Greek and Latin Exercises" (page 29). However, modern English readers do not need a similar Latin background to read and fully comprehend the overwhelming majority of 19th century English works. Hence, in this case it makes sense to say that the 19th century English education imparted knowledge of Latin, but the 19th century English language did not. For the most part, as the gaokao evidence shows, the modern Chinese education system is responsible for comprehension of Classical Chinese, but the modern Chinese language, especially at its most formal and literary levels, still gives the modern Chinese speaker a basic familiarity with Classical Chinese, which although rudimentary, nonetheless exceeds that of most other languages. Perhaps the clearest evidence of this fact is that textbooks of advanced modern Chinese aimed at non-native Chinese learners include lessons on Classical Chinese. I list a couple examples here (apologies for the Ivy League bias, those are just the ones that happen to be most visible and hence public). Shengli Feng, Lulei Su et al. Comprehensive Chinese Advanced Writing: Writing and Truth . Higher Education Press: Beijing, 2007. This two-volume series, has two 11th century Song Dynasty Classical Chinese readings in their original Classical Chinese: 读孟尝君传 ("On Meng Changjun"), a work about the Warring States-era prince Meng Changjun and 五代史伶官传序 ("A Preface to a History of the Five Dynasties' Lingguan Chuan" where "Lingguan Chuan" refers to the records of court performers), a work about the successes and failures of one of the Five Dynasties' era empires. Yanfang Tang and Qinghai Chen. Advanced Chinese: Intention, Strategy, and Communication . Yale University Press: New Haven. Chapter 11 in the table of contents contains a section called "Terse and elegant: using words and structures from Classical Chinese." The Princeton Language Program: Modern Chinese . This is actually a long series of books. I note it here because it has five books on Classical Chinese. The fact that the textbook authors considered a basic primer on Classical Chinese necessary for modern Chinese strongly suggests that an elementary understanding of Classical Chinese is intrinsic to the modern Chinese language and is not just a product of the Chinese education system. In general, writings which demand formality or terseness in modern Chinese tend to become more Classical in nature. The terseness found in public placards and notices tends to be a good demonstration of this. The examples will all be linked to and not embedded, because I'm not sure about licensing issues concerning the images. A good example is here , which combines modern terms with phrases and phrasing which would not be out of place in a Classical text, such as "挺身而出 见义勇为." This might be translated as "Boldly and unflinchingly stride forth and upon seeing injustice, conduct oneself bravely and correct it" or perhaps less awkwardly, but less accurately "Stand up for what's morally right!"; I'll explain the awkwardness later. The first part of this sentence is from a Yuan Dynasty work 西厢记 ("Romance of the West Chamber") and the second is a paraphrasing of a statement from the Analects. This is in part due to heavy usage of four-character idioms, a characteristic pattern of Chinese speech and writing which usually takes phrases that were originally four characters or have been condensed to four characters and uses them as idioms. This is one reason why Chinese signs and notices often sound hilariously mistranslated. The Classical Chinese-like nature of them means that they often have a lyricism and literary register which is completely out of place for their equivalents among English signs. The sign here , for example, if translated to the appropriate register in English might be "Protect our plants and our environment!," but this loses some of the meaning. On the other hand, translating the meaning of the sign results in something which would seem overly lyrical as a notice, namely "Lovingly protect our greenery and [thereby] beautify our environment." | {
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15,476 | I received a rather intriguing email. It says that if I am at an ATM and I'm in the process of getting robbed, I just enter my PIN in reverse order e.g. 4321 instead of 1234. The ATM will still give me the cash but it will notify the police. Is this true? Other examples of this claim can be seen here, Image reads If a thief forces you to take money out of an ATM, do not argue or resist. What you do is punch in your pin # backwards. EX: if its 1234, you'll type 4321. When you do that, the money will come out but will be stuck in the slot. The machine will immediately alert the local police without the robbers knowledge & begin taking photos of the suspect. Every ATM has this feature. Stay safe. | You can find information about this on Wikipedia : ATM SafetyPIN software is a software application that would allow users of automated teller machines (ATMs) to alert the police of a forced cash withdrawal by entering their personal identification number (PIN) in reverse order. The system was invented and patented by Illinois lawyer Joseph Zingher (U.S. Patent 5,731,575). Contrary to a widely circulated hoax (see below), the system is not implemented in ATMs presently. The same information can be found on Hoax Slayer : Brief Analysis The claims in the message are false. Reverse PIN technology does exist. However, it has not yet been implemented by any banks. At this time, entering your PIN in reverse will NOT call police. Snopes also covers this, with a history of failed attempts to make it law. | {
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15,609 | About 30,000 Americans die every year from gun-related deaths (a number likely to exceed those dying from automobile-related accidents very soon if trends continue). About 1 in 3 of those are homicides and the remainder suicides. Together this totals more than 300,000 since the world Trade Centre attacks. A recent editorial in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine claimed that the NRA had used its legislative clout to block public funding for research to find out what measures might reduce the death rate. In their words (but my highlights): Today, with almost no funding for firearm violence research, there are almost no researchers. Counting all academic disciplines together, no more than a dozen active, experienced investigators in the United States have focused their careers primarily on firearm violence. Only 2 are physicians. Only 1 has evaluated the effectiveness of an assault weapons ban. Why did this happen? In the early 1990s, scientists were producing evidence that might have been used to reform the nation’s firearm policies. To those whose interests were threatened by such reforms, it made perfect sense to choke off the production of the evidence. This effort was led by Congressman Jay Dickey, self-described “point person for the NRA.” It succeeded . When rates of firearm violence were at historic highs and appeared to be increasing, the government abandoned its commitment to understanding the problem and devising evidence-based solutions. Given the poverty of good statistics on the topic and the relevance of such statistics for policy (see the difficulty of finding good statistics in this question: Is gun control effective? ) , this seems strange. But is it true? Did the NRA successfully lobby to block research funding related to gun control and gun violence? | Yes they did. The Tiahrt amendment prevents firearms data from being released to anyone other than law enforcement - including gun ownership statistics and many gun-related crime statistics. This effectively prevents most academic research into gun ownership, gun crime, gun violence and even some gun accidents, by denying researchers access to the necessary raw data. The ban applies to all research, public and private, except law enforcement (who are ill-equipped or not mandated to carry out academic research). The amendment was promoted heavily by the NRA who made large campaign contributions specifically to legislators who supported the ban. They also arranged for the passage of the Dickey Amendment which prevents the Centre for Disease Control spending any money at all on research "that might advocate or promote gun control" (the CDC is tasked with research into other non-disease causes of death and injury such as traffic and domestic accident). The restriction was later extended to other publicly funded bodies. The definition of what might "advocate or promote gun control" was left deliberately vague, and given the possibility of criminal prosecution if your research was found to do so, virtually everyone abandoned the area of research. A small amount of research has continued despite the restrictions. References: Slate Magazine Live Science Reuters USA Today Forbes | {
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15,686 | I saw the following claim in B3ta newsletter #574 ( possibly NSFW ), under "US Postal Service hates Atheists". Awful, but then Atheists are not allowed to hold
public office in six US states, including
Texas. Is it true that Atheists can't hold public office in Texas? I would have thought that separation of church and state would prevent any such rule being enacted. | From article 1, section 4 of the Texas Constitution , bolding mine: Sec. 4. RELIGIOUS TESTS. No religious test shall ever be required as
a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor
shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his
religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a
Supreme Being . From article VI of the US constitution : The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of
the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial
Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall
be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no
religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office
or public Trust under the United States. The clause in the Texas consitution seems to violate the relevant clause in the US constitution. There is also the Torcaso v. Watkins case before the Supreme Court. The Court decided: There is, and can be, no dispute about the purpose or effect of the
Maryland Declaration of Rights requirement before us - it sets up a
religious test which was designed to and, if valid, does bar every
person who refuses to declare a belief in God from holding a public
"office of profit or trust" in Maryland. ... We repeat and again
reaffirm that neither a State nor the Federal Government can
constitutionally force a person "to profess a belief or disbelief in
any religion." Neither can constitutionally pass laws or impose
requirements which aid all religions as against non-believers, and
neither can aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of
God as against those religions founded on different beliefs. Though this argument is not based on article VI of the constitution I cited, the court made no decision on whether such clauses in state constutitions would violate this article. | {
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15,697 | There is a sensational article in slate that says there's an herbal tea containing Artemisia that will prevent malaria that is being discouraged by the establishment because it could cause resistance to future drugs. Does this tea actually work? | I agree with Larry at the crucial parts of the article. To explain a bit: The WHO is nowhere near hiding Artemisia for anti-malaria medication. In fact, four drugs prepared from the plant are on their list of essential medicines . But: these are to be used in drug combinations. What the WHO is very much concerned about is drug resistance , which is also mentioned in the article: [M]alaria experts worry that unregulated use of this tea could cause the malaria parasite to develop resistance to artemisinin drugs. Now about the arguments the article has in favor of the home-grown tea: [A] randomized controlled trial on this farm showed that workers who drank it regularly reduced their risk of suffering from multiple episodes of malaria by one-third. Meaning that 2/3 of people run around with a dosage of the artemisinin that is too low to prevent malaria. And not only 2/3 of the patients, but 2/3 of the population and all the time. This is a very promising condition for breeding resistance. The fact that in Wagagai, after years of preventive use, resistance has not sprung up. just means that they have been lucky so far. Neither can the fact that artemisinin resistance is [found] on the Thai-Cambodian border, where conventional artemisinin drugs are used be an excuse for advertising a practice that increases the risk of resistance. BTW, finding resistance where the conventional drugs are used is not entirely unexpected. For one thing, also with the proper medication, underdosage is not uncommon , and there are low quality/dosage counterfeit drugs . This post gives a similar discussion for the region in Cambodia where the resistance came up. In their statement "Effectiveness of Non-Pharmaceutical Forms of Artemisia annua L. against malaria" the WHO explains that Total recovery of artemisinin from plant leaves was found to vary by a factor of 150 This prevents any practicable recommendation for dosing the tea. the leaves need to be stored cool and dry to prevent loss in artemisinin In the end, the prepared tea has too low artemisinin concentration: In order to receive a dose equivalent to a 500 mg artemisinin tablet or capsule, patients would be required to drink as much as 5 litres of A. annua tea per day [...] In practice malaria patients are drinking only 1 litre So the result of the tea is currently a severe underdosage. They also cite studies who found eating plant material more effective than drinking the tea, but nevertheless a high recurrence rate was observed, to that is still not an effective treatment. Here's a newspaper article in German about a desastrous failure of establishing Artemisia farms in east africa . Among other interesting details, there is a sentence Growing Artemisa plants is not as easy as the aid and development agencies thought. That is, the plants did grow, but the small farmers didn't get the drug content that was achieved in the test beds, and the extraction of the artemisinin yielded only half of the content (plus possibly other quality issues). So I understand the WHO is not against the use of Artemisia, but it is strictly opposed to advertising a "use" of the plant in ways that are ineffective and create a severe risk of worsening the situation. | {
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15,704 | Someone was telling me that lower-price or lower-spec computer parts such as graphics cards and central processing units are actually just higher-spec, higher-price units that have manufacturing faults. So instead of the manufacturer throwing them out, they simply disable the faulty bits and sell it as something else. For example if a CPU is made with 6 cores, but 2 cores are faulty (or don't meet quality control standards), they will disable access to the 2 cores and simply sell it as a quad-core processor. Is there any truth to this? Could this person have meant something else? | This is true. I'm not sure it is true in all the examples you gave, but it is true for some multi-core processors. From Gizmodo : Part of AMD's multi-core Phenom blast today is the Phenom X3 8000, "the world's only triple-core x86 processor," which we heard about a few months ago. They're supposed to bargain chips for budget consumers, but they're a nicer bargain for AMD, actually, since it lets them dump bug-plagued quad-core Phenoms by disabling a core. This article says the practice is used by Intel as well: The reason for this is that the disabled cores are turned off for a reason: they failed factory tests. Cores can fail for any number of reasons, including defects in the silicon, problems running at full frequency, or a bug introduced during manufacturing. Both AMD and Intel disable CPU cores for this very reason. This article shows the practice is also used by AMD with L3 cache: When AMD produces a Phenom II die if part of the L3 is bad, it gets disabled and is sold as an 800 series chip . If one of the cores is bad, it gets disabled and is sold as a 700 series chip. If everything is in working order, then we've got a 900. Intel has done this with entire on-board graphics processors ( reference ): Intel recently released a couple of Ivy Bridge based processors that have disabled the integrated graphics completely, the 3350P being one of them. This allows Intel to sell processor die that might have a defect on the GPU portion to increase the relative yield rate of their 22nm process and also gives them another weapon to fight off any pricing competition from AMD. IBM holds a patent ( US7610437 ) on a particular method for doing this: If a defect is detected in a single functional unit, such as a synergistic processor core, the defective synergistic processor core can be disabled and the multiprocessor can still be used with the remaining functional unit(s) as a partial good multiprocessor chip. [...] For example, if a single processing unit is defective, the defective processing core can be disabled and the multiprocessor can still be used with the remaining functional processing unit(s). Such a multiprocessor chip is a partial good multiprocessor. One of their claims points to the mechanism for doing this: blowing a fuse associated with each defective processor core to disable each defective processor core if the number of defective processor cores does not exceed the threshold. From a presentation by Intel and University of Michigan : Defective core options: disable or salvage. Disabling wastes entire core even for minor defect. This is a common enough practice that some hardware research focuses on making use of those faulty cores: Putting Faulty Cores to Work . In that article, they make a statement about how common disabling is: Due to the inherent irregularity of the non-cache parts of the core, it is well known that handling defects in these parts is challenging. A common solution is to disable the faulty core . | {
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15,790 | There is a widely spread news about Australia banning pornography featuring actresses with A-cup breasts. Aussie censor balks at bijou boobs Australia's 'small breast' ban Australia Bans Small Breasted Pornography The reason behind: Senator Joyce claimed that publications featuring small-breasted women were encouraging paedophilia. Is that true that this legislation exists in Australia? Is such a law legally feasible? | No, this legislation does not exist in Australia. The classification of video games, movies, and publications is handled by the Australian Classification Board . The Australian Classification Board is a decision making body, created by statue in the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Act . There is only one type of material that the statute expressly instructs the board to give a Refused Classification to, and that is material that advocates terrorist acts . The board has discretion over classification of all other types of material, with decisions reviewable by the Australian Classification Review Board . The factors that must be considered during classification are: the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults; and the literary, artistic or educational merit (if any) of the publication, film or computer game; and the general character of the publication, film or computer game, including whether it is of a medical, legal or scientific character; and the persons or class of persons to or amongst whom it is published or is intended or likely to be published. These decisions are made on a case-by-case basis. In applying this discretion, the board has in the past refused classification " because of the sexual depictions of characters who appear to be under 18 " (see this Classification Review Board media release ). In 2009, the director said in a speech : With titles such as Purely 18 and Finally Legal, it is safe to assume and I can indeed confirm, that such publications contain images of young persons who are depicted to be on the borderline of 18 years old. [...] Classification guidelines in Australia expressly state that exploitative or offensive depictions or descriptions involving someone who is or appears to be under the age of 18 years, must be Refused Classification. [Emphasis and link added] [...] Interestingly and perhaps the most ‘scandalous’ accusation recently directed at the Board likely to have been prompted by the Boards attention to the breaches I have just discussed above is that we display a bias against small breasted women …and on this basis… are banning material! [Emphasis added] Criticisms have been levelled at the Board regarding the factors it considers when determining the age of persons depicted in publications, particularly the accusation that small breasted women are determined by the Board to appear to be children. This is categorically untrue. [Emphasis added] The Board members take their responsibilities seriously and
consider the overall appearance of persons and the context in which they are depicted, including text, props and poses when making classification decisions. Depicting smallbreasted women is not grounds for a publication to be Refused Classification, nor do the classification guidelines refer to the size of a woman's breasts ! [Emphasis added] | {
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15,886 | In late 2011 the prime minister of Ukraine said the following: But it is impossible to predict what will happen in 20 years. I will
tell you a story: I just got back from a plant in Dnipropetrovsk. Only
20 years ago, it was a highly classified facility that produced
missiles and satellites for the Soviet Union. Today, I saw with my own
eyes: it is producing the first stage of parts for the US-designed
Stanford Torus space station in collaboration with scientists from the
United States. You cannot imagine the level of cooperation and trust
this requires. Who could have imagined that 20 years ago, during the
Cold War? Washington Times, November 7th 2011 What on Earth was he talking about? | There are no traces anywhere of a Stanford torus being built by NASA, and such undertaking is highly unlikely. However, what was built in cooperation between NASA and Ukraine in the Yuzhmash in 2011 was the Antares project: http://usa.mfa.gov.ua/en/ukraine-us/science The signing on March 31, 2008 of the Framework Agreement between the Government of Ukraine and the Government of the United States of America for Cooperation in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space for Peaceful Purposes ... An example of a successful Ukrainian-American cooperation in the space sector is a realization of "Antares” project . As part of the project Ukrainian State Enterprise “Pivdenne” in cooperation with American "Orbital Sciences Corporation" develops a new space launch system "Antares", basing on “Mayak” launch vehicle of its own design. The project also involves Ukrainian enterprises “Makarov Southern Machine-Building Plant”, “Khartron-Arcos "and American "Aerojet"company. The National Space Agency of Ukraine provides scientific and technical support for the development, manufacturing and testing of the Ukrainian units and systems of "Antares" project. As of November 2010 all basic components and systems for future launch vehicles were manufactured and shipped from Ukraine to the customer (Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia, USA). The design office of Yuzhmash is located in the Pivdenne city in the Dnipropetrovsk area : The design bureau is currently known as Pivdenne Design Bureau The project was called Taurus II at that time : has changed its name from Taurus II to the Antares. The rocket is intended to transport cargo to the ISS besides other things: Taurus II and Cygnus would be developed to perform a demonstration of commercial cargo delivery to the International Space Station (ISS). Note: the Stanford Torus is not a part of the direct quote in the questioned article, the interview referred to in the Washington Times was done by Global Post and the quote in the question seems to come from this article: I just got back from a plant in Dnipropetrovsk. Only 20 years ago, it was a highly classified facility that produced missiles and satellites for the Soviet Union. Today, I saw with my own eyes: it is producing the first stage of parts for the US-designed Stanford Torus space station in collaboration with scientists from the United States. How it happened that Taurus II was confused with Stanford Torus is something which we will probably never learn, but it seems quite possible for such confusion to happen. Anyway, the core of the Azarov's message was the amazing collaboration, which was real, only the object of the collaboration was a bit different, and it is quite possible Azarov was not very careful about learning what exactly is the object of the collaboration. A speculation: english pronunciation of Taurus and Torus is very close. (Merriam Webster transcribes both words as \ˈtȯr-əs\ - see Taurus and Torus ). Perhaps Ukrainian personnel used an English pronunciation for the Taurus name, as they adopted it from their NASA colleagues. If the PM was told \ˈtȯr-əs\ is built there, and later tried to inform on the web what Torus is in NASA terminology, the first few hits for the Torus NASA query were about Stanford Torus . | {
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16,035 | There are plenty of companies around that let you purchase a star . They claim that the star will be named as you direct and they issue you a certificate of ownership. I realize that the T&C's for a lot of these deals have disclaimers within them, however there is still a public perception that you can buy a star. So is it possible to purchase, or name, a star in a way that is legally recognized? This question inspired by Flimzy's comment | The International Astronomical Union acts as the internationally recognized authority for assigning designations to celestial bodies (stars, planets, asteroids, etc.) and any surface features on them. and they say : The IAU frequently receives requests from individuals who want to buy stars or name stars after other persons. Some commercial enterprises purport to offer such services for a fee. However, such "names" have no formal or official validity whatever. As an international scientific organization, the IAU dissociates itself entirely from the commercial practice of "selling" fictitious star names or "real estate" on other planets or moons in the Solar System. Accordingly, the IAU maintains no list of the (several competing) enterprises in this business in individual countries of the world. From Ask an Astronomer at Cornell University : Unfortunately it's not really possible to officially "purchase" a star for someone, although many people think so and there are companies that advertise this service. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) is the organization that is responsible for naming celestial objects , and they don't take requests from anyone (even astronomers) for star names. There are places where you can "buy a star", and you will get a certificate and star maps, but these names are not official and are not used in astronomy. In fact, the companies that do this don't even make an effort to communicate with real astronomers on the subject, they just keep a big book or spreadsheet with everyone's name in it. Most people in astronomy, especially the IAU, consider the "star purchasing" idea to be a huge scam that is taking advantage of people's love of the sky to make a lot of money. | {
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16,178 | According to Wikipedia's page on Israel and weapons of mass destructioni : Israel is widely believed to possess weapons of mass destruction, and to be one of four nuclear-armed countries not recognized as a Nuclear Weapons State by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The US Congress Office of Technology Assessment has recorded Israel as a country generally reported as having undeclared chemical warfare capabilities, and an offensive biological warfare program. Officially Israel neither confirms nor denies possessing nuclear weapons. It is believed that Israel had possessed an operational nuclear weapons capability by 1967, with the mass production of nuclear warheads occurring immediately after the Six-Day War. Although no official statistics exist, it has been estimated that Israel possesses from 75 to as many as 400 nuclear weapons, which are reported to include thermonuclear weapons in the megaton range. Israel is also reported to possess a wide range of different systems, including neutron bombs, tactical nuclear weapons, and suitcase nukes. Israel is believed to manufacture its nuclear weapons at the Negev Nuclear Research Center. The Israeli government maintains a policy of deliberate ambiguity on whether it has nuclear weapons, saying only that it would "not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East." Former International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei regarded Israel as a state possessing nuclear weapons. Much of what is known about Israel's nuclear program comes from revelations in 1986 by Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at the Negev Nuclear Research Center who served an 18-year prison sentence as a result. Israel has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but supports establishment of a Middle East Zone free of weapons of mass destruction. It puzzles me that there is no concern in the world over whether Israel has nuclear weapons or not. | Yes, Israel has been known to have nuclear capability since the late 1960s. As recently declassified documents show, they've reached secret agreement with US administration, which'd turn the blind eye. On the other hand Israel would maintain it's policy of deliberate ambiguity. National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 189 Israel Crosses the Threshold Senior Nixon Administration Officials Considered Confronting Israel over Nuclear Weapons in 1969 but President Nixon Declined, Deciding
that Washington Could Live with an Undeclared Israeli Bomb, According
to Newly Declassified Documents and a Study in the Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists Posted Today Washington, DC, April 28, 2006 - Today the National Security Archive
publishes for the first time 30 recently declassified U.S. government
documents disclosing the existence of a highly secret policy debate,
during the first year of the Nixon administration, over the Israeli
nuclear weapons program. Broadly speaking, the debate was over whether
it was feasible--either politically or technically--for the Nixon
administration to try to prevent Israel from crossing the nuclear
threshold, or whether the U.S. should find some "ground rules" which
would allow it to live with a nuclear Israel. The documents published
by the Archive are the primary sources for an article by Avner Cohen
and William Burr, "Israel crosses the threshold," that appears in the
May-June 2006 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
[...] Among the key findings in the article: 1969 was a turning point in the U.S.-Israeli nuclear relationship. Israel already had a nuclear device by 1967, but it was not until 1968-1969 that U.S. officials concluded that an Israeli bomb was about
to become a physical and political reality. U.S. government officials
believed that Israel was reaching a state "whereby all the components
for a weapon are at hand, awaiting only final assembly and testing." [...] By 1975, in keeping with the understanding with Israel, the State Department refused to tell Congress that it was certain that Israel had the bomb, even though U.S. intelligence was convinced that it did . | {
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16,188 | Did Barack Obama say the following? "They'll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner.
You should reject those voices." This is contrasted to Jefferson saying "When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty." (There's a logo of "Gun Owners of America" in the top left hand corner) | Yes he did. It may have been taken a bit out of context : Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of
government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s
at the root of all our problems; some of these same voices also doing
their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always
lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.
Because what they suggest is that our brave and creative and unique
experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be
trusted. | {
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16,252 | I saw the following photo on my Facebook news feed: I asked my friend who posted it for a source, and he gave me a link to a hemp manufacturer. I'm pretty sure it's not a reputable source. I'm interested to see if there is any independent study, patent, manufacturing process, etc, that shows this claim to be true. | This quote apparently comes from a 1916 USDA study on Hemp Hurds as a Paper-Making Material , The most important point derived from this calculation is in regard to
areas required for a sustained supply, which are in the ratio of 4 to
1. Every tract of 10,000 acres which is devoted to hemp raising year by year is equivalent to a sustained pulp-producing capacity of 40,500
acres of average pulp-wood lands. In other words, in order to secure
additional raw material for the production of 25 tons of fiber per day
there exists the possibility of utilizing the agricultural waste
already produced on 10,000 acres of hemp lands instead of securing,
holding, reforesting, and protecting 40,500 acres of pulp-wood land Thus, this quote would have pre-dated modern manufacturing techniques for paper production as well as modern tree-farming techniques. This means that this is actually a difficult question to answer in part because tree farms and traditional farming techniques are completely different from each other and modern technology means that the techniques involved have likely changed greatly in the almost 100 years since the study was conducted. To begin looking at things from a modern standpoint, tree farms typically thin a stand at 15 and 24 years with a final clear-cut harvest every 33 years (see slide 5 of 15 ). However, hemp can be harvested on an annual basis which puts it in line with traditional farm techniques 1 . This would imply that on a very simplistic level the hemp could come out ahead just because no thinning or harvest of a tree stand was done in a given year. So to give a bit more of a fair comparison we are going to need to look at aggregate data and and look at the average yield per year. As with traditional farming different stands can result in different yields and in general harvesting sawlogs is more desirable than pulpwood (which is used to produce paper) since sawlogs are more valuable and therefore more profitable. This in turn means that stands tend to be managed with maximizing the amount of sawlogs produced. The most commonly farmed trees for pulpwood appear to be Loblolly Pine , Acacia , and Eucalyptus with Eucalyptus being the most common. Based on my research, Loblolly Pine and Eucalyptus productions seem to be as follows: Loblolly Pine - 0.9 to 2.5 tons/acre/year , although yields up to 8 tons/acre/year are also reported. Eucalyptus - "Up to 16" tons/acre/year , or 20 green tons 2 /acre/year The yields for hemp fiber 3 on the other hand tend to be based more on historical data and tend to place the yields at 2 to 12.5 tons/acre/year with 5 tons/acre/year being the average on a good year. A modern report from a Kentucky farm put the yields at 2.8 to 6.1 metric tons/acre/year with other sites getting worse yields. Thus, to return to the original claim, if we assume that only paper production is considered (i.e. fiber production in the case of hemp and wood pulp production in the case of trees) then the claim appears to be false with hemp yields only appearing comparable to Loblolly Pine per acre/year wood pulp yields although it is possible for hemp to out produce Loblolly Pine production when it is not grown for pulpwood. However, if other trees are considered then well managed tree farms appear to greatly outproduce hemp farms in terms of per acre yields. The only way this claim is true is only if year-by-year data is examined due to the way tree farms are thinned and harvested due to the significant number of years of no production. For our purposes this is being defined as mechanically assisted farming with harvest being done at the ideal time to maximize yield. Green ton - 2,000 pounds of undried biomass material. This is also assuming the fiber is only used for paper production as opposed to other usage in clothing or rope production . Some useful timber volume-to-weight conversions . | {
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16,270 | This image is circulating on Facebook: The message accompanying it is calling for a boycott of Heineken for sponsoring the event. The message is as follows (warning: horrific grammar, spelling, and some profanity): Are u serious? NEVER will I drink this beer again and u can be damn sure I will post this on every site I can find and show to anyone I see drinking the beer. U want to kill brain cells that's fine we are adults its our own fault but u sponcer an event to make money off of defencless dogs having to fight eachother I say f--k u. Sorry about the language but to some scum there just isn't pretty words. Please share please put them out of business there's no reason enough to support this beer company. Does Heineken sponsor dog fights? | Heineken have addressed this rumour years ago, explaining that they did not sponsor the event, and have ceased their relationship with the venue: A two year old image continues to circulate in social media channels showing a dog fight, with Heineken banners clearly in the background. As a company and a brand owner, we do not and would never knowingly support any event, outlet or individual involved in this type of activity. It is against our company and brand rules and - more
important - against our company values. Since this matter was brought to our attention via Facebook we have conducted an investigation and now know that: The venue is a nightclub in Mongolia The venue hosted a dog fight of which we had no knowledge and were not involved in any way The venue owner has formally confirmed that Heineken banners are visible in the pictures because the previous evening the club had been decorated for a promotional event and he had failed to remove the banners once it was over. This event was in no way related to the dog fight. ( Click to see document ) Based on this we have taken the following immediate actions: Removed all remaining promotional materials from the venue Withdrawn all current product stock from the club Ceased our relationship, ensuring our brands will not be available in the club again Instructed our distributor to check every location where our brands can be enjoyed to ensure such illegal activities are not taking place. If there is any suggestion that they are, we will take the same action and remove our products Continue to ensure our strict advertising and promotion guidelines are enforced both to the letter and the spirit of their intent | {
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16,347 | I noticed some people posting and reposting bold statements online that Japan is (the only) country that banned Islam. I searched a bit and found out that there are some mosques and Muslim societies in Japan, so it cannot be entirely true. Also, their constitution apparently provides for freedom of religion. However - can someone confirm or disprove if Muslims indeed cannot get permanent residency and citizenship? Is it true that there is a strong ban on the propagation of Islam in Japan? Are Arabic languages taught at Japanese universities? Is halal slaughter legal in Japan? I am aware that although Japanese culture is rooted in Shinto and Buddhism, the majority of people declare themselves to be nonreligious. It is conceivable that it is not the best ground for any new religion to grow. However, I am curious to what extent it is a cultural thing and what is actually protected by law. | No. According to the US State Department's evaluation of Japan in its 2012 International Religious Freedom Report : The [Japanese] constitution provides for freedom of religion, and other laws and policies contributed to the generally free practice of religion. The government generally respected religious freedom in practice. There was no change in the status of respect for religious freedom by the government during the reporting period. There were some reports of societal abuse or discrimination based on religious affiliation, belief, or practice. and There are no governmental statistics on the number of Muslims in the country. The Islamic Center estimates there are approximately 100,000 to 110,000 Muslims of whom 10,000 are citizens. | {
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16,414 | In his 2007 video 1st Foundational Falsehood of Creationism the YouTuber AronRa claims [Catholicism and Orthodoxy] have stated support of evolution and denounced creationism. Pope Benedict recently described evolution as an enriching reality and described creationist contest against it as absurd. Both of the popes before him advised Christians around the world to consider evolution to be more than a hypothesis and not to fear and not t fear acceptance of that is being any challenge to their faith in Christ" (4:56-5:16) Other members of the Catholic church speak against evolution (see this example ). Is it true that the official position of the Catholic church is acceptance of evolution? Or is it opposed to evolution? Or has it not taken an official position? | WikiPedia on that subject quotes this article , which alleges that Catholic teaching accepts but doesn't require the theory of evolution. Or a more authoritative answer about Catholic teaching is for example this from Pope Benedict in 2007, quoted on the Vatican web site as follows : Currently, I see in Germany, but also in the United States, a somewhat fierce debate raging between so-called "creationism" and evolutionism, presented as though they were mutually exclusive alternatives: those who believe in the Creator would not be able to conceive of evolution, and those who instead support evolution would have to exclude God. This antithesis is absurd because, on the one hand, there are so many scientific proofs in favour of evolution which appears to be a reality we can see and which enriches our knowledge of life and being as such. But on the other, the doctrine of evolution does not answer every query, especially the great philosophical question: where does everything come from? And how did everything start which ultimately led to man? Another example is at In Creation God Calls the World into Existence from Nothingness by John Paul II in 1986, which reads like a sermon about Genesis. In it, the Pope says, Above all, this text has a religious and theological importance. It doesn't contain significant elements from the point of view of the natural sciences. Research on the origin and development of the individual species in nature does not find in this description any definitive norm or positive contributions of substantial interest. Indeed, the theory of natural evolution, understood in a sense that does not exclude divine causality, is not in principle opposed to the truth about the creation of the visible world, as presented in the Book of Genesis. I interpret this as saying that the Book of Genesis is a product of its time and is not scientific, and that the theory of natural evolution is not incompatible with Catholic theology. The same goes on to list the various things which (unlike evolution) are important articles of faith, for example: 1) The one, true God is Creator and Lord "of visible and invisible
things" (DS 3021). 2) It is contrary to faith to affirm that only matter exists
(materialism) (DS 3022). 3) It is contrary to faith to assert that God is essentially
identified with the world (pantheism) (DS 3023). 4) It is contrary to faith to maintain that creatures, even spiritual
ones, are an emanation of the divine substance, or to affirm that the
divine Being by its manifestation or evolution becomes everything (DS
3024). 5) Also contrary to faith is the idea that God is the universal or
indefinite being which in becoming determinate constitutes the
universe divided into genera, species and individuals (DS 3024). 6) It is likewise contrary to faith to deny that the world and all
things contained in it, whether spiritual or material, in their entire
substance have been created by God out of nothing (DS 3025). I found it interesting to compare Benedict's statement quoted above, with the following paragraph from Humanis Generis from Pope Pius XII in 1950 (emphases are mine): [36.] For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church , to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith. Some however, rashly transgress this liberty of discussion, when they act as if the origin of the human body from pre-existing and living matter were already completely certain and proved by the facts which have been discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts, and as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question. Compared with Pius, who 'doesn't forbid men who are experienced in human sciences and theology to research and discuss evolution, both for and against, while submitting to the judgement of the Church which has the Christ-given mission to interpret Scripture and defend dogmas of faith', Benedict seems more sure that there's some merit to the theory of evolution, when he opined, 'the antithesis [between believing in God the Creator and believing in evolution] is absurd because, on the one hand, there are so many scientific proofs in favour of evolution which appears to be a reality we can see and which enriches our knowledge of life and being as such'. IIRC Benedict had a reputation for being well-versed in and supportive of the traditional Church doctrines; so I infer that Benedict's view is the result of the 57 years-worth of "opinions, favorable and unfavorable to evolution, weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness", to quote Pius. Replying to a comment below, What I'm missing from the answer is the church's stance on creationism. Is it correct to say that the "literal" interpretation of the bible, and specifically the book of genesis, is not accepted by the catholic church? I can't define "creationism", but the Catholic Church's teachings include more than a merely "literal" interpretation of the Bible: for example, there's the historical text (different languages and versions); the literal meaning of the text; and the spiritual meaning of the text. Some of it is "allegorical". The Church would want people to understand it with what may casually be called 'a grain of salt', or more formally, "the Holy Spirit", as well as the "Magisterium". I wouldn't extract quotes from the following references, because quoting sentences and phrases out of context might not give a true view of Catholic teaching; but if you want to see how well I paraphrased it in my previous paragraph above, I invite you to read: Origen of Alexandria: life and work by Benedict XVI in 2007 Paragraphs 34 through 44 of Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini by Benedict XVI in 2010 I don't believe that the Pope's comments in a meeting are considered authoritative decision on Catholic doctrine, just an opinion. Compare that to an Encyclical like "Humani Generis" Wikipedia's article on "Encyclical" in fact quotes from Humani Generis, which says: [19.] Although these things seem well said, still they are not free form error. It is true that Popes generally leave theologians free in those matters which are disputed in various ways by men of very high authority in this field; but history teaches that many matters that formerly were open to discussion, no longer now admit of discussion. [20.] Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their Teaching Authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say: "He who heareth you, heareth me";[3] and generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already for other reasons appertains to Catholic doctrine. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians. Using this to interpret paragraph 36 which I quoted above, I think I understand that (the rest of this paragraph is in my own words and I may be using some words such as 'heresy' inaccurately) whereas Darwin's theories used to be ridiculed and dismissed as incompatible with religious belief, Pius was carefully and deliberately saying that the theory of evolution is not necessarily a heresy (but neither should it be taken atheist). I think I therefore agree with the following summary from Wikipedia about Religious attitudes to On The Origin of Species : By the early 20th century, four noted authors of The Fundamentals were explicitly open to the possibility that God created through evolution, but fundamentalism inspired the American creation–evolution controversy that began in the 1920s. Some conservative Roman Catholic writers and influential Jesuits opposed evolution in the late 19th and early 20th century, but other Catholic writers, starting with Mivart, pointed out that early Church Fathers had not interpreted Genesis literally in this area . The Vatican stated its official position in a 1950 papal encyclical, which held that evolution was not inconsistent with Catholic teaching . For what it's worth, Fundamentalism seems to be centred in the USA . Ad Hominem isn't an argument, however it doesn't surprise me that the "dissenting view" which is cited in the OP comes from the USA. I'm surprised that a person takes this sermon as very authoritative, given that it starts with "By the authority invested in my own mind, etc." A lot of that sermon seems to be his own opinion of or summary from the many things he has read. I won't debate its every statement in detail. The only or most reliable source in the sermon that he quotes is paragraph 37 of Humanis Generis (the next one after the paragraph 36 which I quoted above), saying, “The faithful cannot embrace that opinion that men came from someone other than Adam and Eve or that Adam and Eve represent a collection of many first parents. Thus God created one man and from that one man, woman was created and all of mankind was created from them.” (Paragraph 37) The full, original text is as follows: [37.] When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own. My personal synthesis or explanation of the Church's position (I am not an expert nor authoritative, so you might instead want to ask someone who is, to explain this) is therefore: Evolution explains the evolution of the human body, more or less successfully God creates human souls The first human (with a soul) was Adam; Adam had original sin; all humans descend from and inherit original sin from Adam; Christ came to save us from original sin; etc. | {
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16,441 | Rupert Sheldrake recently had a TEDx presentation removed from the TEDx web-site, for making various controversial claims , basically calling all of science into doubt. I am highly skeptical about nearly all of them, most seem particularly cranky and mystical. The most interesting to me is the claim that the gravitational constant (G) changes over time, or space. In particular, he claims that the estimate is obtained by different labs making measurements on different days, and taking the average, and then the International Committee on Metrology takes an average of averages to decide the "value of big G" (I imagine that they actually just make an estimate of the value). Sheldrake argues that if we looked at the raw data, we might begin seeing patterns (e.g. correlations between changes at different labs indicating that the errors in G are not actually measurement errors, but real, meaningful fluctuations (on a daily or annual scale), but that "no one has done this ... because G is a constant". So the question is: is there any strong evidence for or against G being a difficult-to-measure constant, rather than being a fluctuating value? | At this time the Gravitational Constant is regarded as a constant with problematic/low accuracy by physicists. From University of Washington Big G Measurement : Since Cavendish first measured Newton's Gravitational constant 200 years ago, "Big G" remains one of the most elusive constants in physics . The value of big G tells us how much gravitational force acts between two masses separated by a known distance. In Einstein's language of general relativity, it tells us the amount of space-time curvature due to a given mass. Together with Planck's constant and the speed of light it is considered to be one of the most fundamental constants in nature. Big G is a necessary ingredient in determining the mass of the earth, the moon, the sun and the other planets. Several measurements in the past decade did not succeed in improving our knowledge of big G's value. To the contrary, the variation between different measurements forced the CODATA committee, which determines the internationally accepted standard values, to increase the uncertainty from 0.013% for the value quoted in 1987 to the twelve times larger uncertainty of 0.15% for the 1998 "official" value. This situation is an embarrassment to modern physics , considering that the intrinsic strength of electromagnetism, for instance, is known 2.5 million times more precisely and is steadily being improved. (The situation of G becomes more understandable if one considers the weakness of gravity: the total gravitational force twisting on the pendulum of a typical Cavendish torsion balance is only equivalent to the weight of a bacteria and that small force must be measured very precisely.) Since we are talking about physics, this is true to the best of our current understanding. The question of how/why do we know that G (and other constants) are indeed constant was addressed in Physics.SE: What is the proof that the universal constants (G, ℏ, …) are really constant in time and space? Regarding the claim that the data isn't made public. I couldn't find any evidence that labs are constantly remeasuring and updating G and I couldn't find that this data is hidden. The data is made public through journal articles. Also, the value is not updated constantly as the National Institute of Standards and Technology published a figure that was last updated at 2010 . Here are 4 different values for G from different sources: Physical Review Letters Article : 6.667e-11 0.011e-11 Science Article : 6.693e-11 0.027e-11 NIST : 6.67384e-11 0.00080e-11 University of Washington : 6.674215e-11 0.000092e-11 When plotted in a graph with error bars, we have the following: So measurements are not constantly done, the "official" value is not updated regularly, and the results of the measurements are published. | {
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16,479 | A couple of weeks ago there were reports of an experiment by schoolchildren that appears to demonstrate that wifi router radiation adversely affects cress . There's been time now for the leading researchers from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Sweden [who] have shown great interest in the girls’ project to have reproduced the experiment, but I cannot find any follow-up story amidst a Google-load of conspiracy-theory sites. Has this experiment been reproduced, or indeed debunked? | Norwegian science journalist Gunnar Tjomlid published an article [Norwegian language] in the online newspaper Nettavisen. Blogger Pepijn van Erp summarised it in English . In brief, the experiment was not properly controlled, not blinded, had publication bias, was misreported, had faulty statistical analysis, had bias in the methodology and relied on a cherry-picked hypothesis. The WiFi and control group were not just different because of the presence of the routers. On the pictures in the report it can be seen that also the laptops in the WiFi group were placed quite near to the plates. It’s very likely that this had an effect on airflow and temperature around the plates and that could have an effect on germination, which has nothing to do with the presence of EM-fields. [...] A second experiment in which the laptops had been ‘pinging’ each other constantly did not show the dramatic difference in germination. Only the first experiment was used in the report | {
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16,510 | DN.se Det kostar nära 6.000 dollar (knappt 40.000 kronor) mer per år att ha
en rökare anställd än någon som inte röker, visar en studie i USA. Skälet är rökares större sjukfrånvaro, dyrare hälsovård och lägre
produktivitet på grund av rökpauser. Studien har tagit med i beräkningen att rökare har kortare livslängd
och får ut mindre pension. Translation: Smokers cost close to 6000 dollars more per year than non-smokers, according to an american study. The reason is that smokers have higher amount of sick days, more expensive health care and lower productivity because of smoke pauses. The study have included into the calculation, the fact that smokers have shorter lifespan, and get lower pension. Is there any truth to the study? Is it really that big difference between smokers and non-smokers? This is a study from the US, does it apply to rest of the world as well? I know there is a HUGE difference in work situation between Sweden and the US. In Sweden everyone is allowed to take pauses from work, to eat, drink coffee etc. It's written down in a nationwide contract every employer is supposed to follow. If you don't follow it, you get workers union, media and in some cases even the government breathing down your neck. What I am looking for is not anecdotes, but something more substantial. Smoking is harmful, and the effects of smoking is fairly well documented. While details on that might be used as circumstantial evidence, this question is about if it's more expensive to hire a smoker than a non-smoker. | The Swedish summary appears to refer to this paper: Estimating the cost of a smoking employee , Micah Berman, Rob Crane, Eric Seiber, Mehmet Munur
Tob Control, doi:10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2012-050888 It was an economic analysis based on existing literature. We examined absenteeism, presenteesim, smoking breaks, healthcare costs and pension benefits for smokers. [...] Our best estimate of the annual excess cost to employ a smoker is $5816. This estimate should be taken as a general indicator of the extent of excess costs, not as a predictive point value. So, the Daygens Nyheter summary seems reasonable. There was a study that did draw these conclusions. Whether the study itself is accurate is more difficult to assess. It was published in a prestigious, peer-reviewed scientific journal. It was only published recently, so it is a bit early to check whether the scientific community has cited it approvingly. I checked on one author, and it was within their area of expertise. It is consistent with similar approaches/findings from Germany and the UK . They document potential biases, and discuss how they have attempted to minimise them. It seems reasonable to provisionally accept these findings until counter-evidence is found. It almost goes without saying: Correlation does not imply causation. It may not be the tobacco alone that account for the increased costs. | {
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16,578 | Ancient d20 die emerges from the ashes of time Many centuries before Dungeons & Dragons was even a glimmer in the eye of Gary Gygax, ancient Egyptians were rolling a d20 die. Metropolitan Museum Twenty-sided die (icosahedron) with faces inscribed with Greek letters
Period: Ptolemaic Period–Roman Period Date: 2nd century B.C.–4th century A.D. Geography: Country of Origin Egypt Did the Ancient Egyptians really use 20-sided dice, or was this just a one time thing or a fake? | The Egyptians and other cultures really did use twenty-sided dice as evidenced by studies and artifacts, such as the one at the Met. For example, "A Demotic Inscribed Icosahedron from Dakhleh Oasis" by Martina Minas-Nerpel
published in the The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology in 2007 (Vol. 93, pp. 137-148), describes "a unique icosahedron found at Qaret el-Muzzawaqa in the 1980s and now housed in the New Valley Museum at Kharga" (pictured above). Mina-Nerpel writes, It probably dates to the first century ad. In contrast to other icosahedra
known from Graeco-Roman Egypt, this one is not inscribed with Greek or Latin letters or numbers, but with 20 Egyptian divine names in Demotic, thus adapting Egyptian concepts to a Greek form [...] The polyhedron was presumably used in an oracular procedure intended to establish which deity would provide help to the petitioner. She goes on to cite examples of Egyptian icosahedra including: three "made of steatite or faience, inscribed with Greek letters" in Cairo and Paris museums, "four polyhedra from Egypt with Greek letters made of faience, serpentine, steatite, or calcite" housed in the British Museum, "a faience icosahedron inscribed with Greek letters" sold on the art market, and a rock crystal icosahedron "inscribed with Latin letters and Roman
numerals" at the Louvre. These are described (or "published" in other words) in the literature and regarded as authentic by scholars and collectors. For more information you can begin with a chapter by W.J. Tait called "Dicing with the Gods" in Egyptian Religion , edited by W. Clarysse, A. Schoors, and H. Willems (Leuven: Peeters, 1998). It is worth mentioning that Platonic solids (of which icosahedron is one) were also known to the Greeks, at least as far back as 300 BC. Euclid attributes the discovery of the icosahedron to Theaetetus . (See "The Discovery of Regular Solids" by William C. Waterhouse in Archive for History of Exact Sciences , Vol. 9, No. 3, 30.XII.1972). | {
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16,672 | A friend of mine came across an article about the Tokyo Waterworks Bureau, saying that during a football match that was a major qualifier between Australia and Japan, staff had to monitor the match. During breaks in play, they had to increase water flow due to increased use of the bathroom, and they had to decrease water flow when play was happening. I also once saw on a documentary that electricity usage spiked in the UK just after the end of a popular soap opera, because people put on a kettle for a cup of tea. Again, staff working for the UK's electricity grid had to monitor when the soap opera ended, and adjust electricity production accordingly. I'm accepting of the claim that spikes in water usage and electricity usage can occur. But are they major enough, as claimed, to require monitoring by staff? | The phenomenon is known as "TV Pickup" . It's a sufficiently large effect that "pumped storage" reservoirs are built, which can deliver over 1GW to the grid at a few seconds' notice, used in conjunction with other direct generation sources, which are slower to ramp-up, but can generate for longer. Even on a typical evening, spikes of around 800MW can be expected - during the ad breaks for the big soaps, for example. Among the largest recorded in the UK is 2.8GW following an England/Germany penalty shootout in 1990 . Whole teams are dedicated to both predicting the demand fluctuations based on historic form, and actively monitoring the live system. From the horse's mouth, these slides from a presentation by a National Grid operational energy manager . | {
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16,810 | 19 wildfire firefighters died in Arizona today , and the articles mention that they appear to have used their fire shelters: the 19 firefighters were found in an area that also had 19 fire shelters deployed. Some of those found were inside a shelter, which is typically used as a last resort to withstand the fire as it blows over. Some of the crew members were found outside the shelters. I have read other cases of firefighters deploying their shelters and still dying. I cannot recall a case where the shelter is said to have saved the life of the user. The Wikipedia entry tellingly describes them as a safety device of last resort . So, my question is, do these fire shelters save lives? I can think of several possibilities: Yes they do, but acts thereof are underreported for whatever reason. Yes they can, but because they are viewed as a tool of last resort they tend to be deployed in situations that are already beyond all hope. If used in less extreme fires they would be highly effective. No, they are ineffective. ( USGovt fire shelter summary ) UPDATE - in addition to the answer below, the following quote comes from a new article on the event by the Wall Street Journal : [Wally Covington, professor of fire ecology at Northern Arizona University] added that the fire shelters used by firefighters offer limited protection—usually no more than 10 minutes or so under what he called moderate fire conditions. "But under an extreme condition, they may not work," he said, adding suffocation from smoke is often the cause of fatalities. | A report from 1987 had 4/5 firefighters surviving entrapment by using a fire shelter . This report was found at the Wildfire Lessons Learned Center , when searching for events with deployed fire shelters. In this case shortly after they deployed their shelters water and fire retardant was dropped on their position by helicopter, and they were rescued at 45mins. The heat was so intense they reportedly rolled around on the ground to avoid burning from conduction from the hot ground. The firefighter who died was found half out of his shelter. There are 25 incidents listed on the search page where fire shelters were deployed, with a total of 374 people involved and 2 fatalities. Due to the interface for searching I only totalled results with a Yes for fire shelters being deployed. Some of the entries had a specific number entered instead of a yes/no and I didn't include them in the count as I didn't have time to search through all the different terms separately. So yes, it looks like fire shelters save lives, but their use to save lives is common enough that it isn't reported on by the mainstream media. | {
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16,825 | This petition claims that, having begun by building internment camps for migrants, the Greek government has gone on to "round up": Drug users Sex workers Transgender people ... and is imprisoning them "simply for existing". There are links in the petition text to corroborating web sites, such as Second Council House of Virgo . I don't know how reliable a source this is. I also found a rebuttal , but again I don't know how reliable it is. Searching for "Greece internment camps" corroborates the claim about internment camps for immigrants, with articles in mainstream newspapers . However, I did not find anything about the other categories of "undesirable". Searching for "Greece operation Zeus" brings results from dozens of activism web sites, but none from mainstream news sources. How much truth is in these claims? | Unfortunately, there is a lot of truth to the claim. I wouldn't call it entirely accurate, but I wouldn't call it false either. Xenios Zeus "Xenios Zeus" is a large scale police operation, targeting illegal immigrants in Attica. It started on August 4, 2012, is ongoing, and has not extended to the rest of Greece. The Ministry of Public Order & Citizen Protection published regular reports for the operation until February 22, 2013 when they abruptly stopped (without - as far as I know - any explanation). Up until that point the operation's statistics where: The Police operation was officially launched in August 2012 and the Ministry of Public Order stopped publishing data in February. The report states that of the 84,792 people investigated as part of the Police operation, 4,811 (about 6%) were found to be in Greece illegally and only 59 were arrested. Source: Human Rights Watch condemns Greek Police and ‘Xenios Zeus’ , Το Βήμα, June 12, 2013. The Greek version of the article goes into a bit more detail. According to a different source, the numbers are much higher: The Greek police force says its crackdown on illegal immigration, which has led to almost 6,700 people being detained and just over 1,500 arrested since last Saturday, is already producing results. Authorities said the number of migrants entering Greece via the country’s Evros border with Turkey has fallen dramatically. According to figures released by the police, 447 undocumented migrants were caught crossing into Greece illegally on August 2, before the Xenios Zeus operation began, but on Wednesday and Thursday this week that figure had fallen to 12 and 15 respectively. Source: Police claim Xenios Zeus operation a success , Καθημερινή, Jul 3, 2013. Both sources are major - and generally reliable - newspapers. The discrepancy in the numbers is not surprising, the first source quotes official data up until February 2013, the second reports estimates for the whole operation. The numbers skyrocketing after a certain point is not surprising either, the operation intensified significantly once the first detention centers for illegal immigrants were completed. Detention centers for illegal immigrants The first - and larger one - opened in Amygdaleza in late April, 2012 . There are at least four more, in Corinth, Evros, Rodopi and Lesvos. The Amygdaleza camp was build specifically to host illegal immigrants, the others are probably retrofitted military or police buildings (can't find reliable sources). The original plan for 30 camps in total is currently on hold, due to protests of the local populations and lack of funds. According to non official sources, Amygdaleza currently hosts 2.300 illegal immigrants. Since the Ministry of Public Order & Citizen Protection stopped publishing data, it's not possible to verify that number. Reports suggest conditions in the camp rapidly deteriorated after April, 2013, when several services were cut due to lack of funds. Surprisingly, a private security firm was hired recently to guard the camp. Sources: «Στάση» του Μεταναστευτικού στην Αμυγδαλέζα (news site) Καταγγελία για ξυλοδαρμό μεταναστών-απεργών πείνας στην Αμυγδαλέζα (news site) Εικόνα ντροπής στο κέντρο κράτησης στην Αμυγδαλέζα διαπίστωσε ο ΣΥΡΙΖΑ (news site, quotes Alexis Tsipras, leader of the opposition) Αμυγδαλέζα: Βασίλειο βρωμιάς, παραβατικότητας και εκμετάλλευσης (news site) Εταιρεία σεκούριτι στη φύλαξη κέντρων κράτησης μεταναστών (news site, exposes the story about the private security firm) Αμυγδαλέζα: η αποτυχία ενός καταδικασμένου πειράματος (news site) Sex workers Prostitution is legal in Greece, and sex workers are required to get tested for STDs once a month. The tests are free and available in most hospitals. Now, the incident the claim refers to is most likely the April 2012 arrest of 11 female sex workers. All of them were operating illegally and failed to produce proof they had been recently tested for STDs. Consequently, they were tested and - according to reports - found to be HIV positive. In an unprecedented move of dubious legality, their names, their parents names and their photographs were released to the public. A few days later, on May 5, the Ministry of Health released a report, claiming a total of 85 HIV positive sex workers have been found in 1180 random tests since September 2011. The legal framework for these checks has not been clarified (or challenged). However, the issue was and remains highly controversial. There are conflicting reports that suggest none or only some of the women were HIV positive, and that the arrests and the release of the photos were a publicity stunt, designed to boost the ruling party's popularity for the upcoming May 2012 election . Andreas Loverdos, then Minister of Public Health, had promised a new legal framework that would have allowed a lot more flexibility for random searches to the police, and would legalize forced HIV tests during detention. Interestingly and although the government changed, Mr. Loverdos' framework forms the basis of a law currently in consideration. The draft of the proposal for this new law is not currently available, it will probably be available next Monday. Sources: Aυτές είναι οι 11 ιερόδουλες που σκόρπιζαν τον ιό του AIDS (mainstream newspaper) Φωτογραφίες σοκ από άλλες 7 ιερόδουλες με AIDS (news site) Αυτές είναι οι ιερόδουλες που πάσχουν από AIDS (news site) Υπουργείο Υγείας: «Βρέθηκαν 85 ιερόδουλες με Aids σε 1180 αιμοληψίες”! (medical news site, includes the Ministry of Health's report) Αποκάλυψη: Διασύρθηκαν χωρίς να έχουν AIDS όλες οι ιερόδουλες (news site) Υπόθεση ιερόδουλες με AIDS| Η μεγάλη υποκρισία των ΜΜΕ και της ελληνικής κοινωνίας (news site, opinion piece) Οι …ιερόδουλες αλλάζουν το νόμο για τα προσωπικά δεδομένα (mainstream newspaper, comments on the legality of releasing the names and photos) Drug users & operation Thetis Operation "Thetis" was a March 6, 2013 police operation that targeted drug users in Attica, and more specifically Athens' historic city center. According to news reports, 132 drug users were detained and moved to Amygdaleza, where they were cataloged (!?) and released (!?). The operation was met with contempt and ridicule in local media, and its legality and usefulness have been strongly disputed by KETHEA . The day after the operation, an official statement verified it. According to the statement the operation was in collaboration with medical professionals from the Ministry of Health, and the detainees were collected from various places in Athens' center and were in need of medical attention. Sources: Ανακοίνωση της Γ.Α.Δ. Αττικής σχετικά με τη χθεσινή μεταφορά και υγειονομική περίθαλψη ατόμων σε συνεργασία με υγειονομικές Υπηρεσίες του Υπουργείου Υγείας στις αστυνομικές εγκαταστάσεις της Αμυγδαλέζας (Greek police, Athens Directorate) Αντιδράσεις στην επιχείρηση «Θέτις» (news site) ΚΕΘΕΑ: Η επιχείρηση "ΘΕΤΙΣ" παραβιάζει τα ανθρώπινα δικαιώματα και την αξιοπρέπεια των τοξικομανών (news site, quotes KETHEA) Επιχείρηση "Θέτις": Η ΕΛ.ΑΣ. μαζεύει χρήστες ναρκωτικών και τους οδηγεί στην Αμυγδαλέζα (news site) Όχι στον υγειονομικό φασισμό της επιχείρησης “Θέτις” (news site, opinion piece) ΣΥΡΙΖΑ: «Άθλια η επιχείρηση Θέτις» (mainstream newspaper, quoting SYRIZA politicians) Κατακραυγή για τις αθλιότητες κατά των χρηστών ναρκωτικών! (newspaper) Μεταφορά τοξικομανών στην Αμυγδαλέζα; (news site) Transgender people The Transgender Association claims that transgender people were regularly harassed and detained without cause in Thessaloniki, from 30 May 2013 and onwards. The report on GRReporter translates parts of the association's complaint and matches similar Greek language reports in local media: The police in Thessaloniki has been carrying out a series of ungrounded arrests of transgender persons as stated by the Greek Transgender Support Association. "According to written complaints filed by our members who live in Thessaloniki, it is clear that from 30 May 2013 onwards, the police have been carrying out purges and arrests of transgender citizens on a daily basis. The same complaints state that those arrested are being taken to the police headquarters in Thessaloniki in Dimokratia Square, where the victims are waiting for at least three or four hours to be identified under the pretext that the authorities should establish whether the particular person was not a prostitute," reads an address of the non-governmental organization (NGO). The Association stresses that the police behaviour during the arrests was offensive, humiliating and that it was intended to undermine the dignity of transgender persons. In three of the complaints, the victims note that traffic policemen had stopped transgender women while they were driving their cars without any proof or suspicion of any fault or violation of the law. Later, they were taken to the police station in order for their identity to be verified. The testimonies of a large number of victims suggest that before being released from custody, the policemen threatened transgender women, warning them that if they did not "return to normal", legal proceedings against them would be initiated for indecent behaviour in public places. The Greek Transgender Support Association connects the campaign against transgender persons with the recent actions of some municipal representatives and the church against the forthcoming gay festival Thessaloniki Pride, which will take place on 14 and 15 June this year. One notable event was the detainment without cause of Ms. Electra-Leda Koutra, a lawyer visiting transgender clients held in a police station. The Thessaloniki Bar Association corroborates Ms. Koutra's story. A response to the complaints by Nikos Dendias, Minister of Public Order & Citizen Protection, acknowledges 720 searches that lead to 271 detainments, from June 1 to June 9. It also mentions that the officers responsible for Ms. Koutra's detainment are under investigation. Sources: Mr. Dendias' response (Hellenic Parliament, PDF) Συμπεριφορά αστυνομικών οργάνων προς τη δικηγόρο Αθηνών, κα Ηλέκτρα Λήδα Κούτρα (Thessaloniki Bar Association) Αναίτιες προσαγωγές τρανσέξουαλ καταγγέλλονται στη Θεσσαλονίκη (news site) Θεσσαλονίκη: Στο κρατητήριο δικηγόρος, επειδή υπερασπίστηκε τρανσέξουαλ (mainstream newspaper) | {
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16,846 | "Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal." --
Martin Luther King, Jr. Is Martin Luther King right? Was Hitler "clean" (cannot be charged under the then-law) in the eyes of the law? If the question is too broad (if "everything" includes reckless youth behaviour) , were his actions perfectly legal while he was the ruler of Germany? Were his schemes of acquiring power afoul of any law? | Given that he spent time in prison , for the Nazi's unsuccessful "Beer Hall Putsch" in the German state of Bavaria. During his time in jail he famously wrote Mein Kampf, it is known that not everything he did was legal. Of course that's not the period during Mr. Hitler's life that Dr. King intended to refe :) You'll also have to define under which law. Under the terms of surrender of the Versaille Accords, the remilitarisation of Germany was certainly not legal, though it was intended to as much as possible be performed within the letter of the surrender document (e.g. the He-111 bomber was nominally a passenger and cargo aircraft for Lufthansa .) As we know, Germany was not allowed to have a military air force under the terms of the Versialles Treaty, so many aircraft were being built under strict secrecy, often under the guise of Lufthansa Airlines. The He 111 was no exception. The Luftwaffe had requested that a large commercial airliner be constructed way back in 1934, but it should be designed in such a way that it could be easily and cheaply converted into a bomber adhering to German military specifications. Same was true with other systems, like tanks, which were explicitly designed to stay within the letter of the treaty text. In 1933, the Heereswaffenamt ordered the development of Kleintraktor – an armored vehicle between 4 and 7 tons in weight. It was designated La.S (Landwirtschaftlicher Schlepper / LaS – agricultural tractor) to hide its true purpose from the Treaty of Versailles Again, a military system officially designed as a civilian one to circumvent the treaty. The rest is from memory, based on my reading of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer (good book) Hitler and the NSDAP gained power legally, then used subterfuge to force a situation in which they could institute emergency measures (think Reichstag fire), effectively meaning an end to the Weimar Republic and its laws. From that moment on of course, they made the law so anything they did was effectively legal. And that's no doubt what Dr. King meant. When someone with absolute power wants to do harm, whatever he does is by definition legal as there is no law left under which he can be held liable. | {
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16,852 | There is a claim, made by Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen in his books (such as Permission to Receive ) and lectures (such as this "The Veracity of Torah" lecture on TorahCafé ), that the story of a divine miracle at Mt. Sinai (the revelation of God) taking place before the entire "nation of Israel" is unique among cultures and religions . He says that the Jews claim that at the founding of their religion, God personally spoke the Ten Commandments to each of the millions of Jewish people. He posits if it were naturally possible for false national revelation claims to be made, at least one other religion, nation, or culture should also claim that all of their ancestors witnessed divine miracles. (A non-sequitor, I know, but that's besides the point.) Instead he says that all other religions start up with a divine revelation to only one or two people. Kelemen asks, "If it's so normal for an entire people to think that their ancestors heard God speak, why didn't it happen more than once in recorded history?" (Permission to Receive p.70). Thus, Kelemen appears to claim that there has been no other religion or culture that claims that their ancestors witnessed a deity or other supernatural miracles on a national scale. "National scale" means that all, or at least enough, members of the culture or religion directly witnessed the miraculous (divine, supernatural) occurrence such that the claim that their ancestors witnessed such an event became a continuous national tradition.* Is this in fact so? Are there no other cultures, nations, or religions other than Judaism that have a tradition that their ancestors all directly witnessed a divine miracle(s)? * Although Kelemen also says that no other religion was founded with a revelation of God speaking to more than two people, he does appear to acknowledge claims of Jesus performing public miracles. He apparently does not consider this as a counterexample though, saying that people wouldn't necessarily have known where the people who saw his miracles were, and they and later generations therefore may not have had the ability to check the claim. So this is why I'm asking about the "national" claim rather than an easier to challenge public miracle claim. The point of "tradition" is also important to the claim. Kelemen seems to require that the revelation story doesn't involve the people forgetting and being re-told by a smaller group or prophet. In Permission to Receive and some of his lectures, he mentions a Hindu story where Krishna is revealed to millions of people, but since they almost all die out shortly thereafter, there wouldn't be a nation of people who could check this story with their ancestors. And so he dismisses this sort of counterexample. | There seem to be two claims here. One is that there are no counterexamples of other cultures with a national tradition of a national divine revelation or miracle. The other is an implicit claim that Judaism itself does have such a tradition. Claim that Judaism has an unbroken national revelation tradition In terms of whether Judaism itself has such an uninterrupted nation-wide tradition of the entire nation hearing God directly speak the Ten Commandments, as Kelemen claims, it seems only partially true going by the biblical narrative. National revelation First, it does appear as he says that the biblical narrative includes the Jewish nation experiencing national miracles and at Mt. Sinai hearing God speak, though this latter detail is not obvious from the narrative. Some verses do say that the Jewish people heard God directly, for example: Face to face, the Lord spoke with you at the mountain out of the midst of the fire. (Deuteronomy 5:4) For who is there of all flesh, that hath heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived? (Deuteronomy 5:22) But at the same time, other verses may conflict with this. For example, Exodus 19:21-25 has God allowing only Moses and Aaron up the mountain to see God and receive the commandments, but nobody else could even touch the bottom of the mountain. The people, according to Exodus 19:18-19, simply saw fire, heard loud noise, and possibly heard the voice Moses was conversing with. Deuteronomy 5:5 appears to make Moses the intermediary when God delivers the Ten Commandments. It seems that the view that all Jews directly heard God did become the accepted position among rabbinic leaders, however. For an example, Rashi on Exodus 20:2 says: ...Alternatively, [God mentions the Exodus] since they [the Israelites] heard many voices [during the revelation], as it is said: “And all the people saw the voices” (verse 15), [meaning that] voices came from four directions and from the heavens and from the earth... Even if it's not clear whether the people were supposed to have heard God speak directly, Deuteronomy 11:2-7 does describe various national miracles, such as the splitting of the Red Sea. Kelemen may have been better served using one of those other miracles as his main example. It is clear that according to the Torah the Jewish people did witness at least some nation-wide miracles, but whether the people were supposed to have all heard God speak directly in the way Kelemen says is not as clear. Nation-wide unbroken tradition Whether the biblical narrative includes an unbroken chain of tradition about Mt. Sinai is a different story. There are various places in the Hebrew Bible that describe periods of time when the Jewish people apparently rejected and/or forgot their religion for Canaanite religion en masse, for example: And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers; and there arose another generation after them, that knew not the LORD, nor yet the work which He had wrought for Israel. And the children of Israel did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, and served the Baalim. And they forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the peoples that were round about them, and worshipped them; and they provoked the LORD. And they forsook the LORD, and served Baal and the Ashtaroth. (Judges 2:10-13) Further, a reading of II Kings chapters 21-23 describes a 75 year period where Canaanite religion was national and Torah was apparently unknown before being discovered under King Josiah who implemented major religious reforms and restored monotheism (known to scholars as the Deuteronomic Reform ). Medieval Jewish commentator Rabbi David Kimhi (RaDaK) describes the state to which the Jewish people were unfamiliar with the Torah and its contents: Manasseh had systematically destroyed all the Torah Scrolls and alienated the nation so thoroughly from the Torah that the people were completely unfamiliar with its contents. Sixty-seven [sic] years had elapsed since the beginning of Manasseh's reign, so that this discovery was a surprising revelation to everyone. (The Stone Edition Tanach, The Artscroll Series, citing RaDaK on II Kings 22:8) So the biblical narrative does include later reintroduction of the Torah to the Jewish nation, and there appears no reason to say that the Mt. Sinai story was excluded from what the people had forgotten. It may be arguable whether an elite few always held on to tradition, but this is not Kelemen's claim. Going by the Hebrew Bible, Judaism does not seem to claim an unbroken nation-wide tradition of the Mt. Sinai events as Kelemen says and his implicit claim in this regard is false . Note: This is not to say anything of the actual authorship of the Torah and origin of the the Mt. Sinai story. Whether a king made it up as part of a religious reform and told people it had been forgotten, whether it was the product of natural mythological development and embellishment over centuries, whether the Biblical narrative is completely accurate, or whether it is from some combination of the above, it does not change the reality of the resulting biblical narrative and Jewish beliefs. Whatever the history regarding the Egyptian exodus and Mt. Sinai, the biblical narrative does involve the Jewish people forgetting and being re-introduced to monotheism and the Torah. Claim of no counterexamples The claim that there is no other example of a culture with mythology of a national supernatural experience is quite an ambitious one as it would require an analysis of a huge range of beliefs of present and past cultures to verify that there were no other examples. However, there indeed are examples of cultures with myths comparable to the Mt. Sinai tradition, in the sense that these people believed all of their ancestors experienced supernatural events or witnessed their deity speaking: Aztec Huitzilopochtli Myth and revelation of Huitzilopochtli: The Aztecs , who settled in Lake Texcoco, believed themselves to be descended from tribes of immortal people from Aztlan until they had to leave as instructed by their god Huitzilopochtli who took the form of a white eagle. The journey took 200 years and the ultimate destination of the lake on which they built an artificial island was prophesied in advance and in detail. Whether the Aztecs believed their god to have spoken to all the people or just a prophet is not clear from what I've seen. However, the story does involve all Aztec ancestors experiencing supernatural events, that is, the supernaturally long lifespans. Additionally, this story is an important aspect of the origin of Aztec religion. (source) Fifth Creation of the World by Marumda and the Pomo tribes: The Pomo people , a group of tribes in California that exists today and had settlements dating back several thousand years, have an oral tradition that their god, Marumda, created the world five times (the first four destroyed due to sin), and that they were created the fifth time. They believe all of the Pomo villages were planted by Marumda and that he revealed themselves to their ancestors, sometimes accompanied with miracles, and taught them how to survive and behave and taught them dances that are still performed today. This story does involve national miracles as their god Marumda created their villages, it does have Marumda performing public miracles, it does have their god speaking to the people, and it does tell the story of the origin of their religious beliefs. What the size of the initial population that Marumda created and was revealed to was, and whether Marumda spoke to the entire nation at once or only to individual groups, is less clear. (source) Revelation of Gitche Manitou at Pipestone, Minnesota: Sioux Indians have an oral tradition of a majestic, direct, divine revelation of their god and creator Gitche Manitou or the Great Spirit at the Pipestone National Monument to all the Native American tribes or to all the tribes in the region. In one account, in the form of a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow based on legends, Gitche Manitou breathed into a peace pipe he formed and made a large smoke signal that beckoned all the tribes to gather. They had spite between them, but Gitche Manitou chided them to do away with their weapons, behave properly, and make peace. After this, before all the nations, Gitche Manitou ascended to heaven amidst the smoke. In another, less embellished account recorded by George Catlin from the Dakota Sioux, a detail is included that the Great Spirit was in the form of a large bird, smoke signals are not specified (instead smoke is described as rolling over the multitude), and the description of his ascent to heaven is not included. In both accounts though, the fundamental points of the revelation are consistent. This story does have a lot of similarities with the Mt. Sinai story, though details in the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow may imply that it was only all the men or warriors as opposed to every member of the tribes. (Although, certain details in the Biblical accounts of Mt. Sinai also are directed only to men.) (source 1) , (source 2) The Lakota legend of White Buffalo Calf Woman: The Lakota People are a subset of the Sioux. In 1805 their population was estimated to be about 8,500 (and today there are tens of thousands of their people who speak the language). The people have an oral tradition of an event that took place one summer between year 12 and 10 BCE ( according to this retelling ) when their god Wakan Tanka (same as Gitchie Manitou) revealed itself to all seven tribes of the Lakota as White Buffalo Calf Woman . The story goes that there was famine, so all seven Lakota tribes gathered together, and they sent out two hunters to look for food. The first part of the miracles was only witnessed by one survivor, but for context, they saw a beautiful woman, with clothes and an appearance than no ordinary human could fashion, floating towards them. One of the hunters desired the woman and was turned into a pile of bones amidst a cloud. The other hunter became afraid and prepared to shoot the woman, but she couldn't be harmed. She informed the hunter to return and have the Lakota prepare for her arrival. When she arrived, she taught the Lakota how to behave and perform all the sacred rituals. She gave them seven religious practices, including the sun dance and fasting. She talked to all the people and gave them advice, and gave them a sacred living pipe that is still guarded to this day . As she left, the people saw her turn into a black buffalo, then brown, then red, and then white, which is sacred. As she disappeared, large herds of buffalo appeared where she was and allowed themselves to be killed for the Lakota to live. This story also meets a lot of Kelemen's criterion, it does tell the story of the origin of their religious beliefs, and the tradition is very strong. (source) Samaritans: The Samaritans are a small ethnic religious group living in the Levant. They practice Samaritanism , a religion related to Judaism which is based off of the Samaritan Pentateuch as the sole holy book, which is an alternate version of the Five Books of Moses that includes some textual differences from the Torah, including the unique command within the 10 commandments to build an alter on Mount Gerizim. While Jewish sources consider the Samaritans to be foreign settlers from the Assyrians, Samaritans believe that they, and not the Jews, have the authentic Pentateuch and the authentic lineage tracing to Mount Sinai. Of course, the national miracle and revelation traditions Samaritans hold traces back to the same traditions held by Judaism. However, they nevertheless constitute a different people with a different religion having a tradition of a national revelation starting their religion. (source) There may be additional counterexamples too, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh (and related flood myths) or the Founding of Thebes by Cadmus if you say that Rabbi Kelemen's claim does not necessitate that a sizable group experienced the miracles (just that all of the people's ancestors experienced it). Whether these counterexamples do disprove his claim may depend on how narrow Rabbi Kelemen's claim is understood to be. If he argues that other peoples should have all their ancestors experience miracles or interaction with their god, then it is easy to see these as counterexamples, and his claim would be false . If, however, he requires that the peoples must have experienced something that matches his understanding of a national prophesy of a large population as the start of a religion with a continuous chain of tradition to the verifiably known believers, then some counterexamples become more arguable. But by the same token the claim would be far less meaningful, and as discussed above it would even be doubtful that the stories in the Hebrew Bible actually meet such a threshold. With the less narrow understanding of Kelemen's claim, though, the Mt. Sinai story would not be unique in the way he says and the claim would not be true on those grounds. | {
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16,944 | In the wake of the recent Zimmerman trial , Shan Diddy ( @shannycat81 ) posted a tweet that was retweeted over 7,000 times, including by noted skeptic, Paul Provenza. Meanwhile, ALSO in Florida, a Black single mother gets 20 years in jail for firing "warning shots" into the AIR. cbsnews The linked news article states: A Florida woman who fired warning shots against her allegedly abusive husband has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. [...] She was recently denied a new trial after appealing to the judge to reconsider her case based on Florida's controversial "Stand Your Ground" law. The law states that the victim of a crime does not have to attempt to run for safety and can immediately retaliate in self-defense. Did the Florida court system jail Marissa Alexander for 20 years merely for firing warning shots in the air, in self-defense? | Summary: Yes, she was found guilty of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and sentenced to 20 years prison. Yes, there was testimonial from a witness that she fired "in the air" (while inside the house). The news article in question says: (CBS News) JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - A Florida woman who fired warning shots against her allegedly abusive husband has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. I looked into Duval County public records . Duval County is the county which Jacksonville is in . From the picture above. Judge name: Daniel James. It's the same as is credited to in the news article. Her name is the same too. The incident happened August 2010. Date of her being sentenced to prison is correct too, it's 11th May 2012. And she is sentenced to 20 years. Article also state she had earlier run-ins with the law. Which also is true, according to picture below. All side data is correct. Do notice she asked for a divorce in 2011, and the name of her husband. Now onto the claim of her being sentenced 20 years to prison for firing warning shots. Aggravated Assault - Deadly weapon. A person is guilty of aggravated assault if he or she attempts to cause serious bodily injury to another or causes such injury purposely, knowingly, or recklessly under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life; or attempts to cause or purposely or knowingly causes bodily injury to another with a deadly weapon. Wikipedia on Assault At Common Law, an intentional act by one person that creates an apprehension in another of an imminent harmful or offensive contact. An assault is carried out by a threat of bodily harm coupled with an apparent, present ability to cause the harm. It is both a crime and a tort and, therefore, may result in either criminal or civil liability. A threat of bodily harm is enough. Aggravated Assault Aggravated assault is, in some jurisdictions, a stronger form of
assault, usually using a deadly weapon. A person has committed an
aggravated assault when that person attempts to: cause serious bodily injury to another person with a deadly weapon It's enough to be considered to ATTEMPT to cause serious bodily injury, or even just use threats about it. Shooting a warning shot can easily be considered as aggravated assault. Her husband had been to court for domestic violence earlier. Florida also have the 10-20-Life law when it comes to guns. The law's name comes from three main mandatory sentences: 1) producing
a firearm during the commission of certain felonies mandates at least
a 10-year prison sentence; 2) firing one mandates at least a 20-year
prison sentence; and 3) shooting someone mandates a minimum sentence
of 25 years to life regardless of whether a victim is killed or simply
injured. The second part of the question is whether she fired "in the air" in "self-defense". This document reasonable purports to the witness deposition statement from her second husband. ( Warning : Contains disturbing descriptions of domestic violence.) In the deposition, the husband several times uses the term "in the air" to describe Alexander firing away from him, while inside their home. And she shot in the air one time. And when she shot in the air, that's when I grabbed the boys and I pushed the out the door. [...] The gun was never actually pointed at me. When she raised the gun down and raised it up, you know, the gun was never pointed at me. In this context, "in the air" just seems to mean firing up - not pointed at him or the children - rather than meaning firing into the sky. He also describes (prior to the shooting) physically and verbally threatening her, physically blocking her exit, and her getting past him, and running to the garage (where she got the gun from a car). she ran through the laundry room into the garage, but I knew she -- I didn't know she was going to get a gun but I knew that she couldn't leave out the garage because the garage door was locked, because when I came home that morning my garage door wan't working because we was having problems with the garage and it wouldn't go up, you know, it wouldn't go up. In relation to a question hinting at the self-defense angle, he stated: I honestly think she just didn't want me to put my hands on her anymore so she did what she feel she have to do to make sure she wouldn't get hurt, you know. You know, she did what she had to do. It might reasonably be argued that, in this statement, he is attempting to make Alexander sound innocent and diminish any criminal act she may have committed. He contradicts his previous police report (saying he was originally lying) and may not have been considered a reliable witness. Nonetheless, it seems reasonable for a newspaper reporter to use this witness testimony to describe the crime. In conclusion, any tweet is too short to contain a full context, but it is a reasonable summary of the husband testimonial as to what happened, and is accurate about the outcome - with an understanding that "in the air" is used to mean "into the ceiling". | {
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