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35,536 | This report claims: STUDENTS FORCED TO RECITE 'ALLAH IS THE ONLY GOD' ... Now, parents of public-school students in Tennessee are protesting
assignments that include writing a declaration that Allah is supreme
and textbooks that recount Islamic doctrines as facts instead of
beliefs. Nearly 120,000 people have signed ACLJ’s petition demanding a halt to
such teaching. “What if your child or grandchild’s public school forced them to write
out the Shahada – the Islamic conversion creed – while having skipped
Christianity?” the organization asked. Is it true? Did the assignments include "writing a declaration that Allah is supreme and textbooks that recount Islamic doctrines as facts"? | Students in public school were assigned to write in Arabic the Shahada (Testimony of Faith) , not in Tennessee, but in neighboring Virginia. In English, it is: I bear witness that there is no God except Allah;
And I bear witness that Muhammad (peace be upon him) is His servant and messenger This occurred in 9th grade World Geography class at Riverheads High School, Augusta County, Virginia, December 11th, 2015. See for example the Washington Post article Schoolwork about Islam triggers backlash in Virginia county and Parents in Augusta County Concerned About Islamic Indoctrination The above assignment was taken by the teacher, Cheryl LaPorte, from page 122 of the book World Religions by Gabriel Arquilevich. Laurel Truxell and others were pressured to pose in Hijab for the yearbook by the same teacher (Cheryl LaPorte): the teacher pushed and pushed and pushed so I did it, and when she took a picture, I asked for it not to be in the yearbook and she said it was, so that's when my parents called the school As far as the Tennessee situation, we do not have a written copy of a particular assignment; however, the corresponding state standard required that students: 7.6 Explain the significance of the Qur’an and the Sunnah as the primary sources of Islamic beliefs, practice, and law and their influence in Muslims’ daily life. What happened is explained in Maury parents angered over Islam unit . 7th graders at Spring Hill Middle School, Maury County, were required to learn the 5 pillars of Islam . This involved classwork and assignments that necessitated writing and verbally stating the Shahada in English. students were instructed to write, “Allah is the only God,” said parent Brandee Porterfield.... the teacher verbally asked students about the five pillars, “And the students were reciting the Shahada.” ... My child was required to write ‘Allah is the only God’, parent Joy Ellis said However, after a meeting: Principal Shanda Sparrow said students would not have to write the Shahada again. Director of Schools Dr. Marczak released a written statement acknowledging that: For this last section on the Islamic World this past week, our educators had students complete an assignment that had an emphasis on Islamic Faith. The assignment covered some sensitive topics that are of importance to Islamic religion and caused some confusion around whether we are asking students to believe in or simply understand the religion. The state of Tennessee has recently (September 2016) revised its standard for 7th grade as explained in Islam removed from draft Tenn. 7th grade social studies standards : gone is a standard about understanding the Qur’an and Sunnah | {
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35,554 | In the the final Trump-Clinton presidential debate , Hillary Clinton said: But here's the deal. The bottom line on nuclear weapons is that when the president gives the order, it must be followed. There's about four minutes between the order being given and the people responsible for launching nuclear weapons to do so. And that's why 10 people who have had that awesome responsibility have come out and, in an unprecedented way, said they would not trust Donald Trump with the nuclear codes or to have his finger on the nuclear button. Some people, such as commenters on this Reddit forum are concerned that that information is classified, and should not have been publicized. Is that information classified by the US military? | No, this is not classified information. There have been plenty of descriptions of the timeline to launch US nuclear weapons, most much more detailed than anything Secretary Clinton said, and none of the people publishing them have been prosecuted. Also the articles giving those details are still easily available, and have been for years, indicating that the US military does not see any problem with them being published. Here are some examples: NTI Foreign Policy Bloomberg GlobalNews EDIT: While it is technically possible for information to be both classified and widely known to the public (for example the location of a US aircraft carrier may be technically classified, even when it is in port and visible to anyone for miles around) revealing such information is not a crime if it could be obtained from non-classified sources, and does no harm to US interests, making the question pretty much moot. | {
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35,596 | Trump has claimed numerous times that part of the reason we need to close the border is that the illegal immigrants are prone to crimes. I want to check these claims. Are illegal immigrants more prone to committing crimes then the average US citizen? Obviously being an illegal immigrant is a crime itself, but for this question I want to ignore any crimes that are due to their illegal status, such as not paying taxes. I'm more interested in serious crimes, felonies and violent crimes. I'm also interested in rape as the most common accusation made by Trump. Ideally I'd prefer an answer that separately answers the question of whether illegal immigrants are more prone to rape in addition to whether they are more prone to non-rape crimes if possible. This question refers specifically to illegal immigrants to the United States. I'll accept statistics that look at all illegal immigrants, or that look only at Hispanic illegal immigrants, since Trump often refers to Hispanic illegal Immigrants as if they are the sole form of illegal immigrant. | TL;DR : We don't know. Reported crimes are actually lower, but that may not reflect the real crime rate. There is no evidence that it is higher, only speculation. Immigrant crime statistics show less crime There have been quite a few studies on this. One review found With few exceptions, immigrants are less crime prone than natives or have no effect on crime rates. As described below, the research is fairly one-sided. There are some issues with the studies. For example, one type of analysis compares incarceration rates. But this isn't a good basis for comparison. The courts have an additional option with illegal immigrants that they do not have with citizens. The courts can deport illegal immigrants --even if not found guilty of a crime. So those people are never incarcerated and wouldn't show up in those statistics. Illegal immigrants are less likely to report crimes ThinkProgress reports A new study released reveals that Latinos are less likely to report crimes to the police because they are afraid of being asked of their immigration status. Why would this affect crime statistics regarding crimes committed by illegal immigrants? Because people mostly commit crimes against others like themselves. For example, the FBI's Expanded Homicide Data Table 6 shows that each grouping (white, black, Hispanic, etc.) is most likely to commit crimes against its own group. It's unclear how much this reporting discrepancy causes statistics to undercount crimes by illegal immigrants, but this would have a disproportionate impact on illegal immigrants relative to the native born. As a proxy, Hispanics report Hispanic offenders more than three times as often as non-Hispanic offenders: 439 to 123 in the statistics. We don't have a good study of how much crime is not reported. Like with rape statistics, it is difficult to accurately estimate what is not reported. We can only point out that underreporting has a disproportionate impact on illegal immigrant statistics relative to citizen statistics. | {
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35,700 | This article claims: Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls has increased the faith of
Bible-believers. Why? Because they prove that the hand-copied texts
that have come down from the Masoretic scribes are accurate . ... ... The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in the years 1947 to 1956, in eleven
caves near Qumran, have answered that question. The Scrolls can be
positively dated. They are 1000 years older than previously used
manuscripts — and yet the text shows no deviation . The Masoretic scribes who made the copies kept a remarkably accurate
record. A similar claim appears in this article : The Dead Sea Scrolls are considered one of the most important
archaeological discoveries of the twentieth century and perhaps of all
time. They include 972 documents from approximately 300 B.C. to A.D.
70. Among them are over 200 scrolls of Old Testament writings, such as the famous Isaiah scroll, found in excellent condition even though it
is 1,000 years older than any previous manuscript of the book. These
documents have provided an abundance of evidence that has helped to
confirm the text of the Old Testament is astoundingly accurate. But it (2nd link) admits there are minimal differences, but doesn't say whether they are textual deviations or not. The Dead Sea Scrolls can give us confidence in the reliability of the
Old Testament manuscripts since there were minimal differences between
the manuscripts that had previously been discovered and those found in
Qumran. Is it true that there are no textual deviations between the dead sea scrolls and the old testament? | Is it true that there are no textual deviations between the dead sea scrolls and the old testament? No. Most people claiming that there are no differences seem to cherry-pick the texts that they compare. And there are indeed texts which contain only few significant deviations, for example Isaiah . Although even they do contain some differences, such as replacing the word "foolish" from the Dead See Scrolls with the word "wise" in the Masoretic text in Isaiah 44:25 (see The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Developmental Composition of the Bible ). There are also texts which contain more discrepancies, mainly found in Cave 4: Thus the biblical manuscripts from Qumran [ie the Dead Sea Scrols], which include at least fragments from every book of the Old Testament except for the Book of Esther, provide a far older cross section of scriptural tradition than that available to scholars before. While some of the Qumran biblical manuscripts are nearly identical to the Masoretic Hebrew text of the Old Testament (the canonical Jewish text), some biblical manuscripts found in Cave 4 exhibit dramatic differences from the Masoretic text in both language and content (for example, manuscripts of Exodus, Samuel, and Jeremiah) . In their astonishing range of textual variants, the Qumran biblical discoveries have prompted scholars to reconsider the once-accepted theories of the development of the modern biblical text from only three manuscript families: of the Masoretic text, of the Hebrew original of the Septuagint, and of the Samaritan Pentateuch. It is now becoming increasingly clear the the Old Textament scripture was extremely fluid until its canonization around AD 100. Neil Asher Silberman, 2012. The Oxford Companion to Archaeology, 2nd Edition | {
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35,711 | The following image promotes the Republican party over the Democratic party by looking at the support for some historical decisions. Are the figures presented correct? If you don't know please keep quiet: 13th Amendment ABOLISHED SLAVERY 100% Republican Support 23% Democrat Support 15th Amendment RIGHT TO VOTE FOR ALL 100% Republican Support 0% Democrat Support 14th Amendment GAVE CITIZENSHIP TO FREED SLAVES 94% Republican Support 0% Democrat Support OBAMACARE 0% Republican Support 86% Democrat support | Is it true that there are no textual deviations between the dead sea scrolls and the old testament? No. Most people claiming that there are no differences seem to cherry-pick the texts that they compare. And there are indeed texts which contain only few significant deviations, for example Isaiah . Although even they do contain some differences, such as replacing the word "foolish" from the Dead See Scrolls with the word "wise" in the Masoretic text in Isaiah 44:25 (see The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Developmental Composition of the Bible ). There are also texts which contain more discrepancies, mainly found in Cave 4: Thus the biblical manuscripts from Qumran [ie the Dead Sea Scrols], which include at least fragments from every book of the Old Testament except for the Book of Esther, provide a far older cross section of scriptural tradition than that available to scholars before. While some of the Qumran biblical manuscripts are nearly identical to the Masoretic Hebrew text of the Old Testament (the canonical Jewish text), some biblical manuscripts found in Cave 4 exhibit dramatic differences from the Masoretic text in both language and content (for example, manuscripts of Exodus, Samuel, and Jeremiah) . In their astonishing range of textual variants, the Qumran biblical discoveries have prompted scholars to reconsider the once-accepted theories of the development of the modern biblical text from only three manuscript families: of the Masoretic text, of the Hebrew original of the Septuagint, and of the Samaritan Pentateuch. It is now becoming increasingly clear the the Old Textament scripture was extremely fluid until its canonization around AD 100. Neil Asher Silberman, 2012. The Oxford Companion to Archaeology, 2nd Edition | {
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35,764 | This image claims that "Up until 1913 Americans kept all of their earnings". Up until 1913 Americans kept all of their earnings Despite this, America still had schools, roads, colleges, vast railroads, subways and an army & navy (Tell me again why taxes are necessary?) Is this claim true? | The plain meaning is false: there was taxation before 1913 . However if you want to play games with words then you can define "earnings" as "income after all expenses and taxes other than income tax". The parenthetical bit at the bottom invites the reader to take the broader interpretation, but allows the writer to retreat to the more technical definition if challenged. "1913" probably refers to the passage of the 16th amendment , which allowed Congress to levy taxes directly on people rather than apportioning them by states or according to population. There was a brief period when income tax was levied before that, but it was judged unconstitutional (hence the amendment). But that does not mean that there were no taxes before 1913. Up until then most federal revenue was obtained from tariffs on imports . There were also state taxes, including state income taxes. See DavePhD's answer below for details. | {
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35,846 | Someone on my Facebook feed posted a video that stated that the Rothschild family owns all the central banks in the world except in North Korea, Iran, and Cuba. It also claims that in the year 2000 there were four more countries on that list: Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, and Libya. Humans Are Free lists the central banks from many countries and claims that they are "Rothschild Owned & Controlled". Realities Watch has a similar list. FourWinds10 claims: Only 3 countries left w/o ROTHSCHILD Central Bank! The Rothschild family is slowly but surely having their Central banks established in every country of this world, giving them incredible amount of wealth and power. Does the Rothschild family own most of the world's central banks? | This statement is obvious and complete nonsense . Central banks don't have private owners as a rule, with the only notable exception being the US Federal Reserve bank, which is owned jointly by a number of major US private banks. For example: The Bank of England is owned an run by the UK government. The Bank of Canada is a crown corporation, owned and operated by the Canadian Government The Reserve Bank of Australia is wholly owned by the Commonwealth of Australia The European central banks are similarly government institutions, and they share ownership of the European Central Bank. It is a relatively simple matter to find the legislative acts that created each institution, which give precise terms of ownership and governance of each. | {
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35,912 | A friend just came over and apparently Pepsi is made from people. Or, more specifically : The aborted human fetal cell line is known as “HEK-293,” and it is used to see how the human palate will react to synthetic flavors. Since most of today’s processed food lacks flavor, companies like Semonyx are hired to develop flavors on their own. “What they don’t tell the public is that they are using HEK 293 — human embryonic kidney cells taken from an electively aborted baby to produce those receptors,” said Debi Vinnedge of the pro-life group Children of God for Life. “They could have easily chosen animal, insect, or other morally obtained human cells expressing the G protein for taste receptors.” (though it looks like that post says that they use these cells to develop flavors, not as actual additives). The claim I heard was that Pepsi contains cells from humans - is this true? | The claims people bring to this site never fail to impress! This is more false than it is true. Pepsi does not contain HEK-293 cells. HEK cells were used to test different kinds of sweeteners to determine their reaction. To repeat, people who drink Pepsi are not drinking anything that originally came from a human. (sources: Forbes , LifeSiteNews ) HEK-293 cells were indeed originally derived from an aborted human fetus, but they have been heavily mutated by a virus and are not easily recognizable. For scientific purposes they are a tool, not a research subject or a food, making them not much different in practice than HeLa cells. The transformation resulted in the incorporation of approximately 4.5
kilobases from the viral genome into human chromosome 19 ... The type
of kidney cell that the HEK293 cell line is unknown, and it is
difficult to conclusively characterize the cells post-transformation,
since adenovirus 5 could have significantly disrupted cell morphology
and expression. (source: HEK-293.com ) On the other hand, the use of human cells in biological research is a real ethical and legal issue, as discussed in, for example, the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and the court case Moore v. Regents of the University of California . | {
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35,991 | I came across the article Monsanto Is Scrambling To Bury This Breaking Story – Don’t Let This Go Unshared! claiming there was an unsafe level of glyphosate in a number of foods. The key claim seems to be that 0.1 pbb is unsafe and larger amounts have been detected in a wide variety of foods: A FDA-registered food safety laboratory tested iconic American food
for residues of the weed killer glyphosate (aka Monsanto’s Roundup)
and found ALARMING amounts. Just to give you an idea of how outrageous these amounts are,
independent research shows that probable harm to human health begins
at really low levels of exposure – at only 0.1 ppb of glyphosate. Many
foods were found to have over 1,000 times this amount! Well above what
regulators throughout the world consider “safe”. That quote references a report by FoodDemocracynow.org where they took the below graphic from: Can these claims be verified? | According to the document Joint FAO/WHO evaluation (2004 Part II—Toxicology) with information on the acceptable daily intake of glyphosate (ADI): ( listed here ) The acceptable daily intake for glyphosate is 0–0.3 mg/kg body weight. This was established based on no-observed-adverse-effect level (NOAEL) of 31 mg/kg bw per day. That means that if you weighed 80 kg, it would be acceptable for you to consume 24 mg of glyphosate and the no-observed-adverse-effect level for you would be 2480 mg. Now a person probably consumes about 80 g of Cheerios in a single sitting. At a concentration of 1125 ppb, that 80 g bowl would contain 0.09 mg of glyphosate. There is no risk whatsoever that you will cross over the acceptable daily intake for glyphosate from consuming Cheerios. The document goes on to discuss AMPA and states that: In 1997, the Joint Meeting evaluated aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA), the major metabolite of glyphosate, and concluded that AMPA was of no greater toxicological concern than its parent compound. A group ADI of 0–0.3 mg/kg bw was established for AMPA alone or in combination with glyphosate. | {
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36,010 | Noam Chomsky states in a recent interview : One of the difficulties in raising public concern over the very severe threats of global warming is that 40 percent of the US population does not see why it is a problem, since Christ is returning in a few decades. Is it true that 40% believe something like this? Are there studies underlining this claim? | The 40% figure most likely comes from Pew Research Center : By the year 2050, 41% of Americans believe that Jesus Christ definitely (23%) or probably (18%) will have returned to earth. The figures can be seen here : However, Pew does not make the global warming implication. There is a study by Barker and Bearce about this: the authors show that believers in Christian end-times theology are less likely to support policies designed to curb global warming than are other Americans. Barker and Bearce, End-Times Theology, the Shadow of the Future, and Public Resistance to Addressing Global Climate Change I do not have full access to the paper, but Religion Dispatches quotes it as: a belief in the Second Coming reduces the probability of strongly agreeing that the government should take action by more than 12 percent. The article is written by a professor doing research on evangelism and climate change. She disagrees with the conclusion that a belief in Christ’s return is the only or main reason for believing that global warming is unproblematic. As it seems that Chomsky is using the Pew numbers, and as it is fair to assume that at least some people believing in the probability of a second coming may still worry about global warming, I wouldn't rate the claim as given as accurate. | {
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36,038 | I just watched the movie War Dogs last night (good flick, btw), and they opened with a line that claims that it costs $17,500 to outfit the average US Soldier. Assuming this disregards training and only looks at actual supplies, this figure seems extraordinarily high to me. I did a little research online and found a few references to this number: http://www.seattlepi.com/national/article/Soldier-s-gear-costs-17-500-and-is-rising-1251404.php http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/12/08/the-minuscule-cost-of-equipping-a-chinese-soldier/ http://www.militaryeducation.org/military-equipment/ But of course none of these sites actually show an itemized list of the costs or even points out the big-ticket items that make up the bulk of this figure. I did see a reference that this is a true average so understandably Special Forces members would have much more expensive gear than the average grunt. But I'm still really incredulous that supplying a typical soldier would even come close to this figure. Doing the (completely unscientific) math in my head I would imagine that weaponry, armor, sleeping and navigational gear would be the bulk of cost, but even conservatively I can't see those items costing more than a couple grand each (and that's assuming the US Military is buying top-of-the-line merchandise at retail rates which I am pretty sure is not the case). Question: Where did this figure come from and is it valid? Are they including cost of living (food, heat, water) in these numbers? Does anyone know any more detail? | This graphic appears to be close to the source and lists items but not individual costs. I was able to find a breakdown from 2002 Here’s the breakdown: helmet, $322; uniform, $67.65; body armor, $1,620; nuclear, biological and chemical gear, $341.75, walkie-talkie, $578; boots, $105; M-16 rifle, $586; fully equipped rucksack, $1,031.15; This gives a total price of $4651.55. The price has almost certainly increased since 2002 but the claim is from only 5 years later in 2007. As far as I can find there is no breakdown, the highest level citation I can find for the figure simply cite "GlobalSecurity.org","department of defense" or "Pentagon officials". Searching inurl:globalsecurity "17,472" yields some results but none are relevant. This isn't the highest quality evidence but a piece of discussion on a military forum from 2007 seems worth including here: I couldn't find anything at S&S or on the internet, but I did learn that that exact amount* -- $17,472 -- is what a private gets paid per year. Is it possible that's what they mean? Otherwise it's a heck of a coincidence. It's almost impossible to prove a negative but given the much lower 2002 breakdown it seems plausible that the 17,472 number may have been based on a official mentioning the figure without going into detail. Support for this exact figure seems poor since all articles mentioning the number cite the same source article which doesn't cite a specific source. | {
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36,074 | A massively popular tweet (50k retweets) by Ryan Holmquist quotes Fidel Castro It reads, Castro: I will not die until America is destroyed Trump: I'm gonna be the president Castro: well then There are quite a few other tweets along the same lines. You can also see this popular meme going around (over 10k shares) Did Castro ever say "I will not die until America is destroyed." | It is not an accurate quote. Fidel Castro 19 May 1977 said : Some time ago, the United States was an English colony. If an Englishman were asked if the United States would be independent, he would have said no, that it would always be an English colony. Afterward, the colonies liberated themselves, a nation was established, but it contained slavery. The slave owners would have said that slavery would never disappear, but slavery ended, salaried workers came, capitalism came, it developed extraordinarily, large multinational enterprises developed, and if a reasonable man is asked now if that will be eternal, he will have to say no. Someday the capitalist system will disappear in the United States, because no social class system has been eternal. One day, class societies will disappear. But you can be calm, I do not foresee in a short time any change toward socialism in the United States. So Castro predicted the United States eventually becoming socialist, rather than being destroyed. Also, in the same interview he said: I don't know when I'm going to die, I don't know if I'm going to die tomorrow, tonight, in an accident, from natural causes. I cannot know. So clearly he did not hold the view mentioned in the OP. The quote in the OP is somewhat similar to a famous quote by Bolivar I swear that I will not die until I have driven the last Spaniard out of America which illustrates the geographically inclusive nature of the term "America" and an additional reason that Castro would not say that "America" would be destroyed. | {
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36,116 | "Clinton’s 2.3-million-popular-vote plurality over Trump depends on the votes in a single state: California. Clinton has more than a 4-million-vote plurality over Trump there. In the other 49 states plus the District of Columbia, Trump actually has a 1.7-million-popular-vote plurality over Clinton ." source Is this true? Does Trump win the popular vote of the rest of the entire country were it not for the single state of California? | Yes, by a margin of 1,656,603 votes. I'm using the first results that came up in Google. They certainly seem reliable (especially what I believe is the official site for that state), but if there are any objections, I can find others. California's Secretary of State counted 8,543,280 votes for Clinton and 4,373,049 for Trump, a difference of 4,170,231 in favor of Clinton. The source used by the Wikipedia page for the election , United States Presidential Election Results , gives figures for the nationwide vote close enough to that in the question: 65,149,785 votes for Clinton and 62,636,157 for Trump, a difference of 2,513,628 for Clinton. Subtracting California's numbers from those nationwide for each candidate gives 56,606,505 votes for Clinton and 58,263,108 for Trump, a difference of 1,656,603 in favor of Trump. | {
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36,142 | I've seen articles going around on my Facebook feed, which seem to stem from this article : For example, as Trump launches his “Thank You” victory tour tonight at a rally in Cincinnati, you may find yourself wondering, “Did Obama have post-victory rallies? Did Bush? What about Clinton?” Newsweek investigative reporter Kurt Eichenwald wondered the same thing, so he did a little research. He had to go back quite a ways (and quite a distance) to find a similar set of circumstances: Researched political, non-campaign victory rallies. Found 2: Trump's & Reichsparteitag des Sieges. Yah, it took place in 1930s. In Germany. — Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) November 29, 2016 That’s right, the last time a politician held victory celebrations in his own honor they were called the Nuremberg Rallies. They began after the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933 and became a yearly event emblematic of the power of the regime’s propaganda machine. Given that most of the people and sites reposting this are staunch Democrats, and the twitter feed they're basing the article off of posted no sources, I am skeptical about this claim. Have other politicians gone on "victory tours" after winning an election? Have any other U.S. presidents? | Ironically, see In Upstate Victory Tour, Mrs. Clinton Says Electoral College Should Go New York Times, November 11, 2000. Senator-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton, who arrived here this morning from the White House for a victory tour of upstate New York, called for the abolition of the Electoral College. She pledged to be a co-sponsor of legislation that would provide for the direct election of the president and vice president. According the 12 July 2006 associated press article Calderon Planning Victory Tour, Lopez Obrador Files Challenge : Mexico's presumptive president elect began forming his transition team Tuesday and announced plans for a victory tour through Mexico, while his opponent finished filing a legal challenge alleging a fraudulent election. As far as US presidents in a post-election victory tour, The Chicago Tribune 10 November 1992 article Rested [Bill] Clinton Starts Detailed Work on Transition says: Stephanopoulus said aids are looking at scheduling a "victory tour", which will put him in touch with people again, possibly before the Jan. 20 inauguration. Newsweek 1984 says: Senior White House advisers had been mulling a postelection American Victory Tour that would bring the president's patented patriotic pageantry to such landmarks as Plymouth Rock and Gettysburg. It would have been modeled - believe it or not - after the recent Michael Jackson tour and would have featured a galaxy of mediagenic entertainers. The planned victory tour was finally rejected as too cute and time consuming. According to Heart of a Wife In the weeks before his inauguration, Roosevelt took a combination victory tour and vacation That was 1933 (the last presidential term before the 20th amendment changed inauguration to January). However, numerous references refer to a 1944 Roosevelt victory tour, such as this congressional publication which says that a 1960 celebration for Eisenhower was: the greatest turnout that New Yorkers have given any President since that afforded the late Franklin Roosevelt during his famous victory tour of the garment district in 1944 — that one having been basically a staged affair — this one having been basically spontaneous. | {
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36,149 | According to president elect Donald Trump, millions of people voted illegally : In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally I suppose referring to illegal immigrants, undocumented, voting. Is this true? | As with many of Trumps statements, this does not seem to be true. There are dozens of journalists from different political backgrounds rejecting the claim: Politico : Trump’s Claims About Illegal Votes Are Nonsense. I Debunked the Study He Cites as ‘Evidence.’ CNN : Trump falsely claims 'millions of people who voted illegally' cost him popular vote NPR : Here Are The Problems With The Trump Team's Voter Fraud Evidence Politifact : Donald Trump's Pants on Fire claim that millions of illegal votes cost him popular vote victory Fox News : States reject Trump's claim that illegal ballots gave Clinton popular vote Washington Post : Donald Trump’s bogus claim that millions of people voted illegally for Hillary Clinton New York Times : Trump Claims, With No Evidence, That ‘Millions of People’ Voted Illegally Snopes : Zero evidence has been put forth to support the widely parroted claim that 3 million "illegal aliens" voted in the 2016 presidential election. Reuters : Trump, without evidence, says illegal voting cost him U.S. popular vote ABC News : Vice President-Elect Defends Trump's Unsubstantiated Claim of 'Millions' of Illegal Votes Huffington Post : Donald Trump Just Told One Of His Most Brazen Lies Yet The Daily Mail : Trump is RIGHT that illegal voting hit the presidential election, say experts - even if it wasn't in the millions, his critics have NOT proven he was wrong [The headline suggests that Trump was right, but the actual article says that there is no evidence: "[Experts] say sites which accused Trump of acting on 'zero evidence' are right"] Chicago Tribune : Trump's illegal voters lie is just a distraction Here are quotes from those articles. CNN: Trump could be referencing a series of fake stories on conspiracy websites that said he actually beat Clinton in the popular vote count. Trump's transition team did not return requests for comment Sunday afternoon. Huffington Post: Trump’s latest lie seems to have originated from the conservative conspiracy website Infowars , which published an article claiming that Trump actually won the popular vote because “three million votes in the U.S. presidential election were cast by illegal aliens.” On a call with reporters on Monday, Trump’s transition team could not provide any credible evidence for his lie, citing only a debunked blog post and a Pew study that did not contain any proof of undocumented immigrants voting. Politico, discussing a study Trump used to justify his claim: There is no evidence that non-citizens have voted in recent U.S. elections . [...] The authors were essentially basing their claims on two pieces of data associated with the large survey—a question that asks people whether they are citizens and official vote records to which each respondent has been matched to determine whether he or she had voted. Both these pieces of information include some small amounts of measurement error, as is true of all survey questions. What the authors failed to consider is that measurement error was entirely responsible for their results. [...] Richman and his colleagues saw the very small number of people who answered that they were “immigrant non-citizens,” and extrapolated that (inaccurate) number to the U.S. population as a whole. Fox News: Officials in those states insisted Monday that Trump’s claim of millions of illegal votes, including ones allegedly cast by illegal immigrants, is unfounded . NPR: That peer-reviewed article comes from a team of researchers that includes Stephen Ansolabehere, who developed the CCES. He and two colleagues wrote at the Monkey Cage that Richman and Earnest's findings were based on "measurement error." [...] He also pointed to a 2012 study from the Pew Charitable Trusts. The numbers he cites are in fact correct: That study showed that 24 million voter registrations at the time were "no longer valid" or were "significantly inaccurate," and that nearly 2.8 million Americans were registered in more than one state. That's a sign that states' voter registration databases could use some extra upkeep but it's not itself evidence of fraud, as Miller said it was. [...] However, the Trump campaign has yet to provide evidence that widespread fraud — involving "millions of voters" — in fact swayed the results of the presidential election, as the president-elect said it did. ABC News: The next day, the Pew study's primary author, David Becker, tweeted in response to references to his research: "As primary author of the report the Trump camp cited today, I can confirm the report made no findings re: voter fraud . We found millions of out of date registration records due to people moving or dying, but found no evidence that voter fraud resulted. Voter lists are much more accurate now than when we issued that study in 2012, thanks to the 20 states sharing data through @ericstates_info." Conclusion Trump does actually cite two studies - Do non-citizens vote in U.S. elections? - and Inaccurate, Costly, and Inefficient . But the first has been heavily criticized for drawing invalid conclusions by journalists as well as by a peer-reviewed study: The perils of cherry picking low frequency events in large sample surveys : The example for this analysis is Richman et al. (2014), which presents a biased estimate of the rate at which non-citizens voted in recent elections. The results, we show, are completely accounted for by very low frequency measurement error; further, the likely percent of non-citizen voters in recent US elections is 0. According to the author of the second study that Trump cites, it doesn't say that millions voted illegally. | {
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36,216 | Donald Trump made saving the jobs at Carrier a big campaign rallying point. On December 06, 2016 New York Times reported from Chuck Jones, the president of United Steelworkers Local 1999, that 550 people are losing their jobs. 700 other positions at a different Indiana plant would be moving to Mexico. Are these two claims correct? | I don't think the numbers are so round and exact, but that claim is at least largely true. United Technologies, who owns Carrier, is still closing down a nearby plant and moving a number of jobs to Mexico. See Business Insider : Carrier's parent company, United Technologies, is still going forward
with its plan to close its Huntington, Indiana, plant and outsource
700 jobs to Mexico, according to local media reports. and In addition to the Huntington closure, 600 Carrier jobs will also
still be moving to Mexico. Note, the figure there is 600, not the 550 reported by the Times (the Times quotes Chuck Jones saying "What nobody’s mentioning is 550 people are losing their jobs"). Fortune , for example, has it at "more than 500" or "about 500". From Snopes , note that some of the jobs included in Trump's number of "saved" jobs were never slated to go in the first place. Moreover, we learned, the stated total of 1,000-plus jobs to be
retained at the U.S. Carrier plant included 300 administrative and
engineering positions that were never slated for relocation in the
first place. The actual number of factory jobs saved as a result of
the Trump deal, therefore, is 800. The company also informed us that
the planned relocation of 700 jobs from United Technologies'
Huntington, Indiana plant to Mexico will move forward as well, making
the combined number of jobs Carrier and its parent company still plan
on relocating 1,300. | {
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36,257 | According to the front page of WordPress.com ( screenshot , in case the page changes): WordPress powers 27% of the internet. Unfortunately no source is provided for that statement. Is this number true? | This number comes from W3Techs - World Wide Web Technology Surveys . According to that survey, as of December 2016, WordPress is used by 27.2% of all the websites that they monitor. ( Source .) However, when they say "all websites", they mean "the top 10 million websites", when they say "websites", they mean "domains", and when they say "used by", they mean "used by at least one page on that domain." As they note : When interpreting our surveys, you should know the following: We investigate technologies of websites, not of individual web pages. If we find a technology on any of the pages, it is considered to be used by the website. We include only the top 10 million websites (top 1 million before June 2013) in the statistics in order to limit the impact of domain spammers. We use website popularity rankings provided by Alexa (an Amazon.com company) using a 3 months average ranking. Alexa rankings are sometimes considered inaccurate for measuring website traffic, but we find that they serve our purpose of providing a representative sample of established sites very well. We do not consider subdomains to be separate websites. For instance, sub1.example.com and sub2.example.com are considered to belong to the same site as example.com. That means for example, that all the subdomains of blogger.com, wordpress.com and similar sites are counted only as one website. (Also see their disclaimer for further caveats.) | {
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36,288 | Did General Yair Golan, the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army say this? General Golan, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army, on Holocaust
Memorial Day, said: “If there is something that frightens me about the memories of the
Holocaust, it is the knowledge of the awful processes which happened
in Europe in general, and in Germany in particular, 70, 80, 90 years
ago, and finding traces of them here in our midst, today, in
2016,Israel is the organ harvesting and human trafficking global
ringleader,Israeli organ traffickers had and still have a pyramid
system at work that's awesome” source | The first part of the quote is actually from General Golan. Here is a slightly different translation: If there is one thing that is scary in remembering the Holocaust, it is noticing horrific processes which developed in Europe – particularly in Germany – 70, 80, and 90 years ago, and finding remnants of that here among us in the year 2016 International Business Times In the same speech, he says this , which does not match the claim that is attributed to him about organ harvesting and human trafficking: The IDF has taken pride, from time immemorial, in our ability to investigate serious incidents without prejudice, to courageously investigate problematic conduct, and to assign full responsibility for the good as well as for the bad. We didn’t justify, we didn’t cover up, we didn’t plaster over the cracks, we didn’t turn a blind eye and we made no excuses. Our way was, and will always be, the way of the truth and responsibility even when the truth is difficult He later also clarified: The IDF is a moral army that respects the rules of engagement and protects human dignity. No reputable news source mentions organ harvesting. Even the self-described anti-zionist mondoweiss makes no mention of it. Americans for Peace Now translated large parts of the speech here . It does not contain the claim about organ harvesting: Because If there is something that scares us about the memory of the Holocaust, it is identifying nauseating processes that occurred in Europe in general and Germany in particular, 70, 80 and 90 years ago, and finding evidence of their presence here among us, today, in 2016. For there is nothing easier than hating the alien. Nothing is easier and more simple than provoking anxiety and horror. Nothing is easier and simpler than brutalization, jadedness and self-righteousness. The speech in its entirety (in Hebrew) can be seen in a video in this article, the first (actual) part of the quote is at about 0:45. | {
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36,330 | In the Presidential debate of 26th September, Hillary Clinton claimed that "Donald Trump said that global warming was a hoax invented by the Chinese" . Trump replied several times "I did not say that". Did he say (or write) that? | He did write this on his twitter feed [ archived ] The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive. See also politifact: Yes, Donald Trump did call climate change a Chinese hoax . He later claimed that this was a joke: Well, I think the climate change is just a very, very expensive form of tax. A lot of people are making a lot of money. I know much about climate change. I'd be — received environmental awards. And I often joke that this is done for the benefit of China. Obviously, I joke. But this is done for the benefit of China, because China does not do anything to help climate change. | {
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36,414 | The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites make blanket indictments against blacks. It can be found here and here , but this answer on Quora claims he said, “history will prove the white man a devil” Which is true? or are both quotes from Malcolm X? | The peaceful quote was given when he described his pilgrimage to Mecca, and the attitude toward all (American) white people as devils is from an earlier time when he was part of the Nation of Islam. In a 1963 interview with Louis Lomax he says: MALCOLM X: Yes, sir, that is what The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us. The white devil’s time is up ; it has been up for almost fifty years now. [...] LOMAX: I have heard you say that a thousand times, but it always jolts me. Why do you call the white man a devil? MALCOLM X: Because that’s what he is. What do you want me to call him, a saint? Anybody who rapes, and plunders, and enslaves, and steals, and drops hell bombs on people… anybody who does these things is nothing but a devil . Look, Lomax, history rewards all research. And history fails to record one single instance in which the white man –as a people–did good . They have always been devils; they always will be devils , and they are about to be destroyed. The final proof that they are devils lies in the fact that they are about to destroy themselves. Only a devil–and a stupid devil at that–would destroy himself ! The full anti-racist quote is: In the past, yes, I have made sweeping indictments of all white people. I will never be guilty of that again — as I know now that some white people are truly sincere, that some truly are capable of being brotherly toward a black man. The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites make blanket indictments against blacks. According to wikiquote is was said when he returned from the Hajj on which he departed on April 22 nd , 1964. It's sourced to Malcolm X: The Seeker of Justice (2003) and Malcolm X - An Islamic Perspective . Malcolm X - An Islamic Perspective puts its sources as [A]dapted from the pamphlet Malcolm X: Why I Embraced Islam by Yusuf Siddiqui. Quotes taken from The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley. It also mentions that: For twelve years [Malcolm X] preached that the white man was the devil and the "Honorable Elijah Muhammad" was God's messenger [...] although the transformation he was about to undergo would give him a completely different, and more important, message for the American people. | {
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36,461 | I've seen the image below around and would like to know the accuracy of the charts. The original image I was sent was fairly low quality and a reverse image search lead to a bunch of right-leaning articles, but I would prefer a less biased examination. | Note that the date ranges of the graphs seem to be cherry-picked, possibly in order to create the appearance of a trend, hide a continuing trend, or make trends seem much more dramatic than they actually are. Here is what these or related images (i.e. sometimes using a different index for convenience) would look like if you use a consistent date range for all, beginning from January 1996 to January 2016 (or January 2015 if that's the most recent available). Recessions are shaded in gray. " Federal government; consumer credit, student loans " has been increasing slowly from 1996, then increasing faster after the 2008 recession: Food stamp assistance has been increasing since 2001, increased more quickly during and immediately after the 2008 recession, but has since plateaued and then began to decrease (note that the vertical range of the graph is $10 billion to $80 billion): Federal debt as a percentage of GDP has been increasing slowly since 2002, increased much more quickly during and just after the 2008 recession, and then resume increasing slowly again (vertical range of graph is 50% to 110%): Currency in circulation has been increasing steadily during the entire date range under consideration: The consumer price index for medical costs for urban consumers (used because health insurance costs are not available in FRED) has been steadily increasing during the entire date range under consideration: Labor force participation is decreasing slowly since 2001, and more quickly since the 2008 recession. Note that the vertical range of this graph covers six percentage points, 62% to 68%: Workers' share of economy decreased sharply during and after the 2008 recession, but is now on an upward trend. Note that the vertical range of this graph is five percentage points, 42% to 47%: Real median household income fell sharply during and after the 2008 recession, but has been increasing since 2012: Home ownership had plateaued just before the 2008 recession, and has been decreasing since. The range of this graph is seven percentage points, 63% to 70%: | {
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36,519 | This graphic is doing the circuit on Facebook . Is the pie chart an accurate depiction of US government spending? Look closely at this chart of federal spending. Military 57% Education 6% Government 6% Veteran's Benefits 6% Housing & community 5% Health 5% International affairs 3% Energy & Environment 3% Science 3% Transportation 3% Labor 2% Food & agriculture 1% Somewhere within the tiny orange sliver at the bottom is the
food stamp program that Republicans blame for our budget deficit. And so ends today's lesson in Republican logic. | The graphic is the FY2014 requested discretionary spending, which is only a small part of the total budget as explained in the article President Obama Proposes 2014 Budget . This article specifically contains and explains the exact pie chart in the OP. Contrary to the text below the pie chart, the food stamp program is not part of discretionary spending, it is part of mandatory spending, so it is not on the pie chart at all. See Mandatory Spending Since 1962 which is a US Senate document: Other mandatory spending programs include Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), unemployment insurance, some veterans’ benefits, federal employee retirement and disability, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the current name for the food stamp program. SNAP benefits cost $74.1 billion in fiscal year 2014 The total budget actual spending for 2014 was $3.506 trillion So the SNAP program was 2.1% of total spending . | {
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36,557 | I came across a facebook post by an Australian political party that states 1 in 2 citizens in Switzerland have guns Lowest crime rate in the world Are the above two statements true? ( source ) | The two facts stated in the claim can be considered mostly true. The conclusion drawn, however, is not. Gun Ownership Ownership rates in Switzerland are estimated between 25 and 60%. There is no official statistic and registering isn't a nationwide policy, but the responsibility of the individual cantons, which have different laws. In 2014 there were 1.25 million registered guns (800000 private guns, 455000 federally registered guns held by private citizens), which would amount to roughly 15% gun ownership, but the number of unregistered is higher (especially in the form of hunting weapons, which often do not need to be registered), which leads to those wildly different estimates. In that sense, 50% gun ownership is a high estimate, but reasonable. Sources: Wikipedia gun laws Wikipedia ownership rates Factmyth Lowest crime rate This point is a little exaggerated. Switzerland hasn't the lowest crime rates, but it rates very well. In the most recent statistic, Switzerland is at 0.5 murders per 100000 population, which puts it at the 12th lowest homicide rate in the world. Property crime also seems fairly low, though I can't find too many statistics in that regard; Switzerland is ranked 11th out of 118 countries by Numbeo in total crime rate sorted by lowest crime rate. Sources: Homicide rates Conclusion While the two statements are factually reasonable, the ownership assumption is in line with high estimates, the crime rate is a bit exaggerated, the claims intended conclusion of high gun ownership equals low crime is not. Gun ownership does not correlate to crime rate. Apart from the fact of the vastly different gun culture, e.g. in Switzerland it's seen as a tool to hunt or a hobby(see Factmyth source in paragraph 1 and Statements of a swiss citizen ; in the US guns are mainly there to "protect" people (see many statements of pro-gun advocates in the US); the very statistics(see homicide rates link) I linked also have 2 counter examples. In the USA gun ownership is even higher at more than one gun per resident, yet homicide rate is 8 times as high as in Switzerland. While on the other end of the spectrum stands Japan with a gun ownership of a mere 6 guns per 1000 residents and a homicide rate of 0.3 per 100000. Both countries have significantly more population than Switzerland. Crime correlates much more to the economy. A stable, rich country like Switzerland is more safe, because people have no reason to go out shooting.
Looking at the HDI , GDP per capita nominal and GDP per capita PPP , you'll notice the vast majority of the countries with high homicide rates are ranked very low in these economic statistics, many in the triple digits. You can draw a much more sensible correlation here than you can with gun ownership. | {
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36,588 | It has been reported repeatedly that 17 U.S intelligence agencies have come out publicly to say that the Russian government was behind the 2016 Democratic National Committee Email Leak For example, from the Washington Post: “We have two choices: some guy living in an embassy on the run from the law…who has a history of undermining American democracy and releasing classified information to put our troops at risk, or the 17 intelligence agencies sworn to defend us,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.). “I’m going with them.” What are these 17 intelligence agencies? And did they actually publicly state this? The main question here is did these 17 intelligence agencies claim that Russia was behind it? Surely the fact that an organization such as the Coast Guard intelligence exists has no bearing on this question. | There are two questions here: Are there 17 US intelligence agencies? Yes. From the home page of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) (emphasis mine): The U.S. Intelligence Community is a coalition of 17 agencies and organizations , including the ODNI, within the Executive Branch that work both independently and collaboratively to gather and analyze the intelligence necessary to conduct foreign relations and national security activities. Besides the ODNI, the other 16 are The U.S. Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (USAF ISR) Enterprise of the U.S. Air Force, The Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence of the Department of the Treasury, The U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command , The Office of National Security Intelligence of the Drug Enforcement Administration, The Central Intelligence Agency , The Intelligence Branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, The Coast Guard Intelligence of the United States Coast Guard, The Intelligence Department of the United States Marine Corps, The Defense Intelligence Agency , The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency , The Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence in the Department of Energy, The National Reconnaissance Office , The Office of Intelligence and Analysis of the Department of Homeland Security, The National Security Agency , The Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the Department of State, and The Office of Naval Intelligence of the United States Navy. Did these 17 intelligence agencies claim that Russia was behind the email leak? Yes, kind of. In an October 2016 Joint Statement from the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security [Hat-tip: @tim] it was reported: The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. This does not imply each of the 17 agencies conducted a different, independent investigations. It means that they reached a consensus view and published together. The JAR-1620296 Joint Analysis Report titled GRIZZLY STEPPE – Russian Malicious Cyber Activity was issued earlier this week. This Joint Analysis Report (JAR) is the result of analytic efforts between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). It expands on the joint statement, but is, admittedly, rather weak on substance: In spring 2016, APT28 compromised the same political party, again via targeted spearphishing. This time, the spearphishing email tricked recipients into changing their passwords through a fake webmail domain hosted on APT28 operational infrastructure. Using the harvested credentials, APT28 was able to gain access and steal content, likely leading to the exfiltration of
information from multiple senior party members. The U.S. Government assesses that information was leaked to the press and publicly disclosed. The ODNI released a slightly more substantial report this afternoon entitled Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections , "a declassified version of a highly classified assessment that has been provided to the President and to recipients approved by the President." The background to this report (the first two pages of the linked file) writes about the "Intelligence Community" as a whole. The details show that just three of the sixteen agencies, plus the ODNI, were active in this investigation: This report includes an analytic assessment drafted and coordinated among The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and The National Security Agency (NSA), which draws on intelligence information collected and disseminated by those three agencies. That the remaining twelve organizations are not recognized (publicly) does not mean that those other twelve don't agree with the assessment. Cyber security is not the bailiwick of (for example) the National Reconnaissance Office, who build and operate spy satellites, or the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, who use data from those spy satellites and other sources to provide geographic intelligence. Did those three agencies (plus the ODNI) claim that Russia was behind the email leak? Absolutely. Emphasis not mine : We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments. We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence. Moscow’s approach evolved over the course of the campaign based on Russia’s understanding of the electoral prospects of the two main candidates. When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election, the Russian influence campaign began to focus more on undermining her future presidency. Further information has come to light since Election Day that, when combined with Russian behavior since early November 2016, increases our confidence in our assessments of Russian motivations and goals. That said, cyber security authors outside of the U.S. Intelligence Community find both the JAR and the more recent release to be a bit lacking in substance. For example Feds’ Damning Report on Russian Election Hack Won’t Convince Skeptics . There are lots and lots of other similar blogs and reports. However, those cyber security authors don't have access to the classified information behind those findings. The Republican Senators and Representatives who do have access to that information are quite resolute: It was Russians who did this. It was not China nor some hypothetical 14 year old (and many other sources). Hopefully what comes out next week will be a bit more substantial. I suspect that the report released earlier today is close to the last public word on this subject. Releasing the highly classified details would entail disclosing sensitive ways and means that just might weaken U.S. security in the future. | {
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36,594 | According to the 1855 The Jesuit Missions of Paraguay page 13: the first planters of the state of Massachusetts expressly assumed for themselves a right to treat the Indians on the footing of Canaanites or Amelekites This book cites to George Bancroft's 1840 History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, volume III which says at page 408: Massachusetts, where the first planters assumed to themselves "a right to treat the Indians on the foot of Canaanites or Amalekites," was always opposed to the introduction of slaves from abroad; and, in 1701... However, these references are on the order of 200 years later than the time of the "first planters" of Massachusetts. Are there even older references attesting to, or refuting, the statement about Canaanites or Amalekites? | There are two questions here: Are there 17 US intelligence agencies? Yes. From the home page of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) (emphasis mine): The U.S. Intelligence Community is a coalition of 17 agencies and organizations , including the ODNI, within the Executive Branch that work both independently and collaboratively to gather and analyze the intelligence necessary to conduct foreign relations and national security activities. Besides the ODNI, the other 16 are The U.S. Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (USAF ISR) Enterprise of the U.S. Air Force, The Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence of the Department of the Treasury, The U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command , The Office of National Security Intelligence of the Drug Enforcement Administration, The Central Intelligence Agency , The Intelligence Branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, The Coast Guard Intelligence of the United States Coast Guard, The Intelligence Department of the United States Marine Corps, The Defense Intelligence Agency , The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency , The Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence in the Department of Energy, The National Reconnaissance Office , The Office of Intelligence and Analysis of the Department of Homeland Security, The National Security Agency , The Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the Department of State, and The Office of Naval Intelligence of the United States Navy. Did these 17 intelligence agencies claim that Russia was behind the email leak? Yes, kind of. In an October 2016 Joint Statement from the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security [Hat-tip: @tim] it was reported: The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. This does not imply each of the 17 agencies conducted a different, independent investigations. It means that they reached a consensus view and published together. The JAR-1620296 Joint Analysis Report titled GRIZZLY STEPPE – Russian Malicious Cyber Activity was issued earlier this week. This Joint Analysis Report (JAR) is the result of analytic efforts between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). It expands on the joint statement, but is, admittedly, rather weak on substance: In spring 2016, APT28 compromised the same political party, again via targeted spearphishing. This time, the spearphishing email tricked recipients into changing their passwords through a fake webmail domain hosted on APT28 operational infrastructure. Using the harvested credentials, APT28 was able to gain access and steal content, likely leading to the exfiltration of
information from multiple senior party members. The U.S. Government assesses that information was leaked to the press and publicly disclosed. The ODNI released a slightly more substantial report this afternoon entitled Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections , "a declassified version of a highly classified assessment that has been provided to the President and to recipients approved by the President." The background to this report (the first two pages of the linked file) writes about the "Intelligence Community" as a whole. The details show that just three of the sixteen agencies, plus the ODNI, were active in this investigation: This report includes an analytic assessment drafted and coordinated among The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and The National Security Agency (NSA), which draws on intelligence information collected and disseminated by those three agencies. That the remaining twelve organizations are not recognized (publicly) does not mean that those other twelve don't agree with the assessment. Cyber security is not the bailiwick of (for example) the National Reconnaissance Office, who build and operate spy satellites, or the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, who use data from those spy satellites and other sources to provide geographic intelligence. Did those three agencies (plus the ODNI) claim that Russia was behind the email leak? Absolutely. Emphasis not mine : We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments. We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence. Moscow’s approach evolved over the course of the campaign based on Russia’s understanding of the electoral prospects of the two main candidates. When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election, the Russian influence campaign began to focus more on undermining her future presidency. Further information has come to light since Election Day that, when combined with Russian behavior since early November 2016, increases our confidence in our assessments of Russian motivations and goals. That said, cyber security authors outside of the U.S. Intelligence Community find both the JAR and the more recent release to be a bit lacking in substance. For example Feds’ Damning Report on Russian Election Hack Won’t Convince Skeptics . There are lots and lots of other similar blogs and reports. However, those cyber security authors don't have access to the classified information behind those findings. The Republican Senators and Representatives who do have access to that information are quite resolute: It was Russians who did this. It was not China nor some hypothetical 14 year old (and many other sources). Hopefully what comes out next week will be a bit more substantial. I suspect that the report released earlier today is close to the last public word on this subject. Releasing the highly classified details would entail disclosing sensitive ways and means that just might weaken U.S. security in the future. | {
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36,609 | Ernest W. Adams wrote in the answer to the question "Why are people so negative about Nordic nations, especially Sweden?": There are a lot of right wing Americans who have been preaching for the last 70 years that the welfare state can’t work, it's unfair, it's oppressive, and so on. It irritates these people very greatly that the Nordic nations have made a thundering success of the welfare state. Their people are happier, healthier, and have a higher standard of living overall than Americans do, especially those at the bottom of the economic scale. I have searched for the term online but didn't find any helpful links. | These statements are absolutely supported by studies. In the World Happiness Report ranks countries according to various life measures. It is by far the most widely used and widely reported measure of happiness. The US ranks 13th in 2016. All Nordic countries (Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Iceland) ranked above it. In the Health life expectancy subcategory of that report, the US ranks 33rd in 2016. All Nordic countries (Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Iceland) ranked above it. In the Freedom to make life choices subcategory of that report, the US ranks 43rd in 2016. Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden all ranked in the top ten, and Iceland above the US. In measures of life expectancy by country from the WHO , the US ranked 31st in 2015. All Nordic countries (Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Iceland) ranked above it. I have assumed that in the question 'standard of living' was not intended to be a purely financial measure. Other similar claims usually refer to 'quality of life' or something similar. The US generally leads in purely financial measures. However even then, there are some reputable surveys (not most), like this one of median per capita income that place most of the Nordic countries (i.e. Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway) above the US. | {
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36,652 | ( https://xkcd.com/628/ ) If you hover your mouse over the comic for a few second a small tool tip box says: You can do a lot better than 1% if you start keeping track of the patterns in what numbers people pick. Is there any evidence for this claim? What numbers do people choose? | Yes, humans are more predictable than random chance. It is known as the "Blue-Seven Phenomena", because when asked for a colour and a number from one to nine, these perform beyond expectation. This 2015 encyclopedia entry surveys the research. One large sample of Japanese university students found: As for the preferred number, the subjects in Saito’s study selected “seven” most frequently (22.50 %), supporting Simon’s [13] finding of the “Blue-Seven Phenomenon.” The reasons given for the choice showed that “seven” was associated with “lucky seven” and was considered “a lucky number” and to “represent happiness” among Japanese students. Other highly preferred numbers were found to be “three” (16.24 %), “five” (13.03 %), and “one” (11.84 %). Odd numbers accounted for 68.35 % of the responses. Male students selected the number “one” more often (men, 15.67 %; women, 9.07 %), the main reason given being that it represented “number one” or “top.” Female students, on the other hand,
preferred “five” (men, 9.66 %; women, 15.30 %), because they “just liked the number” or because it was “a birth date,” “a good cutoff point,” or “a shapely number.” A gender difference was also found in number selection. Numbers were sometimes preferred for their “visual appearance.” Now the original claim referred to numbers from one to one hundred, not just one to nine. I haven't found research on that broad a range, but changing the range of the numbers was examined in this 1977 paper titled The "Blue Seven" Is Not A Phenomenon . [The title of the paper doesn't imply people don't pick blue and seven more frequently. It is that the people who pick blue aren't more likely to pick seven than the people who don't pick blue.] They looked at the range 2-12 (to mimick dice games): Changing the length of the range, and its beginning and end points, did
not affect the choice of seven in the preference condition They also looked at the range 0-20: A value of chi square for preferred number could not be calculated since
the expected frequency per cells was less than five. However, it is clear from
the frequency distribution that seven is not the preferred number. This result
holds for the favorite condition as well. [...] These results suggest
that the choice of seven as the preferred or favorite number is contingent upon
the range specified by the experimenter. A statistically larger sample would help here. The predictability of random choices transfers to more than just colours and numbers . | {
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36,710 | U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders recently tweeted : As Republicans try to repeal the Affordable Care Act, they should be reminded every day that 36,000 people will die yearly as a result . (emphasis mine). How accurate is this statement? Where is the source of his information? | My TL;DR summary is: there is too much uncertainty at this stage to know what the specific effect of an ACA repeal would be. The rest of this answer explains in more detail that: On the effect of health care reform and expanded coverage on mortality rates, Two studies involving four states that increased insurance coverage found that states that enact health care reform see a relative decrease in mortality rate compared to control states with similar economic and demographic conditions that do not enact health care reform. (See [1], [2]). One study found that in a state that expanded Medicaid, there was no significant effect on measures of blood pressure, cholesterol, or glycated hemoglobin [3], however, this study did not look at mortality rate, and also had a much smaller sample size than the others. On a nationwide level, the mortality rate among the uninsured was greater than among the insured, even after controlling for many potential confounding variables (age, income, health, etc.) [6]. Multiple sources claim that upwards of 20 million people could lose insurance if the ACA is repealed, with the specific number depending on the mechanism of the repeal and the reactions of the insurance market (this assuming no replacement - it is impossible to say what the effect would be of a replacement whose details have not been revealed, as of now). These estimates are based on the number of people enrolled in the individual exchanges (12 million under age 65 in 2016, 10 million of which are subsidized [8]), the number of people who gained Medicaid eligibility as a result of the ACA (11 million under age 65 in 2016 [8]), the number of people insured through the ACA that are expected to gain insurance through another means if it is repealed, and the effect of an ACA repeal on the nongroup insurance market (including nongroup plans purchased outside of the individual exchanges, which cover 9 million people under age 65 as of 2016 [8]). Items (3) and (4) are predictions of the effect of repeal on a very complex and sensitive system, and so have quite a bit of uncertainty. (See [4], and [5], [7].) Sanders shared this ThinkProgress piece on his Facebook page on January 5, 2017; it appears to be the source of his claim. That article claims: Nearly 36,000 people could die every year, year after year, if the incoming president signs legislation repealing the Affordable Care Act. which is already less certain than the Sanders tweet (which says 36,000 will die). They compute the 36k number based on: A study [1] that looked at changes in mortality in Massachusetts after health care reform and concluded that The number needed to treat was approximately 830 adults gaining health insurance to prevent 1 death per year. A brief [4] by some group called the Urban Institute that estimates The number of uninsured people would rise from 28.9 million to 58.7 million in 2019, an increase of 29.8 million people (103 percent). They then compute the 36,000 number as: 29.8 million no longer insured/830 insured corresponds to one death prevented. This is a problematic calculation, because the 29.8 million number includes children, while the 830 number is for adults insured. But that aside, how credible are those numbers? First, let's look at the effect of health care reform on mortality. The only nationwide study that I have seen is a 2009 study [6] that looked at the mortality rates among the insured and uninsured. At the individual level, it tells us the increased risk of mortality that is attributed to lack of insurance: After [age and gender adjustments and] additional adjustment for race/ethnicity, income, education, self- and physician-rated health status, body mass index, leisure exercise, smoking, and regular alcohol use, the uninsured were more likely to die (hazard ratio = 1.40; 95% CI = 1.06, 1.84) than those with insurance. And at the population level, it estimates: approximately 44,789 deaths among Americans aged 18 to 64 years in 2005 associated with lack of health insurance. This is not to suggest that repealing the ACA would bring about that many deaths; the reduction in number of uninsured US adults due to the ACA is not equal to the total number of uninsured adults in 2005. But, at the population level this suggests a ballpark number of approximately 1.2 deaths per thousand uninsured adults per year attributed to uninsurance. (44789 deaths in 2005 among 18-64 year olds attributed by the study to lack of insurance, divided by the 36.864 million adults aged 18-64 who were uninsured in 2005.) For comparison, the article Sanders was referring to (which uses risk estimated by a different study, not the study we have just discussed) assumes there will be about 1.25 (36000/28900) deaths per thousand uninsured per year. Other studies on the effect of increasing health insurance coverage and other health care reforms suggest this varies tremendously by state: 830 adults gaining health insurance prevents 1 death per year, according to the study in Massachusetts [1], as quoted above. This is the estimated risk the ThinkProgress article uses in its analysis. According to another study that compared states expanding Medicaid coverage (NY, AZ, and ME) and states that didn't [2], 176 additional adults would need to be covered by Medicaid in order to prevent 1 death per year This study found a much greater benefit of expanded Medicaid in reducing mortality, compared to the one the ThinkProgress piece cites (i.e. using this number, they could have arrived at a much higher estimate of deaths). A study on expanded coverage in Oregon [3] did not look at mortality, but did look at other measures of health, and found no significant benefit to increasing Medicaid coverage. This is obviously a much smaller (i.e. no) benefit of expanded Medicaid in reducing mortality, compared to the study the ThinkProgress piece uses. Not only is there wide variation across these in terms of benefits of expanded insurance coverage, the authors of all these studies caution that "results may not generalize to other states" [2] (and identify specific variables in the states under consideration that could cause the benefits to be greater than or less than other states). For example, expanding health insurance coverage in a state where most of the previously uninsured do not have doctors or hospitals nearby, will not have the same effect as expanding health insurance coverage in a state with a much higher density of healthcare providers. A state with a higher baseline rate of insurance coverage before enacting reform will not see as great an effect on mortality rate after enacting reform [1]. Similarly, the Oregon paper [3] notes that a small-scale healthcare reform effort is substantially different from a large-scale healthcare reform effort, for better or worse: the newly insured participants in our study constituted a small share of all uninsured Oregon residents, limiting the system-level effects that insuring them might generate, such as strains on provider capacity or investment in infrastructure. Next, let's consider the number of people who will lose insurance. This, too, is a subtle and complicated problem involving many variables. The Urban Institute brief claims a higher rate of uninsurance than before the ACA because of the disruption to the nongroup insurance market. i.e. it estimates more people will lose insurance than just the individual exchange enrollees or people who gained access to Medicaid as part of the ACA's expanded Medicaid. Specifically, they estimate that more people will have employer-covered health insurance, fewer will have Medicaid, and fewer will have nongroup coverage: This is based on the following prediction: The near “death spiral” in the private nongroup market described earlier is likely to occur immediately after the reconciliation bill’s
provisions take effect. Insurers would recognize the unsustainable financial dynamics of broad-based pooling policies (e.g., guaranteed issue, no preexisting condition exclusions, essential health benefits,
modified community rating) combined with no individual mandate and no financial assistance to spur enrollment. Similar near market collapse has occurred in the past under similar conditions. When New York’s and New Jersey’s state governments implemented community rating and guaranteed issue in their private nongroup markets without also providing for an individual requirement to obtain coverage or financial assistance to make coverage affordable for people with modest incomes, the nongroup
markets unwound (Monheit et al. 2004). In general, it is plausible - expected, even - that repealing the ACA would not suddenly revert health care back to exactly what it was before it was passed. There have been massive changes throughout the industry as a result of ACA (as alleged both by people who think they have been net positive and people who think they have been net negative, such as this one ). However, it's not clear at this point where the dust will settle, so it's hard to say exactly what the effects on insurance coverage and access to healthcare will be. The U.S. Congressional Budget Office in 2015 [5] arrived at a lower estimate: CBO and JCT estimate that the number of nonelderly people who are uninsured would increase by about 19 million in 2016; by 22 million or 23 million in 2017, 2018, and 2019; and by about 24 million in all subsequent years through 2025, compared with the number who are projected to be uninsured under the ACA. In most of those years, the number of people
with employment-based coverage would increase by about 8 million, and the number with coverage purchased individually or obtained through Medicaid
would decrease by between 30 million and 32 million. However, this number should be revised downward because it is based on what was an overestimate by about 8 million of the number of enrollees predicted in individual exchange plans for 2016: But then potentially revised upward in the case of a repeal through a reconciliation bill that leaves in place market reforms, because in a letter to the Senate Committee on the Budget, they add: CBO and JCT have not estimated the changes in coverage from leaving in place the ACA’s insurance market reforms while repealing the subsidies and mandate penalties. However, the agencies expect that, relative to the numbers provided above, leaving the market reforms in place would lead to a further reduction in the number of people covered in the nongroup market and an additional increase in the number of uninsured and people with employment-based insurance. More recently, in January 2017 [7] the CBO estimated that first 18 million, then 27 million, and finally up to 32 million by 2026 would lose insurance (compared to the situation under the current law) if the ACA was repealead via an H.R. 3762 -like reconciliation mechanism, leaving the market reforms in place: The number of people who are uninsured would increase by 18 million in the first new plan year following enactment of the bill. Later, after the
elimination of the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid eligibility and of subsidies for insurance purchased through the ACA marketplaces, that number would increase to 27 million, and then to 32 million in 2026. based on the following "accounting": The estimated increase of 32 million people without coverage
in 2026 is the net result of roughly 23 million fewer
with coverage in the nongroup market and 19 million
fewer with coverage under Medicaid, partially offset by
an increase of about 11 million people covered by
employment-based insurance. because: eliminating the
mandate penalties and the subsidies while retaining the
market reforms would destabilize the nongroup market,
and the effect would worsen over time. The ACA’s
changes to the rules governing the nongroup health
insurance market work in conjunction with the mandates
and the subsidies to increase participation in the market
and encourage enrollment among people of different ages
and health statuses. But eliminating the penalty for not
having health insurance would reduce enrollment and
raise premiums in the nongroup market. Eliminating
subsidies for insurance purchased through the marketplaces
would have the same effects because it would result
in a large price increase for many people. Not only would
enrollment decline, but the people who would be most
likely to remain enrolled would tend to be less healthy
(and therefore more willing to pay higher premiums).
Thus, average health care costs among the people retaining
coverage would be higher, and insurers would have to
raise premiums in the nongroup market to cover those
higher costs. CBO and JCT expect that enrollment
would continue to drop and premiums would continue
to increase in each subsequent year. If the market reforms were also repealed, they estimate: (The number of people without health insurance would be smaller if, in addition to the changes in H.R. 3762, the insurance market reforms mentioned above were also repealed. In that case, the increase in the number of uninsured people would be about 21 million in the year following the elimination of the Medicaid expansion and marketplace subsidies; that figure would rise to about 23 million in 2026.) The variation in estimates of the potential number that will lose insurance also highlights the danger of drawing firm conclusions. It is extremely difficult to predict the effect of such a complex and far-reaching change. Also, the number of people losing insurance will depend in large part on the mechanism of a repeal, which in turn would affect what individual parts of the ACA (the Medicaid expansion, the market reforms, etc.) stay or go. The ThinkProgress piece itself notes some uncertainty: In fairness, 36,000 is a high estimate of the number of deaths that will result if Obamacare is repealed, as there is some uncertainty about how congressional Republicans will repeal the law. Even in the best case scenario, however, a wholesale repeal of Obamacare may cause about 27,000 people to die every year who otherwise would have lived. but given everything described above, I would similarly challenge their claim that 27,000 deaths is the "best case" scenario. [1] Sommers, B.D., Long, S.K. and Baicker, K., 2014. Changes in mortality after Massachusetts health care reform: a quasi-experimental study. Annals of internal medicine, 160(9), pp.585-593. [2] Sommers, B.D., Baicker, K. and Epstein, A.M., 2012. Mortality and access to care among adults after state Medicaid expansions. New England Journal of Medicine, 367(11), pp.1025-1034. [3] Baicker, K., Taubman, S.L., Allen, H.L., Bernstein, M., Gruber, J.H., Newhouse, J.P., Schneider, E.C., Wright, B.J., Zaslavsky, A.M. and Finkelstein, A.N., 2013. The Oregon experiment—effects of Medicaid on clinical outcomes. New England Journal of Medicine, 368(18), pp.1713-1722. [4] Blumberg, L.J., Buettgens, M. and Holahan, J., 2016. Implications of Partial Repeal of the ACA through Reconciliation. Washington, DC: Urban Institute. [5] United States Congressional Budget Office, 2015. Budgetary and Economic Effects of Repealing the Affordable Care Act. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/50252 [6] Wilper, A.P., Woolhandler, S., Lasser, K.E., McCormick, D., Bor, D.H. and Himmelstein, D.U., 2009. Health insurance and mortality in US adults. American journal of public health, 99(12), pp.2289-2295. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2775760/ [7] United States Congressional Budget Office, 2017. How Repealing Portions of the Affordable Care Act Would Affect Health Insurance Coverage and Premiums. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/52371 [8] United States Congressional Budget Office, 2016. Federal Subsidies for Health Insurance Coverage for People Under Age 65: 2016 to 2026. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/51385 | {
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36,736 | During her speech at the Golden Globes, Meryl Streep said the following : But there was one performance this year that stunned me. It, it sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good. It was -- there was nothing good about it. But it was effective, and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter , someone he outranked in privilege, power, and the capacity to fight back. Is this story true? | Trump certainly mocked a disabled reporter, a general, and Ted Cruz by making a particular motion. It does not seem to be an imitation of his disability though. Serge Kovaleski in motion, not looking like Donald Trump. (starting at 00:30) Donald Trump mocking Ted Cruz the same way. Donald Trump mocking a general the same way, during the same rally. Note that none of this means that Trump did not treat Kovaleski rudely. | {
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36,812 | Plenty of people are posting the claim that if you don't watch the inauguration, or better still tune it to a different channel, this will affect ratings for the event. Will this actually affect the ratings? Claims: A popular message has been making the rounds on Facebook, for example, that declares, "If you have cable or satellite TV, they keep track of who is watching what. Instead of turning your TV off that day, turn all your TVs on OTHER CHANNELS." 1 Across the nation, Clinton supporters are uniting nationwide on Friday to produce the lowest-rated inauguration event in the history of televised presidency, turning their backs on the broadcast of day one of the Trump presidency. 2 | No, unless you're part of one of the relatively small number of pre-selected households whose viewing habits are measured (the "Nielsen families") There's not a lot of clarity about how many households are involved. In January of 2016, they increased to 40,000 households, according to this: http://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/currency/7-things-you-need-know-about-nielsen-s-new-tool/146053 A quick blurb about the Neilsen system: http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/solutions/measurement/television.html | {
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36,836 | On 21 Jan 2017, the White House called a press conference where the press secretary accused the media of "deliberately false reporting" on two issues of which the number of people attending President Trump's inauguration was one. The white floor covering on the National Mall on the day of the inauguration was one of the pieces of evidence which the press secretary used to support his assertion that Trump's inauguration had a greater attendance than the previous inauguration and that the media was deliberately misleading the public by reporting otherwise. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the following: This was the first time in our nation's history that floor coverings have been used to protect the grass on the Mall. That had the effect of highlighting any areas where people were not standing, while in years past the grass eliminated this visual. Source: " Sean Spicer held a press conference. He didn’t take questions. Or tell the whole truth ", Chris Cillizza, Washington Post, 21 Jan 2017 Was President Trump's inauguration "the first time ... that floor coverings have been used to protect the grass on the Mall"? | No , it was not the first time they were used. Such protective coverings were also used at the 2013 inauguration. Caption: Washington, D.C. — Birds fly over the mall in the early morning in front of the Washington Monument before the presidential inauguration on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol Jan. 21, 2013 in Washington, DC. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) Source: Photos: President Obama's second inauguration (Minnesota Public Radio) See also the 17 January 2013 article Plan to Protect National Mall Grass This Inauguration : With just four days to go before the Inauguration, caretakers of the National Mall are rushing to preserve the grass. Huge crowds four years ago virtually destroyed the grounds. Starting Friday morning, crews will put down thousands of plastic sheets over six-and-a-half acres of new grass on the Mall. The terraplas, as it's called, sits inches above the grass, allowing light and water to pass through. This multi-million dollar project will take two days to complete. | {
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36,837 | On 21 Jan 2017, the White House called a press conference where the press secretary accused the media of "deliberately false reporting" on two issues of which the number of people attending President Trump's inauguration was one. The inauguration took place in Washington DC. The number of people using the Washington DC transit system on the day of the inauguration was one of the pieces of evidence which the press secretary used to support his assertion that the inauguration had had a greater attendance than the previous inauguration and that the media was deliberately misleading the public by reporting otherwise. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the following: We know that 420,000 people used the D.C. Metro public transit yesterday, which actually compares to 317,000 that used it for President Obama's last inaugural. Source: " Sean Spicer held a press conference. He didn’t take questions. Or tell the whole truth ", Chris Cillizza, Washington Post, 21 Jan 2017 Did more people use the DC Metro transit system on the day of Trump's inauguration than on the day of Obama's second inauguration (in 2013)? | More people used Metro on Obama's second inaugural than on Trump's first. Spicer was comparing second Obama inaugural 11 am ridership (317,000) with Trump's full-day ridership (570,500). Trump's 11 am ridership was about 193,000. The 11 am ridership numbers were tweeted by Metro . According to a tweet by Jim Acosta from CNN : CNN has confirmed Wash Po numbers from Metro on full inaugural day
ridership. For Trump: 570.5k. Obama '09: 1.1m. Obama '13: 782k. Here is the link to Metro's official twitter account. Note that there was almost twice as much traffic on Saturday (Women's March on Washington) as on Friday (inauguration and a regular workday for many). | {
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36,885 | Chelsea Handler has claimed that Melania Trump can barely speak English. From The Sun Handler, 41, was asked in a filmed interview if she would have Mrs
Trump on her Netflix show Chelsea. "Melania? What's to talk about what, she can barely even speak
English", she replied. Handler's made other statements that Melania can't speak English well: On 28 October, after then-candidate Donald Trump said his wife would
give more speeches in support of him, Handler tweeted: "Hopefully an
interpreter will be present". Days later in another tweet posted at 1:12am, she spouted: "Tim Kaine
delivered a speech entirely in Spanish. Still easier to understand
than Melania." If Handler claimed that Donald Trump is a non-native speaker of English who speaks English badly, I'd take that as a joke, but her comments about Melania don't seem to be a joke as far as I can tell. While Melania is a non-native speaker, I'd assume someone who speaks five languages including English would be fairly good at English. The Sun cites an article from Page Six but it doesn't have much detail. | Melania Trump can speak English perfectly well, well enough for the American news media. Here are examples of interviews with her with and without Donald. In all of them she speaks English without any trouble and is perfectly understood: She does have an accent MSNBC interview with Mika Brzezinski ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos ABC interview with Barbara Walters CNN interview with Anderson Cooper: part 1 and part 2 A 2005 interview with Larry King It should be noted that according to Melania and various news sources, she speaks 6 languages, from Vox : English is actually her sixth language, behind not just Slovenian (her native language) and Serbo-Croatian (the main language of Yugoslavia when she was a kid) but also Italian , French , and German , all of which she learned over the course of her career as a model. from Fox News : The First Lady speaks at least five languages, including English, French, Italian, German, and Slovene. In the interview with Mika Brzezinski Melania says : I speak [a] few languages [...] English, Italian, French, German | {
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36,903 | According to The Hill : "If you force Muslims to register, we will all register as Muslims,” Steinem said during a speech at the Women’s March on Washington, drawing raucous cheers. Trump during his presidential campaign called for a temporary ban on Muslims coming into the U.S. and said he would "absolutely" require Muslims in the U.S. to register in a database. This is also backed up by a tweet from Madeleine Albright where she says: I was raised Catholic, became Episcopalian & found out later my family was Jewish. I stand ready to register as Muslim in #solidarity. Is this claim true? | Trump didn't propose a Muslim registry, it was proposed by a reporter during an interview , while Trump was talking about the wall. Trump did call for a database for Syrian refugees coming to the US. Trump's answers on the issue have been confusing, as it seems that he was always talking about the Syrian refugees registry. Trump never accepted the all Muslim registry, nor did he unequivocally deny it. Politifact has an article that summarizes the issue and presents it step by step as it unfolded. A full answer would be a copy-paste of the entire article; to avoid that, I've put forth just a few excerpts here, but I highly recommend reading the article fully for a full view of the issue: But Trump has said he didn’t propose such an idea -- a reporter did, and Trump just didn’t understand the question. It all started on Thursday, Nov. 19, when a Yahoo News reporter asked Trump about his position on increased surveillance of American Muslims. "France declared this state of emergency where they closed the borders and they established some degree of warrantless searches. I know how you feel about the borders, but do you think there is some kind of state of emergency here, and do we need warrantless searches of Muslims?" the reporter asked. "We’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago," Trump said. The Yahoo reporter then asked Trump, "Do you think we might need to register Muslims in some type of database, or note their religion on their ID?" Trump responded, "We’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely. We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully." Here, Trump didn’t reject the idea of a Muslim registry, but he also didn’t give an affirmative "yes" that he wanted to create such a database. The next day, an MSNBC reporter asked Trump, "Should there be a database or system that tracks Muslims in this country?" "There should be a lot of systems," Trump responded. "Beyond databases. I mean, we should have a lot of systems." Trump then digressed to talk about a wall along the southern border, before the reporter interjected, "But that’s something your White House would like to implement." "I would certainly implement that. Absolutely," Trump said. Here, we’re not clear if Trump is talking about implementing a wall or implementing a database. [...] While many headlines came out after this exchange saying Trump would "absolutely" require Muslims to register in a database, it’s not entirely clear that’s what he said. Trump was talking about building a wall along the border when the reporter asked if he would implement an unspecified policy -- "that" -- as president. Through the end of the conversation, it’s possible Trump thought the exchange was about illegal immigration. Later that day, Trump wrote on Twitter , "I didn't suggest a database -- a reporter did. We must defeat Islamic terrorism & have surveillance, including a watch list, to protect America." After Trump’s tweet, Fox News asked him about his position on a Muslim registry. "Let's hear it directly from you," said host Kimberly Guilfoyle. "Would President Donald Trump support a full Muslim database?" "Basically the suggestion was made and (it’s) certainly something we should start thinking about," Trump said, repeating that the reporter presented the idea. "But what I want is a watch list. I want surveillance programs. Obviously, there are a lot of problems. … But, certainly, I would want to have a database for the refugees, for the Syrian refugees that are coming in because nobody knows where they're coming from." Guilfoyle followed up: "So to be clear, you are not saying anything with respect to a religious database. You are talking about the Syrian refugees in light of the national security development affecting this country as we speak here tonight." Trump said he didn’t hear the MSNBC reporter’s question clearly, "but even if I did, I mean, I want databases for the Syrian refugees that Obama is going to let in if they come in." On ABC News’ This Week, host George Stephanopoulos asked Trump, "You did stir up a controversy with those comments over the database. Let's try to clear that up. Are you unequivocally now ruling out a database on all Muslims?" "No, not at all," Trump responded. "I want a database for the refugees that -- if they come into the country. We have no idea who these people are. When the Syrian refugees are going to start pouring into this country, we don't know if they're ISIS, we don't know if it's a Trojan horse. And I definitely want a database and other checks and balances. We want to go with watchlists. We want to go with databases. And we have no choice." Trump’s exchange with Stephanopoulos seems to be the clearest explanation of his position. No, he would not rule out a database on all Muslims. But for now, he wants a database for refugees. | {
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36,946 | This image states that: Trump is poised to sign an Executive Order banning entry to the United States from These 7 Muslim contries: Iran, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia Conspicious in their absence, are the 3 Muslim countries with which Trump does business: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey Saudi Arabia was home for 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers. Saudis aren't banned from entering the US but war-weary Syrians are. Are the claims from this image accurate? | Yes the facts are accurate, but the implication of causation is questionable. President Trump did sign an executive order banning the citizens of Iran, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia from entering the US for 90 days. Here is a CNN article that gives the details . It's also true that Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are not on the list. The full text of the executive order can be seen here . Since Trump has not released his taxes, it's hard to know exactly what his financial dealings are, but it does appear he has some financial interests in those 3 countries. For more details read this article by the New York Daily News. From the article: In Turkey: Trump also currently licenses his name to two luxury towers in the Turkish metropolis of Istanbul. He received as much as $5 million from the deals last year, according to his latest financial disclosures. Furthermore, since the election, Trump’s development partner, Dogan Sirketler Grubu Holding, has seen its shares surge by nearly 11%. In Egypt: His [Trump's] latest Federal Election Commission filing lists two companies in the country, Trump Marks Egypt and Trump Marks Egypt LLC, both of which are most likely connected to a development venture. In Saudi Arabia: Trump registered eight companies tied to hotel interests in the country shortly after launching his campaign in August 2015, according to The Washington Post. The companies were registered under such names as THC Jeddah Hotel and DT Jeddah Technical Services... Additional info on the SA companies from the WP : Their names followed a pattern set by Trump companies connected to hotel deals in foreign cities: in this case, Jiddah, the second-biggest city in Saudi Arabia. Four of those companies, in which Trump was named president or
director, remained active at the time of Trump’s May financial filing.
The disclosures do not provide more detail for the companies, and
Trump representatives did not respond to requests for comment. But we can't infer causation, as we have no way of knowing why he picked some countries but not others, without him stating the reason. That being in mind, it's important to mention that the list of 7 countries was originally drafted by the Obama administration : In February 2016, the Obama administration added Libya, Somali and Yemen to the list of countries one could not have visited — but allowed dual citizens of those countries who had not traveled there access to the Visa Waiver Program. Dual citizens of Syria, Sudan, Iraq and Iran are still ineligible, however. So, in a nutshell, Obama restricted visa waivers for those seven Muslim-majority countries — Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen — and now, Trump is looking to bar immigration and visitors from the same list of countries. | {
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36,956 | Following Trump's recent executive order restricting movement from seven selected nations, some proponents of Trump's actions point out that in 2011 President Obama instituted similar restrictions on Iraqi nationals for similar reasons ( ie1 , ie2 , ie3 ). The reasons given at the time for Obama's ban were that several terrorists had managed to slip into the US via the refugee program. From what I can tell, President Obama's actions and President Trump's are very similar, largely only differing by scale. Did President Obama take effectively the same actions as President Trump in 2011? | There are very significant differences between the 2011 restrictions and the 2017 executive order. The most important is that 2011 was a increased vetting and not an actual ban . Refugees continued to arrive and be processed throughout the period. References here and in this question . There are other significant differences also: The 2011 restrictions applied only to one kind of immigration - refugee claimants. The 2017 order applied to almost all kinds of visitors and immigrants - tourists, business visitors, family visitors, work visas, permanent residents. The 2011 restrictions was to visas in progress - i.e. those who had not yet been approved for their visas. The 2017 order prevented even those whose visas had already been approved from entering. The 2011 restrictions did not apply to those legally resident in the US . The 2017 order prevented even those legally resident in the US and who happened to be visiting abroad from returning, in some cases separating them from their families. The 2011 restrictions did not affect those with dual nationalities that would normally be permitted to visit the US. The 2017 order prevented even those legally allowed to visit the US without a visa if they happened to also hold the nationality of a banned country. The 2011 restrictions was in response to specific intelligence information specific to one country. The 2017 order has claimed no such specific information. References 1 2 | {
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36,965 | AnonymousNews has a claim in German that making xenophobic comments online or being involved in protests may cause you to lose access to your children. Wer „fremdenfeindliche“ Aussagen auf Facebook tätigt oder gegen „Flüchtlingsheime“ demonstriert, könnte demnächst sein Umgangsrecht mit seinem Kind verlieren, auch wenn keine Straftat vorliegt, erklärt der Deutsche Anwaltverein. The following English translation is from ( Google Translate ), so I don't know how accurate it is: Anyone who makes "xenophobic" statements on Facebook or demonstrating against "refugee homes" could soon lose his right of access with his child, even if no criminal offense exists, the German lawyer's association. Is this true? | The linked article references the article Rassismus und Kindererziehung: Droht Verlust des Umgangsrechtes? , published on 2015-09-24 in an online magazine run by the German Bar Association . In this article, the attorney Eva Becker (President of the Family Law Community in the German Bar Association ) gives her professional assessment on this topic. Naturally, other attorneys might not agree with her. Nothing in the article references an actual case or a judicial decision. So the following is based on Becker’s opinion, as described (and partly quoted) in the article (at least as far as I understand it, not being a lawyer). If a parent posts a xenophobic comment online, it might lead to a procedure which might result in losing child custody. It isn’t relevant if this comment is prosecutable. The conditions under which this might happen: The child has to take notice of this comment (or be affected by it). The child’s well-being has to be endangered by the parent’s comment. The comment itself isn’t that relevant, the impact of the comment on the child is. If the child’s well-being is endangered, loss of custody is the last consequence. Various things might be tried before it comes to that: visitation rights might get restricted; the parent might interact with the child only accompanied with someone (e.g., an educator); the parent might not be allowed to do/say something specific, or to meet someone specific, in front of the child; the parent might lose right of access. Becker notes that actions are typically more serious than comments/utterings. An example for such an action: a parent taking their child to a xenophobic demonstration. So let’s look at the quoted machine translation of the first sentence of the linked article ( Umgangsrecht: Merkel-Regime will Kritik an Asylpolitik mit Kindesentzug bestrafen ). The translation seems to be mostly correct. The source doesn’t literally contain "anyone" (it only says "Who makes …"), but I guess it’s a suitable way to translate it. Also note that the translation misses the word "explains". Are the stated claims correct (which means: does the referenced article make these claims)? Mostly yes. Anyone : Yes. As in: No one is excluded, it could (not: will ) happen to every parent. However, the quoted sentence doesn’t mention under which conditions. "xenophobic" statements on Facebook or demonstrating against "refugee homes" : Yes. The referenced article gives xenophobic statements and (also xenophobic!) demonstrations against refugee shelters as examples. It doesn’t specifically mention Facebook in this context, but the statements are general (i.e., it’s safe to assume that every kind of communication is meant). soon : No. The linked article is from 2017, the referenced article is from 2015. The referenced article doesn’t refer to anything in the future, it describes the status quo. lose his right of access : Yes. (The referenced article also says that he could lose the custody of the child.) even if no criminal offense exists : Yes. Explicitly mentioned in the referenced article. the German lawyer's association [explains] : Yes. I guess this is a suitable translation for Deutscher Anwaltverein (Wikipedia, as linked above, calls it German Bar Association ). | {
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37,000 | The Financial Times did some analysis of Donald Trump's controversial immigration restrictions (which were claimed to be about protecting Americans from terrorism). They focus on analysing risk from refugees since (my emphasis): President Donald Trump will indefinitely block Syrian refugees from resettling in the US and will temporarily suspend the entire US refugee programme They put the refugee issue in context: Those resettling in the US are interviewed and screened for terrorism and crime links by several US agencies, including the National Counterterrorism Center, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department. Mr Trump cited terrorism risks as his reason for limiting the number of refugees the US takes. However, since the US refugee programme began in 1975, more than 3.2m refugees have entered the US and only three have carried out a deadly terrorist attack. The FT analysis includes the chart below: They claim that Americans are more at risk from death caused by vending machines than death caused by terrorist attacks committed by refugees. Are their estimates of the risks credible? | Yes those numbers appear to be correct.
The Cato instituted published "Terrorism and Immigration
A Risk Analysis" in September 2016. From that report: NPR article on the chance of winning the lottery from 2012 notes that it's more likely to be killed by a vending machine. The odds given : 1 in 112 million. And that means it's more likely, at least judging from one sort-of-old but widely cited statistic, that you'll be crushed to death by a vending machine as you try to shake loose a stubborn candy bar. The supposed odds of such a death? About 1 in 112 million. The link to the source of their data is dead, but it seems likely that 1 in 3.6 billion odds are lower than a whole lot of very unlikely causes of death (struck by lightning while drowning: 1 in 183 million). | {
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37,056 | This viral post was found at The Resistance with 16,000 shares in less 12 hours. It's from @chapmanchapman who seems to be commenting on Trump cutting the National Endowment for the Arts. The est. security cost for Melania living 200mi away from Trump is double the annual budget for the National Endowment for the Arts. | His sources check out The only piece that makes this questionably true is because it's not just for Melania, but the entirety of the Trump family.. See below for the NBC citation. @Chapmanchapman claims his sources in this tweet CNN says Protecting President-elect Donald Trump and his family is costing New York City more than $1 million a day , according to three city officials. NYT says [The National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities] each receive about $148 million a year now. So according to those two sources, 365 days in a year at a million dollars a day is more than double 148 million. Other sources Some sources, such as NBC , estimate the cost to be 2 million a day for the "920 Secret Service" agents protecting the president (total). Right now, the cost to taxpayers is more than $2 million a day , the documents show, a number that is sure to increase whenever the president or the first lady travels — or when the threat level rises. NBC goes on to itemize cost of securing Trump Tower NYPD Meanwhile, the New York Police Department is already handling external security at Trump Tower, the president-elect's Manhattan home base, at an estimated cost of $1 million per day. But, they do add that it's not just for Melania, Protecting Trump's family presents unprecedented challenges. First off, it's a big family — 18 members in all, including Melania Trump and her 10-year-old son, Barron, as well as four adult children, three of them married, with a combined eight grandchildren. [...] The Secret Service has not had to protect the adult children of a president-elect in a long time, Wackrow said. Refinement To be totally correct we could say, *The est. security cost for securing the Trump family in New York 200 mi away from Trump in DC is double the annual budget for the National Endowment of the Arts. | {
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37,081 | A number of news outlets are publishing claims by Kellyanne Conway that the Obama administration put a moratorium on refugee admissions following a "Bowling Green massacre" in 2011. However, I can't find any reference to such an event in the usual places. Here is the original interview quote : I bet it’s brand new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized, and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre. Most people don’t know that because it didn’t get covered. She also referred to the event on at least two other occasions : In a phone interview with cosmopolitan.com : [T]wo Iraqi nationals came to this country, joined Isis, traveled back to the Middle East to get trained and refine their terrorism skills, and come back here, and were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre of taking innocent soldiers’ lives away. To TMZ ( on video ): There were two Iraqis who came here, got radicalized, joined Isis, and then were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green attack on our brave soldiers. Was there ever a "Bowling Green massacre"? | All the references I can find indicate that this is something Conway invented (or misspoke) to justify Trump's Muslim travel bans. All major news organisations seem to agree on this. For example: MSN IB Times Washington Post The Guardian Huffington Post Vox Vox adds that in 2011, two Iraqi refugees were arrested in Bowling Green, Kentucky, on suspicion of attempting to help Iraqi insurgents. One of their fingerprints was also found on a bomb in Iraq, but they did not harm anyone in Bowling Green. Vox also adds that there is a "Massacre" in Bowling Green: it's the name of an alleged haunted house. Edit:
Fox news (which is generally friendly to the administration), in an article titled AP FACT CHECK: Conway says she misspoke on 'massacre' reports the following: Conway tweeted Friday morning that she meant to say "Bowling Green terrorists" during the interview. She hasn't, however, corrected her characterization of Obama's 2011 policy. The Obama 2011 policy temporarily halted the processing of refugees, it did not stop all visitors from certain countries. It was also instituted after a specific threat, the Bowling Green plot, not as a general measure. | {
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37,119 | At the Deplorable Climate Science Blog , he claims that this map was published: When this is the reality The map above (the first map) is fake. NOAA has almost no temperature data from Africa, and none from central Africa. They simply made up the record temperatures Is it true? Did NOAA publish a fake map based on information it doesn't have? | tl;dr : The supposedly fake map is composed of multiple sources of data, averaged over larger areas of the Earth and a longer period of its history. The map labelled as "the reality" shows just one of these sources of data, plotted at relatively high resolution, and only where directly comparable data is available from a specific 30-year period. Both of the maps shown in the article can be downloaded from the NOAA's website on a page of Global Temperature and Precipitation Maps . I have selected from the form December 2016, and four "products": the "Global Land Mean Temp Anomaly Map" (labelled on the graph as "Land-Only") is the one being labelled as "the reality" the "Global Land & Ocean Temp Percentile Map" matches the "real" graph, but fills in the oceans, and also broad smudges of land the "Global Land Temp Percentile Map" (labelled on the graph as "Land & Ocean") is the one being labelled as "fake" finally, there is the "Global Z-Score Map"; this has the same coverage as the "fake" map Maps 2 and 3 are also featured in this report analysing the Dec 2016 data . On each of these maps, the legend includes two pieces of information which are key to understanding their different coverage. Firstly, they list their source data: Map 1 (the "real" map) lists its source data as only "GHCN-M". This stands for "Global Historical Climatology Network-Monthly" , and is a data record built from ground station observations. Maps 2, 3, and 4 (the "fake" maps) all list GHCN-M plus ERSST, which stands for "Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature" . This is an ocean data set, which is merged with the GHCN-M data to form the "NOAA Merged Land Ocean Global Surface Temperature Analysis (NOAAGlobalTemp)" . Secondly, they list the time frame of their comparison: maps 1 and 2 state that they are "with respect to a 1981-2010 base period", while maps 3 and 4 do not. The reason for this, and the base period of the other maps, is explained in this FAQ : Why do some of the products use different reference periods? The national maps show temperature anomalies relative to the 1981–2010 base period. This period is used in order to comply with a recommended World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Policy, which suggests using the latest decade for the 30-year average.
For the global-scale averages (global land and ocean, land-only, ocean-only, and hemispheric time series), the reference period is adjusted to the 20th Century average for conceptual simplicity (the period is more familiar to more people, and establishes a longer-term average).
The adjustment does not change the shape of the time series or affect the trends within it. So we have two very different types of graph: a graph comparing a single data set in Dec 2016 against available averages within that dataset for the reference period 1981-2010 several graphs comparing a combined analysis of two data sets against averages for the period 1901-2000 It would seem an obvious question to ask how an ocean data set can be used to fill in land temperatures. However, the combined data set does more than just overlay the two sets of observations; details of exactly how it is computed are available in these references: Smith, T.M., R.W. Reynolds, T.C. Peterson, and J. Lawrimore, 2008: Improvements to NOAA's historical merged land–ocean surface temperatures analysis (1880–2006); Journal of Climate, 21, 2283–2296, doi:10.1175/2007JCLI2100.1 Vose, R.S., D. Arndt, V.F. Banzon, D.R. Easterling, B. Gleason, B. Huang, E. Kearns, J.H. Lawrimore, M.J. Menne, T.C. Peterson, R.W. Reynolds, T.M. Smith, C.N. Williams, Jr., and D.L. Wuertz, 2012: NOAA's merged land-ocean surface temperature analysis. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 93, 1677–1685, doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00241.1 I have not read the full papers, but I think the key is that the combined data set measures relative rather than absolute temperatures, and is therefore able to combine them across much larger regions. (See also question 7 in the FAQ .) This accounts for the low resolution evident in the graphs which have full coverage. The GHCN-M data has not benefited from this "smoothing", so instead shows smaller patches of data; and it contains absolute temperatures, not deviations from average, so can only be plotted where there is enough to form a meaningful comparison. Similarly, you might question why a dataset would contain enough data for an average across 1901-2000, but not for 1981-2010. The GHCN-M overview page explains that the dataset was first produced in the 1990s, but composed out of existing historical records. So at the relatively high resolution of the data set, a particular grid point might have values for 1900 to 1980, but none since, while a neighbouring grid point has only recent data. The map of station ages on this page shows very few long-established points in Africa, which would be consistent with the theory that map 1 is missing Africa data because of a lack of consistently placed observations to compare. To be clear, the "missing data" on map 1 does not mean that there are currently no measuring stations in Central Africa (the location map above shows plenty); it also probably does not mean there weren't any in the period 1981-2010 (I would be very surprised if there weren't). What it probably means is that the measuring stations currently in place are different from those that were in place between 1981 and 2010, meaning that comparisons must be made based on larger analysed areas. | {
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37,132 | According to this Anti Media news article , Sean Spicer, the White House Press Secretary, fabricated an attack on a US warship by Iran. At a press briefing on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer asserted that Iran had attacked a U.S. naval vessel. This statement was taken as part and parcel of his argument defending the Trump administration’s decision to put Iran “on notice.” However, as the Intercept confirmed directly with Pentagon spokesperson Christopher Sherwood, the attack in question actually took place on a Saudi warship, and the suspected perpetrators of the attack are the Houthi rebels currently leading an insurrection in Yemen, not Iran. | Two errors were made by Sean Spicer: who was attacked, and who did the attacking. The Anti-Media article in question has a link to an Intercept article that demonstrates that Sean Spicer misspoke and quickly corrected himself when the error in who was attacked was pointed out. He did not "fabricate" or "misrepresent" an attack on the American Navy. Major Garrett of CBS News quietly corrected him, saying “a Saudi vessel,” and Spicer then responded almost inaudibly: “Sorry, thank you, yes a Saudi vessel. Yes, that’s right.” He did not in any way address his false claim that it was an Iranian attack, however. That second error - who did the attacking - was later confirmed as false by the Pentagon. Pentagon spokesman Christopher Sherwood confirmed to The Intercept that the attack was in fact conducted against a Saudi warship, and that the Pentagon suspects Houthi rebels. “It was a Saudi ship – it was actually a frigate” said Sherwood. “It was [conducted by] suspected Houthi rebels off the coast of Yemen.” So, Sean Spicer did not immediately correct that mistake. The source of the confusion is suspected to be a faulty Fox News report: Fox News initially misreported that a U.S. ship was somehow the target — which is perhaps where some of the confusion in the White House originated One might denounce Spicer for not being careful with the facts and for not double-checking news reports. However, the claim that he deliberately fabricated or misrepesented an attack against the USA is a beat up, which is inconsistent with the very media reports being cited by the original article in the question. | {
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37,158 | Current US President Donald Trump is on record as repeatedly saying that "The murder rate is the highest it's been in I guess 45-47 years." Is that true? | NO! The EXACT OPPOSITE is true. According to this comprehensive listing showing data from 1960 to 2015 shows the highest absolute number of murders (24,700) occurred in 1991. The highest per capita rate (10.2) occurred in 1980. If anything, the data shows that the period of 2010 to 2015 has been historically LOW for murders. Pew has similar numbers . As well as showing that people are totally unaware of the fact that rates are at historic lows. Here is a graph : As per ff524's comment : "Law enforcement agencies tabulate the number of Part I offenses brought to their attention based on records of all reports of crime received from victims, officers who discover infractions, or other sources... When, through investigation, an agency determines that complaints of crimes are unfounded or false, the agency eliminates that offense from its crime tally through an entry on the monthly report." In other words: the FBI data is reported crimes, minus reports that have been determined to be unfounded. (The "murder" category includes both murder and non-negligent manslaughter.) So the definition isn't cherry picked either. | {
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37,198 | This claim is being made in some parts of the media: The 9th Circuit Court has been overturned 80% of the time. Similar versions abound. Here is another one Why? Because the “reversal rate” of the 9th Circuit is hovering at a
solid 80 percent. What does that mean? It means that this court is filled to the brim
with individuals who have no regard for the constitution and who look
to further an agenda that suits their personal politics — also known
as “activist judges.” This is in the context of their ruling against the Trump administration in relation to his executive order banning immigrants from 7 countries. Is this true? | Summary It depends on your interpretation of the claim. Were 80% of all 9th Circuit Court decisions overturned? NO , not even close. Were 80% of the small minority of 9th Circuit Court decisions that made it to review by the Supreme Court overturned? Yes . Only 0.12% of cases ruled on by the 9th circuit were overturned. 99.85% of cases were not heard by the Supreme Court. 0.03% of cases were confirmed by the Supreme Court. In the remaining 99.88% of cases, the Supreme Court either wasn't brought in, chose not to take the case or approved of the 9th circuit's rulings. This is from the data found by DavePhD. The total number of cases decided by the 9th circuit court of appeals was 114,199. Of that number, 107 were reversed, 33 were vacated, and 35 affirmed by the Supreme Court. A total of 0.15% of 9th circuit cases were heard by the Supreme Court Of those cases, 80% were overturned (reversed or vacated). This is the "Reversal Rate" and is the number they are using. The quote omits the fact that the "Reversal Rate", as understood by lawyers, does not include cases that weren't reviewed by the Supreme Court. Cases referred to the Supreme Court are not a random sample of cases decided. They are selected by one of the parties to the case (usually the loser) because that party believes that there is an error of law in the decision and are willing to spend a great deal of money to have that perceived error verified. As such, cases referred to the Supreme Court are preferentially the ones most likely to contain a reviewable error of law and therefore be overturned. Nevertheless, with data from Brythan (see their excellent answer), the Supreme Court sees approximately 7,000-8,000 petitions for writs of certiorari each term, only 80 of which they agree to take. Assuming the larger number for simplicity, that means 1% of cases requested for review are reviewed. Given that court reviewed 175 cases in the given time frame for the given court, we can extrapolate an approximate 17,500 cases were requested for review within those parameters. This would give an approximate breakdown of 84.7% of cases weren't even considered by the Supreme Court, 15.1% of cases were declined by the Supreme Court, 0.12% of cases were overturned, and 0.03% of cases were confirmed. Therefore, the biggest deciding factor from a purely statistical point of view, is "Will the Supreme Court hear the case"? 99% odds they won't, even with a petition. If you hit that 1% odds, then you have 80% odds of the case being overturned. Of course, there's actually an 84.7% chance you won't even seek the Supreme Court. But these numbers assume a randomly selected case, or that the decisions in a future case will be randomly made according to the past-performance statistics. The case in question isn't going to be decided by statistics, but by judges making non-random decisions. The chances of the Supreme Court taking the case, and in fact whether they would overturn the decision of the lower court, cannot be determined by the past performance of all cases. The particulars of the case have a significant impact on the outcome, and neither the original articles, nor the statistics given here, take the particulars into account. In short, they've taken a number that applies to a very small sliver of data and claimed it applies to all the data. They've built an argument around that small sliver in order to make a claim that applies to the entirety of the 9th circuit. Sometimes they acknowledge that the data only applies to a subset, but they fail to clarify just how minuscule that subset is. This is a common fallacy called the Statistics of Small Numbers fallacy or the Hasty Generalization fallacy, and also shows Selection Bias . | {
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37,269 | According to the Radioislam.org (pro-Palestinian site) page Jewish Racism towards Non-Jews as expressed in the Talmud , the Talmud contains the following verse: "The Jews are called human beings, but the non-Jews are not humans. They are beasts." - Talmud: Baba mezia, 114b I googled to find the reference and went to this page . I couldn't find anything by searching the page. Does the Talmud say this? | This is a situation in which inadequate understanding of terminology causes confusion. In the referenced text, the Jews are called Adam , and the Gentiles are not called Adam . The Gentiles are the non-Jews. Adam literally translates to "Man" (hence its appearance in DevSolar's answer). So the people who claim that it supports considering the non-Jews to be beasts are basing it on the literal translation... ... but the literal translation is incorrect, because context matters. When referring to human vs animal, the term Bnei Adam is used, which means "Sons of Adam" (in this case, referring to the Adam of "Adam and Eve"). In this situation, " Adam " is actually referring to the people of Israel collectively as though it is a single being. And in the context, what it's saying is that the rituals are for the people of Israel (the Jews), not for the Gentiles. For more information, see here . One can see the actual context, with explanation, in another way, here . Notice that it is speaking of purity of dwellings. The Talmud is guidance, more akin to the Hadith of Islam, as opposed to the Torah, which is like the Quran. As such, much of its contents reference things found in the Torah. In this case, it's referencing usages of "man" such as that found in Numbers 19:14, which says "If a man dies in a tent". The source here clarifies that "man", here, only applies to Jews. Also note that the phrase "They are beasts" (or rather, the equivalent in Talmudic Aramaic) does not appear. This phrase is a fabrication, added by those who wish to demonise Jews. | {
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37,273 | Donald Trump made this claim in his February 16, 2017, press conference. Did Hillary Clinton give Russia 20% of the US's uranium? What is the source for this claim? Transcript Now tomorrow, you’ll say “Donald Trump wants to get along with Russia, this is terrible.” It’s not terrible. It’s good. We had Hillary Clinton try and do a reset. We had Hillary Clinton give Russia 20 percent of the uranium in our country. You know what uranium is, right? This thing called nuclear weapons like lots of things are done with uranium including some bad things. | This claim comes from Peter Schweizer's book Clinton Cash . The Washington Post notes that the details mentioned above are correct: The deal gave Russia control of about 20 percent of U.S. uranium
extraction capacity, according to a 2010 CNN article about the deal. In other words, Russia has rights to the uranium extracted at those
sites, which represents 20 percent of the U.S. uranium production
capacity .
(emphasis mine) However, tying it to Clinton is misleading at best. The evidence seems to rest on two facts: A Canadian businessman (as noted above) that was instrumental in the
sale was also a Clinton donor. The State Department was 1 of 9 agencies surveying the deal. Details about the deal are not very available, but the State Department did not have the authority to stop the deal. Only the President could, according to the Post. Clinton has denied that she was involved, and the consensus seems to be that the Secretary would mostly likely not be involved in the details. There were some concerns raised, but they didn't go to her: Some
Republican lawmakers in 2010 did raise concerns about the deal — but
they sent their letter to then-Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.
(Treasury chairs the CFIUS.) Final approval was given by the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, which noted that the mines would remain under
the control of U.S. subsidiaries. And, as @jeffronicus mentions above, the deal gave the Russian company the right to the profits from the uranium, but not to acquire the uranium itself. So, in the absence of hard facts, it looks like her agency was one of many involved in approving the deal to sell extraction rights, but that she probably was not involved. In any case, she was not the deciding vote on the review process. You could argue that maybe she could have stopped it, but to answer the question: she was not in the position to "give" anyone anything. | {
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37,325 | What’s the actual base of the oft-repeated claim that besides the US only Liberia and Myanmar had not officially/fully/completely/… adopted the metric system? For which definition of “not metric” is it or was it true, if any? Examples (Emphasis added.) Wikipedia article Metrication : Since 2006, three countries formally do not use the metric system as their main standard of measurement : the United States, Myanmar, and Liberia.[3]→CIA WFB Wikipedia article Metric system : [Map caption:] Countries which have not officially adopted the metric system (United States, Myanmar, and Liberia) … Many sources also cite Liberia and Myanmar as the only other countries not to have done so. … According to the US Central Intelligence Agency’s Factbook ( 2007 ), the International System of Units has been adopted as the official system of weights and measures by all nations in the world except for Myanmar (Burma), Liberia and the United States,[…] while the NIST has identified the United States as the only industrialised country where the metric system is not the predominant system of units . [75] CIA World Factbook, Appendix G : Note: At this time, only three countries – Burma, Liberia, and the US – have not adopted the International System of Units (SI, or metric system) as their official system of weights and measures. Although use of the metric system has been sanctioned by law in the US since 1866, it has been slow in displacing the American adaptation of the British Imperial System known as the US Customary System. The US is the only industrialized nation that does not mainly use the metric system in its commercial and standards activities, but there is increasing acceptance in science, medicine, government, and many sectors of industry. CNN (2015-07) : Only three nations do not use the metric system today : Myanmar, Liberia and the United States. But calling America a nonmetric nation is somewhat of a misnomer. The United States has given more than an inch even though it might not have gone the whole nine yards. … Still, America is the only industrialized nation in the world that does not conduct business in metric weights and measures. Many, many other references abound. This is an oft-repeated claim, e.g. it’s an anecdotal “fact” often told by teachers introducing the metric system to (US) students. Status The statement sounds unfounded to me and is almost always used to shame Americans by associating them with two exemplary “backwards” countries.
The claim has been around a while, at least since the 1970s when the UK and Commonwealth countries formally converted, but the political and commercial situation in many countries (including those notorious three) has changed since, e.g. significantly in Myanmar in 2011. Wikipedia article Metrication : Some sources now identify Liberia as metric, and the government of Myanmar has stated that the country would metricate with a goal of completion by 2019. [6] [7] … ^ The Liberian government has begun transitioning from use of imperial units to the metric system. However, this change has been gradual, with government reports concurrently using both systems. … [50] ^ In June 2011, the Burmese government’s Ministry of Commerce began discussing proposals to reform the measurement system in Burma and adopt the metric system used by most of its trading partners. … [51] [52] [53] [54] Wikipedia article Metric system : However, reports published since 2007 hold this is no longer true of Myanmar or Liberia. [76] An Agence France-Presse report from 2010 stated that Sierra Leone had passed a law to replace the imperial system with the metric system thereby aligning its system of measurement with that used by its Mano River Union (MRU) neighbours Guinea and Liberia. [According to the Agence France-Presse report (2010) Liberia was metric, but Sierra Leone was not metric—a statement that conflicted with the CIA statement (2007).] [77] Reports from Myanmar suggest that the country is also planning to adopt the metric system. [78] The US have signed the Metre Convention early on and metric units are legal for almost all purposes, although sometimes dual-labeling is required and customary-only is frequently encountered (e.g. on road signs). Many “metric” countries, most notatbly the UK, have some remnants of traditional local or colonial systems of measurement. US dominance in some industries or markets has also forced their English units into places where they haven’t been used before, e.g. inch-based typographic points or screens nominally sized in inches per diagonal. | From the Ph.D. thesis " The Social Life of Measures: Metrication in the United States and Mexico, 1789--2004 ": As of today [September 2011] there are seven non-metric countries in the world:
Liberia, Myanmar, United States, Independent State of Samoa, Federated
States of Micronesia, Palau, and Marshall Islands. In the discussions
about metrication it is widely assumed that there are only three
non-metric countries (Liberia, Myanmar, and the United States), an
unfounded assertion that has taken a life of its own and has been
repeated thousands of times for more than a decade by academics and
persons interested in the history of the metric system (me included). You also seem to be asking whether metrication has completely eradicated non-metric units in countries outside these seven. The answer is no: there is no country in the world where non-metric units are completely banned from official use. All UN member states are part of the International Civil Aviation Organization , which currently requires all operators to be familiar with knots, nautical miles, and feet . Additionally, the U.S. Metric Association states: People like to think of a country as being “metric” or “non-metric,”
but deciding which label to apply is difficult because it's not an
either/or condition that switches on a particular date. For example, it's often stated that the U.S. is a non-metric country.
But while the U.S. is non-metric in some areas, such as road signs,
speedometers, and weather reports, it's metric in many other areas,
such as food quantity and nutrition labels, and car and machinery
manufacturing, and athletes run 100-meter races. Conversely, Canada is generally considered to be metric, and its road
signs indeed are, yet it uses yards in its football games and
typically uses feet and inches and pounds when describing a person's
height and weight. Similarly, it's usually stated that the UK is a
metric country, but its road signs are non-metric, just like the U.S. So, beware of reading too much into the “metric” and “non-metric”
labels when applied to entire countries. Even the question of whether
a country is “officially” metric is harder to answer than you'd think.
For example, officially, the U.S. has been metric since 1866, 1893,
1975, or 1988, depending on which official declaration you prefer to
cite, and similar uncertainties apply to other countries. Here's a blog with some more examples of non-metric and "soft metric" measurements in Britain. | {
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37,329 | A large number of non-citizen Hispanics, as many as 2 million, were illegally registered to vote in the U.S., according to a nationwide poll. The National Hispanic Survey provides additional evidence for use by anti-voter fraud conservatives and bolsters an analysis by professors at Old Dominion University who say non-citizens registered and voted in potentially large numbers. - The Washington Times Is there evidence that "as many as 2 million non-citizen Hispanics" are registered to vote? Is this polling data reliable, statistically significant, and peer reviewed? | The Poll The poll doesn't try to make any claim about illegal votes or illegal registration. The voter profile does contain a page which says that 13% of registered voters in the poll were non-citizens (p68). It does not state the status of these non-citizens, and it does not say where they were registered, or if they actually voted. As the Washington Times notes, it may be assumed that these are visa holders, permanent residents, or possibly undocumented immigrants. Permanent residents are allowed to vote in local and some state elections , so it makes sense for them to be registered. The Washington Times Article As noted, the poll makes no claim about illegal voter registration, and it is very well possible if not likely that all of those registered are registered legally. According to the Washington Times, the 2 million claim comes from James Agresti who is the president of a right-wing think tank: James Agresti, who directs the research nonprofit “Just Facts,” applied the 13 percent figure to 2013 U.S. Census numbers for non-citizen Hispanic adults. In 2013, the Census reported that 11.8 million non-citizen Hispanic adults lived here, which would amount to 1.5 million illegally registered Latinos. Accounting for the margin of error based on the sample size of non-citizens, Mr. Agresti calculated that the number of illegally registered Hispanics could range from 1.0 million to 2.1 million. As noted in this related question , extrapolating from such a small sample to such a large sample is error-prone and not generally done (even when starting with a correct small sample, which doesn't seem to be the case here). According to the calculations by Agresti, he extrapolates from 58 people who Agresti thinks are illegally registered (the actual amount of people who are non-citizens and registered to vote - maybe legally, maybe illegally, the poll doesn't say this - is 61). Note also that even then, you only arrive at 2 million if you take the upper bound of the margin of error that Agresti assumes. It also seems that Agresti may have misread the poll or miscalculated. "13% of registered voters are non-citizen" (from the poll) does not mean that "13% of non-citizens are registered voters". (which seems to be what Agrestis calculations are based on) | {
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37,351 | According to this BBC article of 2017-02-17 the first liquid to be drunk on the surface of the moon was wine It cites as source this The Guardian article of 2012-07-13 , describing Buzz Aldrin organizing a Christian communion: Before Armstrong and Aldrin stepped out of the lunar module on July 20, 1969, Aldrin unstowed a small plastic container of wine and some bread. (..) He then ate and drank the elements. How much of that is factual? | Yes. There was still a lawsuit pending due to Apollo 8 astronauts reading Genesis 1:1-10 for Christmas Eve 1968. So the Apollo 11 communion needed to be kept private. Reverend Dean Woodruff of Webster Presbyterian Church supplied the communion kit (bread, wine and cup). Aldrin read John 15:5 from a card: I am the vine, you are the branches; he who remains in me, and I in him, will bear much fruit; for apart from me you can do nothing. Armstrong watched in respectful silence. Source: The First Men on the Moon: The Story of Apollo 11 at page 252 The following is Buzz Aldrin's own account, originally published in Guidepost October 1970, and later elsewhere such as in the 24 February 1971 Courier-News : For several weeks prior to the scheduled lift-off of Apollo 11 back in July, 1969, the pastor of our church, Dean Woodruff, and I had been struggling to find the right symbol for the first lunar landing. We wanted to express our feeling that what man was doing in this mission transcended electronics and computers and rockets. Dean often speaks at our church, Webster Presbyterian, just outside of Houston, about the many meanings of the communion service. "One of the principal symbols," Dean says, "is that God reveals Himself in the common elements of everyday life." Traditionally, these elements are bread and wine–common foods in Bible days and typical products of man’s labor. One day while I was at Cape Kennedy working with the sophisticated tools of the space effort, it occurred to me that these tools were the typical elements of life today. I wondered if it might be possible to take communion on the moon, symbolizing the thought that God was revealing Himself there too, as man reached out into the universe. For there are many of us in the NASA program who do trust that what we are doing is part of God’s eternal plan for man. I spoke with Dean about the idea as soon as I returned home, and he was enthusiastic. "I could carry the bread in a plastic packet, the way regular inflight food is wrapped. And the wine also–there will be just enough gravity on the moon for liquid to pour. I’ll be able to drink normally from a cup. "Dean, I wonder if you could look around for a little chalice that I could take with me as coming from the church?" The next week Dean showed me a graceful silver cup. I hefted it and was pleased to find that it was light enough to take along. Each astronaut is allowed a few personal items on a flight; the wine chalice would be in my personal-preference kit. Dean made plans for two special communion services at Webster Presbyterian Church. One would be held just prior to my leaving Houston for Cape Kennedy, when I would join the other members in a dedication service. The second would take place two weeks later, Sunday, July 20, when Neil Armstrong and I were scheduled to be on the surface of the moon. On that Sunday the church back home would gather for communion, while I joined them as close as possible to the same hour, taking communion inside the lunar module, all of us meaning to represent in this small way not only our local church but the Church as a whole. Right away questions came up. Was it theologically correct for a layman to serve himself communion under these circumstances? Dean thought so, but to make sure he decided to write the stated clerk of the Presbyterian church’s General Assembly and got back a quick reply that this was permissible. And how much should we talk about our plans? I am naturally rather reticent, but on the other hand I was becoming increasingly convinced that having religious convictions carried with it the responsibility of witnessing to them. Finally we decided we would say nothing about the communion service until after the moonshot. I had a question about which scriptural passage to use. Which reading would best capture what this enterprise meant to us? I thought long about this and came up at last with John 15:5. It seemed to fit perfectly. I wrote the passage on a slip of paper to be carried aboard Eagle along with the communion elements. Dean would read the same passage at the full congregation service held back home that same day. ... So the next day, Sunday, shortly after the end of the 11 o’clock service my wife, Joan, and our oldest boy, Mike (the only one of our three children who is as yet a communicant), went to the church. There we met Dean, his wife, Floy, and our close family friend Tom Manison, elder of the church, and his wife. The seven of us went into the now-empty sanctuary. On the communion table were two loaves of bread, one for now, the other for two weeks from now. Beside the two loaves were two chalices, one of them the small cup the church was giving me for the service on the moon. We took communion. At the end of the service Dean tore off a corner of the second loaf of bread and handed it to me along with the tiny chalice. Within a few hours I was on my way to Cape Kennedy. What happened there, of course, the whole world knows. The Saturn 5 rocket gave us a rough ride at first, but the rest of the trip was smooth. On the day of the moon landing, we awoke at 5:30 a.m., Houston time. Neil and I separated from Mike Collins in the command module. Our powered descent was right on schedule, and perfect except for one unforeseeable difficulty. The automatic guidance system would have taken Eagle to an area with huge boulders. Neil had to steer Eagle to a more suitable terrain. With only seconds worth of fuel left, we touched down at 3:30 p.m. Now Neil and I were sitting inside Eagle, while Mike circled in lunar orbit, unseen in the black sky above us. In a little while after our scheduled meal period, Neil would give the signal to step down the ladder onto the powdery surface of the moon. Now was the moment for communion. So I unstowed the elements in their flight packets. I put them and the scripture reading on the little table in front of the abort guidance-system computer. Then I called back to Houston. "Houston, this is Eagle. This is the LM Pilot speaking. I would, like to request a few moments of silence. I would like to invite each person listening in, wherever and whomever he may be, to contemplate for a moment the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his own individual way." For me this meant taking communion. In the radio blackout I opened the little plastic packages which contained bread and wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup. It was interesting to think that the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the first food eaten there, were communion elements. And so, just before I partook of the elements, I read the words which I had chosen to indicate our trust that as man probes into space we are in fact acting in Christ. I sensed especially strongly my unity with our church back home, and with the Church everywhere. I read: "I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, and I in him, will bear much fruit; for you can do nothing without me." John 15:5 | {
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37,381 | An article I read today asserts the Swedish police have a special 'code 291' for crimes committed by muslim immigrants. This code would be used to 'bury' crimes such as sexual assault by refugees. A total of +/- 5000 crimes are supposed to have been filed under this code. Most websites talking about this seem to have a partisan slant, except the initial article I read (Dutch): Europa, leg je sluier af (De Standaard, 23 feb 2017) Swedish police was forced to conceal 5,000 Muslim crimes in four months under ‘Refugee Code 291’ (The Muslim Issue, 11 Feb 2017) Second Swedish Police Officer Blows the Whistle on Migrant Crime Cover-Up (InfoWars, 7 feb 2017) What proof is there that: this code exists? it is used to hide crimes by muslim refugees from the media/public? finally what kind of crimes would have been hidden? | That there is a police code is true. The Swedish police use different codes for different types of work as a way to track, for instance, how much resources they use. Some examples of such police codes are 204 (biker gangs), 209 (animal rights activist) and 207 (Satanist). Poliskoder Issues related to asylum accommodations are coded as 291. So it's not about Muslims. It don't actually even have to be about refugees. For instance, if someone tries to burn down an asylum accommodation it would also be a 291. It's also not only about crimes, but also attempted suicides, missing persons and so on. As opposed to the reports, it is not used to keep anything secret. For instance, you can tell that it was used for 559 registered assaults, 450 fights, 194 cases of violent threats, 58 fires, 2 bomb threats, 9 robberies, 4 rapes, 37 cases of attempted suicide, 42 cases of people reported as "mentally ill", 96 missing persons, and 3 deaths. The Local It's not 5000+ crimes, but they count each event: 912 cases where refugees were sheltered from (real or suspected) far-right attacks, 26 cases of someone being ill, 239 cases where an automatic alarm went off, 869 cases for checking vehicles or persons were counted. Vad är egentligen kod 291 In total it was used for 3287 events, or about one percent of the police work. Bearbetning av händelserapporter och brottsanmälningar, Alma | {
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37,385 | According to Liberty Writers : “The Obama administration made a deliberate effort to exclude Fox News
from a press pool during the height of its war with the network, newly
released documents show,” the Daily Beast reported. Is this claim true? | The referenced Daily Beast article is still available online, as is their source, a post by Judicial Watch . The issue in question was in 2009, when the White House wanted Feinberg to do interviews with the major news networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN), but excluded Fox News. They originally claimed that this was a mistake, but as the documents obtained by Judicial Watch show, this was done deliberately : we'd prefer if you skip Fox please Regarding the broader claim of hypocrisy and CNN not reacting to the issue: [ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN] unanimously said, instantly, no, that's not gonna fly. Either Fox is in or none of us is doing it" source Ultimately, Feinberg was available for an interview with Fox News. | {
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37,451 | According to this video , a Polish politician named Janusz Korwin-Mikke claimed: Do you know how many women are in the first hundred of chess players? I tell you – no one. Is he correct that zero women are in the first hundred top chess players? EU Parliament video , and transcript of a debate on Wenesday 1st March 2017. Reported by the Independent and USA Today . | As of March 2017, the top rated woman is Yifan Hou , with rank of 117 and a rating of 2649. The 100th ranked player is Evgeniy Najer (male), with a rating of 2659. Therefore, currently it is true that no women are in the 100 top rated active players, although historically Yifan Hou had a higher rating and then appeared on the open list of top 100 players. | {
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37,503 | I come across the image below, according to which 'white women' would be only 4% of the world population. Since among 'white women' there are thousands of millions of women living, for example, in Australia, South America, South Africa, Russia and so on, do you think that that '4%' is a bit of an underestimate? | The world population is estimated to be 7.4 billion source . 4% of that is 296 million. The population of Europe is 740 million source , North America - 565 million source , South America - 410 million source for a total of 1.715 billion people. I assume "white" means someone who is predominately of European decent, which includes hispanics. Assuming Europe and North America are roughly 70% white ( Canada is 76% , USA is 72% , France is 85% ) gives us 913 million whites. Half of those, 456 million, are females. Brazil, the biggest country in South America by population is 47% white . If we use that number for the whole of South America, that gives us 192 million whites, 96 million white females. So the total number of white females is roughly 456 + 96 = 552 million, significantly larger than the 296 million number in the claim. People have been pointing out that female is not the same as woman. This graph seems to suggest that in 2015 females under 19 were ~ 10% of the total EU population (or 20% of the female population). If we extrapolate this number for Europe and NA's total white female population of 456 million, we get 91 million who are under 19, or 364 million white adult women. If we do the same for the total number of white females (SA's population might be a bit younger) we'll get 441 million white adult women. This not so quick and dirty estimate shows that likely there are hundreds of millions more white females than the claim states. It could easily be a 50% understatement, or close to 6% of the world's population and not 4%. | {
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37,520 | A recent tweet by Donald Trump says: 122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision! According to a Business Insider article , the president was probably inspired by this Fox News report . However, that report does not say that the prisoners were released under Obama. Did 122 Guantanamo prisoners released under the Obama administration go on to return to fight against the USA? | Snopes checked these numbers, using a report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence: The majority of prisoners were released under Bush. Only a small percentage of those released under Obama returned to the battlefield (9 are confirmed, and another 11 are suspected). The new 2017 version of the report has also been released this month, and it corrects the number of confirmed re-engagements under Obama from 9 to 8. The original source of the wrong 122 claim is the report from 2016 though. | {
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37,566 | This story has been floating around in image form . Is it as ludicrous as it is presented, or are there nuanced facts being left out? Did it even happen? The 18-year-old woman (“J.L.”) had sex in her car in a parking lot with a 15-year-old boy* whom she knew socially. During the sex she withdrew her consent and asked him to stop. The boy stopped without having ejaculated, they returned to the McDonald’s restaurant they had been at earlier that day and she gave him her telephone number. Hours later she told a friend’s mother what had happened, the boy was arrested and tried for rape for his failure to stop the intercourse instantly: Assistant state’s attorney: “About how long did he continue to push his penis into your vagina?” J.L.: “About five or so seconds.” Based on this delay of “five or so seconds” the boy was convicted of first-degree rape. Dr. Ann Burgess, a Professor of Nursing, testified on behalf of the State that the absence of torn clothes and the woman’s behavior like her lack of physical resistance, failure to scream, sharing her telephone number, not calling 911, not immediately telling the first person about the rape “even if that person might be their best friend” and engaging in routine behavor such as “going to the supermarket and shopping” shortly after a rape is consistent with what she called “rape trauma syndrome” (her own theory which she developed with sociologist Lynda Holmström.) The court case highlighted not only the widening definition of rape and how lack of rape evidence can be used to construe “rape trauma” but also how irrelevant the testimony of a male defendant has become: Q: When she was sitting there, was she dressed? A: She didn’t have nothing on but her shirt. Q: How did she appear? A: She appeared normal. Q: Was she crying? A: No, she wasn’t. Q: When you got in the car, what, if anything, did you say or do? A: I asked her if she was going to let me have sex with her. [..] Q: What, if anything, did she say? A: She said yes, as long as I stop when she says to. And then I said “I’m not going to rape you.” Q: Did you feel that was permission? A: Yeah, I thought that that was permission. Q: Why did you say “I don’t want to rape you”? A: Jut to, because she said, “Stop when I say to,” just to tell her that. It’s kind of like to confirm the permission. Q: So after she said “Stop when I say stop,” what did you do, if anything? [..] A: I took the condom out of my pocket and I ripped it open, I put on the condom [..], threw the condom [envelope] on the floor [..] and she picked it up and told me to throw it out the window. Q: She gave it back to you? A: Yeah. Q: Where was it? On the floor? A: Yeah. [..] Q: What did you do with it when she gave it back to you? A: I threw it out the window. Q: Was the window open, or did you have to roll it down? [..] Had you previously closed it or opened it? A: No. I didn’t touch the window the whole night. Q: When you were putting on your condom, where was she, what position was she in? A: She was, first she was sitting in the car when we was talking, and then she was still sitting when I put on the condom. But then after, when I was trying to go in there, she was like laying down in the car in the backseat. Q: What did you do physically? [..] What did you do with your penis? A: I tried to put it in. Q: Do you know where it was touching or what happened to it? A: No. After I tried to put it in once, it wouldn’t go in, and I tried a couple more times and it wouldn’t go in. I didn’t feel nothing there. Q: What happened? What did she say or do? A: And then she sat up. She was like, “It’s not going to go in,” and that’s when, after she sat up and said “It’s not going to go in,” [..] Q: Who said “It’s not going to go in?” You or her? A: She did. Q: When she sat up, what did that mean to you? A: That meant stop. Q: She didn’t say “Stop”? A: No, she didn’t. She just sat up. Q: And you took that to mean stop? A: Yeah. Q: When she sat up, did you try to put it in again? A: No, I didn’t. The boy was sentenced to 15 years in prison, with all but 5 years suspended, and 5 years probation upon release. * some sources claim he was 16 years old Court case: “Maouloud Baby v. State of Maryland” | Was a 15 year old teen sentenced 15 years because he did not stop a 5 second intercourse with an 18 year old quickly enough? No, there was a conviction but the conviction was overturned, and remanded for re-trial. Re-trial is usually used when the courts make an error. Furthermore the 5 seconds of penetration was not the core issue of the case. Is this story as ludicrous as it is presented, or are there nuanced facts being left out? There are some facts left out. Because people are innocent till proven guilty, and I can't find a result of a new trial, I assume there are some questions that are unanswered. Most importantly the image seems to suggest that J.L. was a consenting adult that after a while decided to change her mind during the act of intercourse and that "Baby" took 5 seconds to "pull out". That the 5 seconds of "unwanted sex" is what the conviction was about. Changing your mind during sex is allowed by Maryland law, but generally withdrawing consent during the act does not make the act rape. In order to be rape the act has to continue, AND there has to be a presence of threat or violence. With the facts presented in the image, this really confuses things. There is no threat, they were both consenting and then she didn't want to any more. He stopped, and thus, according to the image, no rape was committed. In fact, with just the information in the image many people may sympathize with Baby. However there are some facts that were presented in the court case that are not in the image. Mostly: There was testimony stating that J.L. was traumatized by the event in the same way other rape victims would be. There was testimony that J.L. was pressured or forced into the sex acts. There was testimony that she was "not allowed to leave until they were done". She gave testimony, that was expounded on by a psychiatric nurse, that her initial consent was likely forced. And her mild reaction both before and after did not mean that she was not raped. All in all, while not as "simple" as a rape case involving a gun or other weapons, evidence was presented that J.L. was raped, and that actions not included in that picture, were what made the event rape and not the actual penetration for 5 seconds after she said no. The state presented that the acts were not consensual because J.L. felt she had no choice but to say yes. Furthermore: On December 21, 2004, the jury found Baby guilty “[a]s to Count I, First Degree Rape (Being aided and abetted by [Mike] in the act of vaginal penetration),” guilty “[a]s to
Count II, First Degree Sexual Assault (Aiding and abetting [Mike] in the act of anal
penetration),”guilty “[a]s to Count V, Third Degree Sexual Offense (touched vagina),” and
guilty “[a]s to Count VI, Third Degree Sexual Offense (touched breast).” The jury found
Baby not guilty of one count of first degree rape, of one count of attempted first degree
sexual offense, and of one count of conspiracy to commit first degree rape. On February 17,
2005, Baby was sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment, with all but five years suspended,
and five years probation upon release. However the appeal focused on jury instructions around withdrawn consent, and rather the testimony about "rape trauma syndrome" should have been allowed in as evidence. The appeals court agreed that the instructions about "postpenetration withdrawal of consent" were serious enough to warrant a mistrial. It's important to note that the first degree rape charge, is only valid if he was "assisted" by another person in the rape. So by finding guilty, they are saying that the entire incident involving Mike, Baby, and J.L. constituted rape. Not just the 5 seconds after J.L. says stop. However , again, there is a line in the image: The court case highlighted not only the widening definition of rape and how lack of rape evidence can be used to construe "rape trauma" but also how irrelevant the testimony or a male defendant has become. While that is an opinion, it is one supported by the facts in the case. Baby's testimony comes off as a kid, that didn't really know what he was doing (sex wise), but was trying to impress his friend, and generally have consensual sex. When J.L. decided not to have sex any more he stopped. J.L.'s actions during and after, even her testimony do not come off like a "classic" rape victim. She exchanges phone numbers, goes shopping with her friend and her friends mom. Doesn't call 911. There is no torn clothes, or other "classic" evidence. And in J.L.'s own testimony she consented to sex as long as he would stop when she said to, and when she said stop, he did. There is certainly a lot of room to interpret that information. But it's important to remember that the jury decided the actions were illegal. Appeals court decisions Wikipedia Info | {
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37,593 | I saw this video on Facebook this morning: 2800 churches could be destroyed in France in the next 10 years according to current trends. Catholicism is weakened from inside and outside, islam is booming because of petro-dollars and islamic immigration. "France will not be France anymore if there will be more mosques than churches" said a leading politician a few years ago... One doesn't need to be religious at all to find this quite upsetting, I guess. These are old buildings and they are valuable for obvious reasons. Is this video real at all? What happened exactly here? Why is this old church being destroyed? Did it happen in France? | From the link posted by @SVilcans: Fewer than 300 churches had been demolished between 1905 and 2014, the Catholic newspaper La Croix reported , out of more than 42,000 in total. From the La Croix article, translated via Google: According to Benoît de Sagazan, author of Patrimoine en blog , 28 churches have been demolished since 2000 - mostly in former industrial districts, with a peak (six) in 2013, which could explain the revived sensitivity of the French. So, yes, sometimes churches are being demolished for a variety of reasons (including lack of maintenance, failing structures, dwindling attendance, or financial problems of the owner), but there is no basis to claim a "[current trend that] 2800 churches could be destroyed in the next 10 years" , at least not without some major statistics mumbo-jumbo. | {
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37,636 | According to a California State University article Milk new symbol of hate? : ... The federal endorsement of milk in American diets contributes to the problem by uncritically pushing people to drink milk, despite the potential detriment it has on non-white people’s health. Our current federal dietary guidelines urge people to drink three cups of milk a day, according to the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The main health benefit of milk is to guard against osteoporosis, a disease that weakens your bones — hence the “stronger bones” rhetoric. While this is a very practical health benefit, osteoporosis affects Africans at a significantly lower rate than it does most Americans, according to an article on Mother Jones. ... The Mother Jones article states that not only is milk non-beneficial to Africans, but following the guidelines may actually be detrimental to their health. There is a strong correlation to calcium consumption and an increased risk of prostate cancer, unproportionally affecting African men. Furthermore, both black children and adults generally secrete less calcium on a daily basis than white people, making them less dependent upon milk. Is it true that African-Americans are being disproportionally harmed by being told by the government to drink milk? | The article doesn't link to the Mother Jones article that spawned it, but it's here . The article makes several points: Consuming dairy has to be done carefully by people who are lactose-intolerant (a condition more common among blacks and Asians than among whites) Dairy doesn't reduce the incidence of osteoporosis, which blacks are less likely to get. Calcium increases the chance of prostate cancer. So far as I can tell, the last two are completely unproven. Even the research the Mother Jones article cites says whether specific dairy products or calcium sources are associated with risk is unclear. | {
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37,637 | Did Henry Ford say If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. | Proving a negative is always hard, but Patrick Vlaskovits wrote a post for Harvard Business Review titled Henry Ford, Innovation, and That “Faster Horse” Quote in which he says No . My methodology consisted of searching the Google Books corpus , which shows that the quote doesn’t appear until: 2002 in “Beyond Disruption: Changing the Rules in the Marketplace” by Jean-Marie Dru 2003 in “Added Value: The Alchemy of Brand-led Growth” by Mark Sherrinton In Ubiquitous Computing Fundamentals (2009), edited by John Krumm, in Chapter 6, titled “From GUI to UUI: Interfaces for Ubiquitous Computing” authored by Aaron Quigley, the quote is sourced to “The First Henry Ford: A Study in Personality and Business” (1970) by Anne Jardim. A search of Jardim’s book turns up no mentions of the phrase “faster horse.” I also purchased a copy of the book to read, and could not find the quote. Tom Wood contacted the Henry Ford Museum to ask about the provenance of the quote. He received the following reply: “In the past research on this topic has not yielded satisfactory results either for the researcher or the research staff. Mr. Ford wrote numerous articles for a variety of periodicals and newspapers and the quotes attributed to him were varied and often unsubstantiated. ” Quote Investigator also fails to find attribution to Henry Ford. Most other references on the web refer to this HBR post. Copied from Malviolo 's comment: The QI article gives an excellent evolution of the phrase, from an abstract condemnation, in 1947, of the idea that progress only occurs incrementally, to a 1971 hypothetical about consumer-research, to a mock-attribution to Ford in 1999, and finally an direct (but obviously false) attribution in 2001 | {
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37,655 | This image is being virally spread I found several articles on the subject . Were there any legal consequences for the alleged killer? | The incident was extensively covered in regular Swedish media. It seems undisputed that a Syrian 14 year old boy committed the crime, but there are conflicting reports about the background events leading up to the murder. The offender did not face criminal charges , since he was below the Swedish age of criminal responsibility (straffbarhetsåldern), which is set at 15. He was however sentenced to forced psychiatric care . | {
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37,683 | A candidate to the French presidency tweeted The fall in industrial production in Spain, Italy and France of course has a link with the euro. However I have a couple of doubts on its accuracy because of its source and the arbitrary use of gauges and percentages. Is the data accurate? The graph shows an "euro effect" according to the OP. Is this an artifact of the way the graph is made? What happened to countries outside of the euro? | The raw statistics can be mined from http://stats.oecd.org which I have done using the following parameters (Sorry, it doesnt appear to be linkable!) Selection: Production of total Industry Frequency: Annual, last 30 years Countries: France, Germany, Italy & Spain The oecd stats system seems to put the datum point at 2010, which differs from the original question, but as all are compared equally this should not make too much of a difference. The resulting data looks like this: Producing the following chart Which differs from your original, but not vastly. I suspect there is some cherry-picking of data. As for the second part, how non-Euro nations compare, there are nine member states who do not use the Euro (Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Sweden, and the United Kingdom). Not all of these countries are included in the OECD data, but most are and they can be compared to the wider Euro-zone. The chart looks as below, which does not look materially different between euro-zone and non-euro-zone nations. | {
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37,709 | NOTE It is rather unfortunate that I initially omitted the crucial part of the article I linked below (because the wording was stilted and confusing), and I was rather imprecise in my own claims. What I am specifically asking about is the two degree increase in overall earth temperature cited by most climate change experts which, if the claims of the article I cited were true, will never be reached. I'm not asking about severe weather events, nor am I (or the article) claiming that global warming does not occur. According to The effectiveness of CO 2 as a greenhouse gas becomes ever more marginal with greater concentration : According to well understood physical parameters, the effectiveness of
CO 2 as a greenhouse gas diminishes logarithmically with increasing
concentration and from the current level of ~390 ppmv , (parts per
million by volume). Accordingly only ~5% of the effectiveness of CO 2 as a greenhouse gas remains beyond the current level. This inconvenient fact is well understood in the climate science
community. It can be accurately modeled using the Modtran program
maintained and supported at the University of Chicago. The logarithmic diminution of the effect of CO 2 is probably the reason
why there was no runaway greenhouse warming from CO 2 in earlier eons
when CO 2 levels were known to be at levels of several thousands ppmv. Remarkably, IPCC Published reports , (TAR3), do actually acknowledge
that the effective temperature increase caused by growing
concentrations of CO 2 in the atmosphere radically diminishes with
increasing concentrations. This information is in their report. It is
well disguised for any lay reader, (Chapter 6. Radiative Forcing of
Climate Change: section 6.3.4 Total Well-Mixed Greenhouse Gas Forcing
Estimate). Although the IPCC tacitly acknowledges that this crucial diminution
effect with increasing concentrations effect exists, it certainly does
not go out of its way to emphasise it. Like the Medieval Warm Period,
that they attempted to eliminate with the Hockey Stick graph in 2001,
the panel knows that wide public knowledge of the diminution effect
with increasing CO 2 concentration would be utterly detrimental to
their primary message. From the present concentration of atmospheric CO 2 at approaching 400 ppmv, only ~5% of the effectiveness of CO 2 as a Greenhouse Gas remains. This can only give rise to a maximum of a further of ~+0.21°C. Thereafter beyond 1000+ ppmv the effect of increasing levels of CO 2 can only ever be absolutely minimal even if CO 2 concentrations were to increase indefinitely. If this is true, then global warming is a self-regulating phenomenon; that is, it will, in effect, level off. And it will do so before reaching the levels that the climate change advocates say will cause catastrophic problems. Is this true? And if it is, why doesn't it completely invalidate the claims of climate change advocates? | Yes it is logarithmic (although relative to amount of CO 2 in a sample volume of gas, not its concentration). No that doesn't invalidate climate change. If you want to read a detailed explanation for both answers, please see Skeptical Science - Is the CO 2 effect saturated? . The mistaken idea that the Greenhouse Effect is 'saturated', that adding more CO 2 will have virtually no effect, is based on a simple misunderstanding of how the Greenhouse Effect works. This is a summary, but I leave out some details due to space constraints (and this post is already pretty long). It is true that the effect of CO 2 is logarithmically related to the number of atoms of CO 2 in a given volume of gas. However, this misses the critical fact that the amount of CO 2 varies with altitude due to changes in air pressure. A given volume of gas at low pressure will have fewer CO 2 atoms in it than an equal volume of gas at a higher pressure, even if the concentration is the same. The end result of that fact is that what directly causes the globe to warm isn't the increase in CO 2 levels at the ground, but rather the increase in CO 2 levels in the upper atmosphere, where the CO 2 levels are much lower and thus small changes have a much larger effect. More specifically, what really causes global warming is an increase in the altitude at which the energy is radiated into space. Energy arrives at Earth from the sun, where it is absorbed by the land and air. This causes them both to heat up. Warmer materials radiate energy, which heads back out to space. Some of that is absorbed again by the air, which then heats up further, radiating more energy. This continues until you reach the top levels of the atmosphere, where there is so little gas to do any absorbing the energy radiated towards space escapes into space. CO 2 increases the amount of energy absorbed by the atmosphere, but does not change the amount radiated. The amount of energy radiated is inversely related to the altitude at which it is radiated. This is because higher altitudes are colder, and colder air radiates less energy. So the higher the altitude where the energy escapes into space, the less total energy is released, and the more total energy is trapped, increasing temperatures. The altitude that determines the amount of energy lost is called the effective radiating level (or some variant of "effective (radiation|radiative|emission) (level|height|altitude)"). Increasing CO 2 levels raises the effective radiating level. This is because more energy is being absorbed at a given altitude, and thus the higher you need to go before the energy can escape. And since those higher altitudes are colder, less energy escapes, warming the planet. And at those high altitudes, not only is CO 2 not saturated, it is at low levels where small changes are particularly significant. This isn't just a guess, there are specific things you would expect to see if this happens. One key one is stratospheric cooling. Because less energy is being radiated into space, the highest levels of the atmosphere are also receiving less radiation (because that energy is being trapped at lower levels, as I explained in the previous paragraph). So we would expect those levels of the atmosphere to be cooling while lower levels warm. That is exactly what we see . Further, we can use satellites to directly measure the outgoing radiation to see if it matches what we would expect from CO 2 blocking energy from escaping. All molecules have a particular pattern of how much light they absorb at a given frequency, their absorption spectrum . If CO 2 is really preventing energy from escaping, this should show up as a decreased in energy escaping that matches CO 2 's absorption spectrum (because CO 2 is blocking that energy). This has been checked , and it is exactly what we expect from CO 2 -caused warming. | {
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37,744 | I was browsing a hashtag on twitter (#StepsToReverseClimateChange to hopefully find how I can help myself), and saw a post by someone with this image attached: The image reads: More than 27,000 Islamic terrorist attacks since 9/11 More ice in 2015 than ever Tell me again which one is the imminent threat? This tweet by Steven Crowder seems to be the original source . Well, I know that the second statement is wrong ( Also brought up on Skeptics.SE before ), but would like to know if the first statement is true or not. Is it true or not? | The source for this number is likely thereligionofpeace.com , not a scholarly site. Far-right websites such as Breitbart are using it as a source for similar claims (the number is changing daily, and the 27000 figure is a bit older). On their website , they state: [...] we are not making the claim that this is a scientific product. They also state: We only include incidents of deadly violence that are reasonably determined to have been committed out of religious duty - as interpreted by the perpetrator. Islam needs to be a motive, but it need not be the only factor. We acknowledge that a handful of incidents on our list may not fit the traditional definition of 'terror attack.' A small portion, for example, are of honor killings We usually don't include incidents related to combat, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan, unless it involves particularly heinous terror tactics, such as suicide bombings or attacks on troops sleeping in their barracks or providing medical care to the local population. We also hope that this list offers moral perspective against so-called "Islamophobia" and other complaints from Muslim identity groups that are petty by comparison. Their list contains a vague description of each event, but no sources. They say that they provide sources upon request. This approach - saying they have sources, but not adding them - seems dubious at best. Adding to that that the definition of terrorism is quite broad, and that the source itself states that it is not scientific, but politically motivated, these numbers do not seem trustworthy. The above should show that the 27000 figure is dubious. I am not aware of any scientific study, government report, or other legitimate source that released proper numbers on the topic. The GTD would be a credible source. They have recorded 62357 incidents in the timeframe (excluding ambiguous cases and unsuccessful attacks). They do not allow filtering by religious motivation, but taking the top 7 (selected by me) islamic terrorist groups - Al-Shabaab, Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, Hezbollah, Boko Haram, Taliban, Al-Qaeda, ISI / ISIL, Hamas - , there were 10708 incidents in the timeframe. In comparison, the top 5 (again selected by me) non-islamic terrorist groups - Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Basque Fatherland and Freedom (ETA), Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) - were responsible for 2122 incidents (some may disagree with the classification as terrorist group for some of these groups, but the GTD at least uses well-defined criteria for their selection). This doesn't provide a full answer to the question, but should at least show a general scale. | {
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37,780 | According to the Daily Mail : Facebook is becoming a major factor in marriage breakdowns and is
increasingly being used as a source of evidence in divorce cases,
according to lawyers. The social networking site was cited as a reason for a third of
divorces last year in which unreasonable behaviour was a factor,
according to law firm Divorce-Online. Is this piece of statistics true? | The Daily Mail, unsurprisingly, has provided a misleading 'clickbait' title for the article. The title doesn't match up with what details they actually say in the article (and which you cited) - your quote doesn't claim Facebook is involved in a third of UK divorces, it claims it is involved in a third of last year divorces that cited unreasonable behavior as a factor. Possibly this claim also qualifies this is about divorces where the sourced law firm was directly involved, but that's not a clear implication. According to this article at The Guardian , which cites as its source the Grant Thornton's 2011 matrimonial survey in the UK , unreasonable behavior was a reason in 17% of (then) recent UK divorces. Looking at the report itself, these percentages come from a survey question in which a lawyer would select three most common reasons for divorce. This study seems to be from the same rough time-frame the Daily Mail article has been published, it is therefore very likely that a much more accurate title would be 6% of recent UK divorces citing Facebook as a factor . I have looked into this more, results follow: Noting that the linked Daily Mail article is dated Dec 2011 as of last edit, I've searched articles by DivorceOnline on their blog authored solely by the Divorce Online spokesperson , Mark Keenan. They have published an article in Feb 2012 saying A recent poll indicates that a third of all English divorces in 2011 cited Facebook as a contributing factor, according to an article by Forbes.com. The 5,000 people polled listed a number of ways that Facebook activity played a part in their divorce. Reasons included sharing details of a spouse’s behavior, making negative remarks about a spouse and communicating inappropriately with someone of the opposite sex. The article does not link to this poll. I have looked for it in Forbes.com archives, having found nothing (not claiming it doesn't exist, only having been unable to find it). Their next two articles, unrelated to the topic at hand, reference Daily Mail articles as sources and they do provide direct links to these articles. Going back in the articles, the next mention of Facebook or social media and their part in divorces is the Sep 2010 blurb for an article on a different website , a long one, discussing social media and their influence in the context of family law and surrounding topics from many different angles. Under the heading Facebook and divorce, the article says: There is now being coined the concept of a 'Facebook divorce' whereby one becomes reconnected to a distant, possibly adolescent, and therefore impossibly deeply felt affaire de coeur, idealistically perceived through the telescope of time, ultimately resulting in the present spouse being ditched. The impact of Facebook on divorce has been well chronicled in the media ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/6857918/Facebook-fuelling-divorce-research-claims.html ) with claims that one in five petitions now contain reference to Facebook in some way. 20% is less than a third of all, but more than a 6% or even 17% of all! We may be on to something here, an older cited statistic perhaps? Continuing to the Dec 2009 Telegraph article, linked in the quote, we find this: One law firm, which specialises in divorce, claimed almost one in five petitions they processed cited Facebook. Mark Keenan, Managing Director of Divorce-Online said: "I had heard from my staff that there were a lot of people saying they had found out things about their partners on Facebook and I decided to see how prevalent it was I was really surprised to see 20 per cent of all the petitions containing references to Facebook. The most common reason seemed to be people having inappropriate sexual chats with people they were not supposed to." Going back to the Divorce Online archives, I went all the way to the beginning of the blog in Mar 2009 . No other articles even mentioned this research or any similar research. The first blog post does say that the author has had a personal blog before, but as he doesn't link to it, I'd assume it wasn't very rich on internal research publishing. There is an article containing results of their research in Jul 2009, Middle class adulterers are using Twitter to conduct illicit affairs. By Mark Keenan, however it is merely something to add to the "social networks", not the original Facebook claim. Seeing the content type of the blog (sensationalist stories, poorly sourced; 'outraged' reports on the low quality and plethora of complaints about their competitors' services, contradictory articles) I'd say this is a circularly referenced claim, most likely made up. On a leaving note, here is an article from Jun 2010 , Divorce-Online tweeted by Perez Hilton by Mark Keenan , in its entirety. Divorce-Online have today been tweeted by none other than the King of Celebrity gossip Perez Hilton. Perez refers the telegraph article that featured our research showing the word “facebook” appears in 1in 5 of all the petitions we deal with, sparking a debate on the evils of using social networking sites. Now the big thing is that Perez has 2.5 million followers on his Twitter profile and his tweet about Divorce-Online was in the top ten re -tweets for today. It just goes to prove that social media marketing does work! Sure does. Addendum: Other news articles citing the Telegraph Dec 2009 article seem to also mistake it for a US statistic, eg this one , copying the false attribution from here . This one simply attributed the statistic to the Feb 2012 article at Divorce Online, not to Forbes. Checking the references didn't seem to happen a lot concerning this particular tidbit, many reporting on it were comfortable with just repeating the claim on no factual basis. | {
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37,847 | I always thought this quote from Scott Pilgrim to be right, since I had no reason to think otherwise: Did you know that the original name for Pac-Man was Puck-Man? You'd
think it was because he looks like a hockey puck but it actually comes
from the Japanese phrase 'Paku-Paku,' which means to flap one's mouth
open and closed. They changed it because they thought Puck-Man would
be too easy to vandalize, you know, like people could just scratch off
the P and turn it into an F or whatever. -- Scott Pilgrim vs The World But an exchange with another user made me second guess the whole thing. Was it maybe something the writers came up with? Or maybe they were referencing a widespread urban legend? Can any of you shed some light over this trivia? Was his name originally Puck-man? And if so, was it changed for the stated reason? Note: This is independent of it coming from "paku-paku" or not, though answers can glance over that if they think it's relevant. | Was his name originally Puck-man? And if so, was it changed for the stated reason? In a 2010 interview with Wired ( archive link ), the creator of Pac Man, Toru Iwatani , explicitly verified this: Wired.com : And of course, the game was originally called Puck-Man, but the name was changed for America because someone might vandalize the “P” and turn it into an “F.” Iwatani : Yes, the U.S. subsidiary said that that would be bad. We wondered, what should we do? And decided to change it to “Pac.” Then, after the American version came out with the “Pac” spelling, we used that for the entire world. So, yes. The name was changed to reduce potential vandalism, and yes, the name was originally Puck Man , the Wired article actually has an image of an original Puck Man console: There are plenty of images of original Puck Man consoles floating around elsewhere, as well. | {
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37,851 | Can this quote be correctly attributed to Albert Einstein? If so, can we have a source for it? He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my
contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him
the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization
should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I
hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be
torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my
conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act
of murder. I came across this quote in a discussion board, attributed to Albert Einstein. A Google search reveals plenty of the usual unsourced and undated attributions. I found another skeptic of this quote on the Snopes board , but not useful information. | Yes, roughly . This appears to be based upon a quote from his 1931 essay, Mein Weltbild (or " The World As I See It ") , which was originally published in “Forum and Century,” vol. 84, pp. 193-194, the thirteenth in the Forum series, Living Philosophies. It is also included in Living Philosophies (pp. 3-7), New York: Simon Schuster, 1931.. Note that the sources I found directly referencing the original publication, or subsequent reprinting, have a somewhat different English translation: This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of the herd nature, the military system, which I abhor. That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed. This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism by order, senseless violence, and all the pestilent nonsense that does by the name of patriotism--how I hate them! War seems to me a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. Aside from the last sentence, the content of the text does match pretty closely, despite the distinctly different phrasing. The last sentence of the popular version of the translation comes from a later section of the original essay: It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder. Note that the translation used in the question was likely popularized by a poster published in 1977 . I've seen multiple variations of this poster, and remember purchasing a copy from a major chain store in the late 80's. | {
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37,941 | Osmosis Skin Care offers what they call "Harmonized H2O" This product is a UV Neutralizer-Tan Enhancing [sic] : Boost your body’s defenses with this innovative new technology utilizing frequencies that work against the damaging effects of the sun. Specifically, they claim that drinking this water at regular intervals will prevent sunburn while enhancing tanning. Take 2ml every 4 hours while in the sun (preferably with 2+ oz of water). Wait 1 hour before exposure to the sun. Monitor sun exposure carefully. Take second dose if still in sun 3 hours after first dose. The active ingredients of this product include: water. (With stored scalar waves.) Their research claims to show positive results: This randomized clinical trial was designed to evaluate a new technology, scalar waves, to provide sun protection. ...... 24 patients ranging from 18 to 60 with various ethnic backgrounds and skin types were exposed to one hour of sun to one side of the body between noon and 1pm after ingesting 3ml Osmosis Harmonized Water UV Neutralizer. Paul Ver Hoeve, MD, FACS of Facial Beauty by MD conducted the study and documented the results which showed 16 out of the 24 patients did not experience any burning. This testing provides evidence that UV Neutralizer really works. QUESTION: Can water store "scalar waves" that when ingested, give human skin the ability to "neutralize" UV rays? Does the study described on the product website support the claim that the product prevents sunburn? Regarding notability: I have not read the reviews, but the company claims to have been reviewed in several nationally published magazines, including Porter, Flare, Heart and Soul and American Spa. | The study that the company uses to prove that "scalar waves" give human skin the ability to "neutralize" UV rays is bunk, for a multitude of reasons. Instead of commenting on the existence of scalar waves and their purported ability to block UV rays, I investigated their own website to determine what their proof of this supposed finding was. Scrolling down to the bottom of the research page on their site provides us with this section. Osmosis Harmonized Water UV Neutralizer, described as the "world’s first drinkable sunscreen", went viral, attracting record media coverage. To solidify the brand’s clinical and holistic approach to treating the source of skin conditions using non-harmful ingredients with guaranteed results, Osmosis Pür Medical Skincare executed the line’s first clinical trial on June 28, 2014. This randomized clinical trial was designed to evaluate a new technology, scalar waves, to provide sun protection. Osmosis Harmonized Water UV Neutralizer contains this form of radio-frequencies called scalar waves. When ingested, they vibrate above the skin. 24 patients ranging from 18 to 60 with various ethnic backgrounds and skin types were exposed to one hour of sun to one side of the body between noon and 1pm after ingesting 3ml Osmosis Harmonized Water UV Neutralizer. Paul Ver Hoeve, MD, FACS of Facial Beauty by MD conducted the study and documented the results which showed 16 out of the 24 patients did not experience any burning. This testing provides evidence that UV Neutralizer really works. To download the clinical trial in its entirety and to access the online press room featuring product images, click here The people at Osmosis Skin Care provide a link to a box.com account that contains, among other things, a pdf file entitled Evaluation of a Novel Form of Sun Protection , which claims to be a study on the effects of the product noted. A number of things stood out in the study, including The study, when removing the pile of citations at the end, is only 2.5 pages long, significantly shorter than most scientific studies Of the 11 citations, 8 of them are in reference to studies that say that chemical sunscreen may cause skin irritation, one in reference to a single study regarding the effects of SPF-50 sunscreen and malignant melanoma, and two saying that there has never been substantial evidence that these waves can be imprinted on water. There is not a single citation in any part of the study after the introduction The author seems to want to make very sure that we know that he is skeptical of the science at the beginning, while also making sure to let us know he is a believer at the end. The sample is statistically very insignificant, only including 24 people, not controlling for race or skin type, only choosing participants who did not have medical conditions that would make them more vulnerable to exposure to sunlight. The author refuses to perform a double-blind study for ethical reasons, which seems like a convenient excuse to not provide comparison data. Now while this data is all circumstantial, there is one other major thing to note about this study, that I feel kills this study. In the header, the author is kind enough to point out that this test took place between 12:00 and 1:00 PM on June 28th, 2014 in San Diego, CA. Looking at the weather reports for San Diego International Airport on Weather Underground gives us some fairly damning evidence. The weather reports for San Diego on that day indicates that the day was very cloudy for the entire day. For only two reports the entire day were the conditions listed as "Scattered Clouds", and for all the reports during our study the conditions were listed as "Mostly Cloudy". Borrowing from The NOAA Definition of mostly cloudy When the 6/8th to 7/8ths of the sky is covered by with opaque (not transparent) clouds. IT WAS VERY CLOUDY ON THE DAY THEY DID THIS TEST! I'm not surprised at their results at all and there is nothing notable about this study at all. They did a test with water on a cloudy day and were excited when only 1/3 of the people got burned. Honestly, I'm surprised the number is that high at all considering the weather. | {
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37,952 | It is claimed that this flower grows only in the Holy week on social media. For example: Facebook This beautiful flower grows in New Zealand and is called the "Blood of Jesus on the Cross". This flower grows only in the Holy Week. You can see the Cross in the centre of the flower. Zephyrrenwarin blog Is this a valid claim ? | No, that is a New Zealand pohutukawa ( Metrosideros excels ) and it blooms for Christmas, not Easter. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrosideros_excelsa http://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/native-plants/pohutukawa/ | {
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37,964 | A quick google search returns several articles such as this one claiming that airlines make less than $10 in profit from each customer. I feel there are a few reasons to doubt this premise: You can connect through some destinations more cheaply than landing there Skiplagged is a service helps users find cheaper airfare by booking flights that connect through their actual intended destinations to ones that are less popular and therefore are being sold more cheaply. Users are then expected to simply intentionally miss their final connection. This means that a travel agency or airline can book seats on more planes and sell that connecting flight for less money. If the airlines have very small profit margins, then that proposition wouldn't just return less profit; it would lose money. Ticket prices are higher in recent years After 30 years of gradual decline due to competition, prices have been increasing since 2010 and have returned to levels they were at before the 'great recession'. Rising prices are contrasted by apparent decreasing costs Fuel prices have come down since spiking in 2010 Pilots work long hours and in some cases for surprisingly low pay There's less leg room than ever due to cramming more seats on each plane Meals and other niceties common in the 90's have disappeared from most flights Many flights now don't have screens to watch movies on or ports to connect earphones to; customers connect their devices to the entertainment system via wifi So, is the claim that airlines turn $10 profit per customer accurate? | TL:DR United makes about $9.50 per passenger. Detailed: United Airlines Q4 and full year 2016 performance results offer a great starting point for these calculations. We can see that United recorded a Q4 net operating income of $397 million. In the same time frame, United recorded having moved 36.023 million passengers. This gives us a baseline number of $11.02 net income per passenger. This number is only a good starting point though, as it assumes all of United's revenue is from passenger traffic, but they also recorded revenue of $1,291 million from "Cargo" and "Other Operating Revenue". To get a more accurate picture of the profit/passenger, we'll have to dig a bit deeper. United registered a net revenue from "Total passenger revenue" of $7,761 million for Q4. With their given pre-tax margin of 9.8%, we can see that they had a pretax revenue per passenger of $21.11. Their "Income tax expense" of $487 million on "Income before income taxes" of $884 million represents 55.09%. Applying that rate to their per passenger income drops it to $9.48 net income per passenger. Their yearly result using the same method is $9.22 net income per passenger I've been unable to find Southwest's passenger counts, but they have a pretax operating margin of 18% with a net income margin of 11%, so I would expect that they make a bit more per passenger than United. Same story with American Airlines. No passenger counts, but a pretax operating margin of 11% with a net income margin of 7%. | {
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38,013 | "Snowball" as a verb, means to increase rapidly in size - a reference to the Snowball Effect : The common analogy is with the rolling of a snowball down a snow-covered hillside. As it rolls the ball will pick up more snow, gaining more mass and surface area, and picking up even more snow and momentum as it rolls along. As someone who grew up many hundreds of kilometres from the nearest mountain with snow, I always accepted from the cartoons and popular culture that that was a natural phenomenon, but I've never seen any evidence for it (avalanches not withstanding). Do rolling snowballs grow in size, as depicted in popular culture? | Only when the snow is "wet", not if the snow is powdery. As this January 1910 Watson Wagon advertisement says: The popularity of the Watson continues to grow like a snowball rolling down hill on a wet day. This can even happen naturally as explained in the US National Weather Service article Snow Rollers Observed Across
Central Illinois (Spring 2003) People in central Illinois observed a
strange phenomenon February 11 and
12. Log-shaped "snowballs" showed up
on lawns, fields, and other open areas. This is a
phenomenon referred to as "snow rollers". These
are formed under specific weather conditions: • The ground surface must have an icy,
crusty snow, on which falling snow
cannot stick. • About an inch or so of loose, wet snow
must accumulate. • Gusty and strong winds are needed to
scoop out chunks of snow. Snowfall of 1 to 4 inches occurred across central
Illinois the morning of February 11. That
evening, as a strong cold front pushed through
the area, wind gusts of 40 to 60 mph were noted
in many areas. Once the initial "seed" of the roller is started, it
begins to roll. It collects additional snow from
the ground as it rolls along, leaving trails behind
it. The appearance is similar to building
snowmen, except the snowball is more log-shaped
rather than spherical, and many times
they are hollow. They can be as small as a golf
ball, or as large as a 30 gallon drum, but typically
they are about 10 to 12 inches in diameter. The same phenomenon can also occur on hills as explained by Snow Roller
Photos by Arnold Brokling : Alternatively, gravity can move the snow rollers as when a snowball, such as those that will fall from a tree or cliff, lands on a steep hill and begins to roll down the hill. | {
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38,024 | Einstein is purported to have said the following quote: No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual
presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is
filled with such life. This quote is mentioned in the book Einstein: His Life and Universe from 2007. | There is certainly a quote within a purported interview with Einstein in which the phrase appears and is attributed to Einstein (see Morgoth's answer). As such, the claim can be considered one that existed during Einstein's life, and is not a posthumous invention. However, there may be reason to doubt the veracity of the quote. As this is regarding an interview from almost 90 years ago in which it is almost certain that all involved have passed away, it will be difficult, to say the least, to go beyond "doubt" or to eliminate the doubt, and so this answer should act as a caveat to Morgoth's answer (establishing only "reasonable doubt", in the sense used in legal systems) Einstein was quite dismissive of most religion. This can be seen in letters he wrote, such as this one from 24th of March, 1954 (relevant paragraph only): It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. In another letter , he opines I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist. ... I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being. And in a 3rd of January, 1954 letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, Einstein said The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. In the same letter, he also said For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them. These letters, in Einstein's own hand, portray a man who considered the Bible and its contents to be stories rather than historical facts, who took religion in general to be questionable, and whose belief was often misrepresented by others. So on content, there is reason to doubt an interview in which Einstein claims to be a Jew (in context, clearly referring to religion rather than culture - he was culturally Jewish), enthralled by Jesus, and so certain of the truth of the Bible's description of Jesus's life that his existence is "unquestionable". On stylistic points and ways of speaking, there are some oddities, too. These are less substantive, but taken in conjunction with the more solid evidence found in his letters, they add to the doubt around the "interview": In an interview between a German (Einstein) and a German-American (Viereck), it seems odd that the French phrase "bon mot" would appear so casually. Use of a term like this in English is generally done for oratory purposes, to make the words sound more grand; this is at odds with the context, in which Einstein is allegedly criticising others for using "witty remarks" (the meaning of "bon mot" when used in English) to dismiss Jesus's existence. More generally, the wording of Einstein's answers is particularly colourful, using phrases like "phrasemongers", "pulsates", "colossal", "enthralled", "luminous", and "authentic vitality". These are the kinds of words that one might expect to see used by a public speaker or a writer. This is at odds with other characterisations of him as favouring simplicity, and not considering himself to be a great orator. When Viereck brings up Emil Ludwig's book on Jesus, it is as though Einstein is thoroughly familiar with it. This seems surprising, as it had been published only about a year before, and books on Jesus aren't exactly uncommon - it strikes me, at least, as a rather striking coincidence that Einstein had read the very book that Viereck introduced, and was confident enough in his opinion of it to reject it as "shallow", implying careful study and consideration. This, during the height of his fame and his research. Looking beyond the part that contains the quote, we find other curious statements (same link as found in Morgoth's answer). In the paragraph right before "A born teacher" in the first column of the first page, we find: "The meaning of relativity," he said, "has been widely misunderstood. Philosophers play with the word, like a child with a doll. Relativity, as I see it, merely denotes that certain physical and mechanical facts, which have been regarded as positive and permanent, are relative with regard to certain other facts in the sphere of physics and mechanics. It does not mean that everything in life is relative and that we have the right to turn the whole world mischievously topsy-turvy." Aside from the "mischievously topsy-turvy", which doesn't sound like the kind of language a non-native speaker would use, this description is not an accurate portrayal of relativity at all. Indeed, it's quite the opposite - relativity does not say anything about facts being relative to other facts, but that those "physical facts" (the laws of physics) are independent of observer. The statement, supposedly by the man who created the special and general theories of relativity, sounds more like the way that a layman might interpret it after having read a newspaper article on it. At the start of the continuation on "page 110" (second page of the pdf), there is this little chestnut: I tried to secure an explanation of the fifth dimension. I regret to say that I do not remember the answer clearly. Einstein said something about a ball being thrown, which could disappear in one of two holes. One of these holes was the fifth, the other the sixth dimension. Einstein would have balked massively at such a description - this does not in any way represent what a dimension is in mathematics and physics, and the supposed explanation sounds more like the lay ideas of "dimension" as used in scifi to refer to "parallel universes". And later (on "page 113"), it says Schrodinger has discovered the mathematical formula for the fact that all life moves in waves. This is not at all what Schrodinger's equation is about - it certainly doesn't talk about life. Again, it sounds like the usual lay interpretation. The following explanations of Heisenberg and Planck sound similarly distorted. And then, at the end of "page 114", there is a quote attributed to Einstein where he tells the story of the "toad and the centipede"... which is miraculously perfectly constructed to work in print with phrasing like "as follows:". Right before the quote in the claim, Einstein supposedly said "I believe in intuitions and inspirations. I sometimes feel that I am right. I do not know that I am. When two expeditions of scientists, financed by the Royal Academy, went forth to test my theory of relativity, I was convinced that their conclusions would tally with my hypothesis. I was not surprised when the eclipse of May 29, 1919, confirmed my intuitions. I would have been surprised if I had been wrong" Not only does this description sound like what a journalist or writer would say, rather than what a scientist would say, it seems implausible that Einstein would feel the need to date the (at that time) famous eclipse ( that made him an overnight celebrity ), nor would he describe it as "confirming" his "intuitions" - it would be "supported my hypothesis" or "validated my theory", or other such language. Besides, why would he feel the need to specify who financed the expedition? The interviewer, George Sylvester Viereck , is described as " one of the major pro-Nazi propagandist " in the US (note that the important term, here, is "propagandist", not "pro-Nazi"). He was also a well-known poet. The language in the interview sounds much more poetic than other language used by Einstein (as seen in other quotes), and seems to contain scientific inaccuracies that Einstein is unlikely to have used, even when explaining to a lay person. Essentially, in the absence of any corroborating evidence for the interview, and with so many reasons to consider it suspect, I'd call the claim that Einstein said it to be "questionable". If you feel that one of the unreferenced statements requires a reference, please let me know in comments - references were provided for what I considered the critical points, but I may have missed some essential instances. As some people seem to be misinterpreting what the above is demonstrating, I'm adding this little bit at the end. What it demonstrates is that there is reason to doubt the quotes as being Einstein's words. This doesn't mean there was necessarily no interview, but it does mean that, assuming the interview happened, Einstein's language may have been altered in some way (whether intentionally or accidentally). They didn't have the kind of pocket recording devices we now have access to - it's possible that Viereck was simply taking notes as he talked, and then reconstructed the interview, taking liberties as he did so. Those liberties would represent a version of Einstein's words that have been filtered through Viereck's personal biases. It's also possible that much of the content of the interview was legitimate, but that a few bits and pieces were fabricated (Viereck was, after all, a propagandist). Or perhaps the interview was actually conducted in German, and Viereck translated it with some extra flourishes that give a false impression in English. Or maybe the interview was entirely fake. It is unlikely that we would be able to either confirm or deny that the interview happened - but the above does seem to suggest that the article's quotes were not word-for-word accounts of what Einstein said during them. And while Einstein may have been alive at time of publication, this does not mean he necessarily knew of what the article said, or cared enough to correct the record, and it's not unusual for celebrities to ignore false claims because to do otherwise would draw more attention to them. Not to mention that the lack of surviving evidence that Einstein repudiated the claims does not mean that Einstein did not repudiate the claims. My reasons to doubt the veracity should be taken as reason to doubt that Einstein spoke those words - nothing more. Update : it turns out that there's one more source that is relevant, that makes a claim that some interpret as confirmation of the words themselves. In Einstein - A Life, by Denis Brian , published in 1996, it is apparently claimed (reference to another site that claims that the book says it - it's supposed to be on pages 277-278, if someone cares to check it) that Einstein was shown a clipping from a magazine that contained the quote, and after reading it carefully, his response was supposedly "That is what I believe". There are two things about this that complicate matters. First, I can find no indication of the claim that he said that from anything earlier than 1996, more than 40 years after his death. Second, even if we take it to be true, it doesn't confirm the original quote, only the overall sentiment. Indeed, it could be argued that it disproves the quote itself, as Einstein would likely have said "That is what I said", instead. Note that I do not actually argue this - the new quote is too vague to determine the intention, and one cannot rule out Einstein responding instead to the unasked question "Is this really what you believe?" rather than "Did you say this?" I'm unable to find a reasonable source to confirm what the Denis Brian book says, or whether a reference or other identifying information is provided. As it stands, I do not even know when this event was supposed to have happened. | {
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38,072 | The Cato Institute claims the following (my highlight): The ongoing controversy and litigation over the Trump administration’s “Muslim ban” has reignited a debate that has raged since the 9/11 attacks: Who commits more domestic terrorism–violent Salafists or traditional “right wing” extremists? According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, it’s the latter and by a very wide margin. Are they right in claiming that, since the September 11 2001 attack, there have be significantly more terrorist incidents perpetrated by right wing extremists than by islamic terrorists? NB this is a question about the number of attacks not the likelihood that a member of a particular group will commit an attack. | There are grounds for believing that "home-grown" right wing terrorists have caused more incidents than Islamic terrorists (but the number of deaths is similar) The question has been addressed by the non-partisan Government accountability Office. Their report (pdf) argues the following (my highlights): White supremacists, anti-government extremists, radical Islamist extremists, and other ideologically inspired domestic violent extremists have been active in the United States for decades. Examples of attacks include the 1993 World Trade Center bombing by radical Islamists, in which 6 persons were killed; and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building by anti-government far right individuals, in which 168 lives were lost. The September 11, 2001, attacks account for the largest number of fatalities in the United States in a single or closely- related attack resulting from violent extremism in recent decades. While the September 11, 2001, attacks were perpetrated by foreign violent extremists, from September 12, 2001 through December 31, 2016, attacks by domestic or “homegrown” violent extremists in the United States resulted in 225 fatalities, according to the ECDB. Of these, 106 were killed by far right violent extremists in 62 separate incidents, and 119 were victims of radical Islamist violent extremists in 23 separate incidents. If this count is credible, it appears that whether you count incidents the "home-grown" right wingers have caused more terrorism in the USA than Islamic extremist inspired terrorists (though the number of deaths is similar). They do, however, caveat this claim with the following: Since September 12, 2001, the number of fatalities caused by domestic violent extremists has ranged from 1 to 49 in a given year. As shown in figure 2, fatalities resulting from attacks by far right wing violet extremists have exceeded those caused by radical Islamist violent extremists in 10 of the 15 years, and were the same in 3 of the years since September 12, 2001. Of the 85 violent extremist incidents that resulted in death since September 12, 2001, far right wing violent extremist groups were responsible for 62 (73 percent) while radical Islamist violent extremists were responsible for 23 (27 percent) . The total number of fatalities is about the same for far right wing violent extremists and radical Islamist violent extremists over the approximately 15-year period (106 and 119, respectively). However, 41 percent of the deaths attributable to radical Islamist violent extremists occurred in a single event—an attack at an Orlando, Florida night club in 2016 (see fig. 2). The caveat at the end of the quote reflects the difficulty of using simple summary statistics for rare events as any average is highly skewed by single large events. It is also worth noting that Islamic attacks get a lot more news coverage than others according to this study : Controlling for target type, fatalities, and being arrested, attacks by Muslim perpetrators received, on average, 449% more coverage than other attacks. Update A news story related to the incident in Charlottesville reports that the FBI and Homeland Security have assessed the risk of attacks over the last couple of decades by extremist groups and concluded that: ...white supremacist groups had already carried out more attacks than any other domestic extremist group over the past 16 years and were likely to carry out more attacks over the next year... The source document which appears to have emerged from Homeland Security seems to clarify some of the previous claims and provide additional estimates of the future threat as well as the historic patterns. This seems to clarify and reinforce the earlier claims in this answer. | {
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38,088 | A rumor in my region states that a wind turbine consumes far more energy while being built and setup than it can produce in a lifetime. The debate is about modern, freshly built turbines in Southern Germany. Is there evidence that this is true? | The Guardian cites a 2010 study that found: the average windfarm [sic] produces 20-25 times more energy during its operational life than was used to construct and install its turbines. It also found that the average "energy payback" of a turbine was 3-6 months. Wikipedia has a graphic that is based on another 2010 study showing similar numbers: The German federal environmental protection agency says that wind turbines produce back the amount of energy that was consumed during production after 3 to 7 months. Siemens analyzed its wind turbines and found that the energy amortization period is about 5 months for onshore facilities and about 10 months for offshore farms. This considers not only the cost to produce the turbines, but the entire lifetime energy cost, including maintenance, dismantling, etc. | {
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38,098 | Russian news site "Federal News Agency" (FAN) today published "Директор NASA заявил, что до вторжения инопланетян осталось несколько месяцев" : Директора NASA Чарльза Болдена отправили в отпуск по болезни, после того, как он публично заявил, что вторжение внеземных пришельцев произойдет в ближайшее время. ... «Нас могу захватить в любой момент!» — заявил он, выступая на конференции NASA. После чего его тут же увели со сцены два сотрудника космического агентства. (translation mine) NASA Director Charles Bolden was sent on sick leave, after he publicly announced that the invasion of extraterrestrial aliens would happen in the near future. ... "We can be invaded at any time!" - he said, speaking at a NASA conference. Then he was immediately led off the stage by two employees of the space agency. I found an English site with similar claim (though awkward English makes me think it was a bad translation from Russian in the first place): The director of NASA has publicly declared invasion of aliens . Charles Bolden heading the American aerospace agency NASA on April 22 this year at a conference in Houston has declared that aliens can intrude (to begin war with people of Earth) on our planet in several months. | No. The original source of this claim is a satirical news site. This claim is from an article in World News Daily Report , which carries the following disclaimer in the footer: World News Daily Report assumes all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content. All characters appearing in the articles in this website – even those based on real people – are entirely fictional and any resemblance between them and any person, living, dead or undead, is purely a miracle. | {
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38,126 | In a recent interview , Noam Chomksy claims that the United States rejected an offer from North Korea and China that would have frozen the North Korean nuclear missile program in exchange for the United States stopping military maneuvers in the area: Actually, there's one proposal that's ignored. I mean, you see a mention of it now and then. It's a pretty simple proposal. Remember, the goal is to get North Korea to freeze its weapons and missile systems. So one proposal is to accept their offer to do that. Sounds simple. They've made a proposal; China and North Korea proposed to freeze the North Korean missile and nuclear weapon systems and the US instantly rejected it. And you can't blame that on Trump; Obama did the same thing a couple of years ago. The same offer was presented - I think it was 2015 - the Obama administration instantly rejected it and the reason is that it calls for a quid pro quo. It says in return the US should put an end to threatening military maneuvers on North Korea's borders which happen to include under Trump sending of nuclear-capable B-52s flying right near the border. The quote happens at 26:45 in the linked video. It's not explicit, but I believe from the quote Chomsky is implying that the same offer was made to the Trump and Obama administrations, and that both offers were rejected. Did both administrations receive and reject such an offer? | Did both the Trump and Obama administrations receive and reject an offer of de-nuclearization? Yes, certainly. This is an article from The Telegraph , dated 9 March 2017, detailing fallout following the Trump administration rejection of an offer to de-nuclearize North Korea in exchange for United States and South Korea suspending military activities in the region. This is an article from The Guardian , dated 24 April 2016, detailing the Obama administration response to the North Korean government regarding the same deal - suspension of the DPRK nuclear program in exchange for a suspension of military activities. The military activities that are being referred to in both of these instances are known as Foal Eagle , an annual training exercise between South Korean and United States Armed Forces to demonstrate South Korean-U.S. military resolve to deter war on the Korean peninsula and to improve the combined and joint operational posture of those forces. The exercises have (with 2001 being the only exception) been going on since 1997, much to the chagrin of the North Korean government, who see the exercise as threatening, and as a provocation against the North. Is it a big deal? Probably not. Does this mean that the United States and South Korea are war-mongering by refusing a deal to remove nuclear weapons? Almost certainly not. The United States has made a deal with North Korea in the past to de-nuclearize the peninsula. President Bill Clinton approved an aid package to North Korea in 1994 providing US $5bn in energy aid for the country, including two light-water nuclear reactors, in exchange for allow[ing] full and continuous inspections of its existing nuclear sites, freeze and then later take apart some of its most important nuclear plants and ultimately ship out of the country fuel rods that could be converted into fuel for weapons... A second aid package in 1996 provided food assistance to the country in the midst of a famine. However, implementation the Agreed Framework was slow. A change from a Democratic to Republican controlled Congress in 1994 delayed funding for the aid package, spurred on by several Republican Senators who considered the deal appeasement. The promised LWRs would not begin construction until 1996, and serious funding would not start until 2000, well behind schedule as the initial plan was to have the reactors online by 2003. In 2002, the aid to the North stopped, and construction of the LWRs was halted. President George W. Bush included North Korea in his Axis of Evil speech in early 2002, calling them A regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens While I have no concrete evidence to support or deny this claim, we do have a timeline of events that took place starting in 2002. Events of note around the year 2002 are 16 October 2002 - US Announces that North Korea admitted to having a clandestine nuclear program 27 November 2002 - The North accuses the US of deliberately misinterpreting its contested statement, twisting an assertion of its "right" to possess weapons into an "admission" of possession. 4 December 2002 - North Korea rejects a call to open its nuclear facilities for inspection 27 December 2002 - North Korea expels IAEA inspectors from the country By 2003, it seems that the North Korean nuclear program was back in full swing, and by 9 October 2006 North Korea announced its first test of a nuclear weapon. If we are to believe the United States (and this author makes no claims either in favor of or against this statement) the North Korean government never had any intention of holding up the end of the deal that was negotiated with the Clinton administration in 1994. This would be a huge disincentive for both the Obama and Trump administrations to be willing to acquiesce to demands or negotiate with the North Korean government since they have already reneged on a deal in the past. When you then add in the extra fact that, when the first deal was struck in 1994, North Korea had not demonstrated nuclear capability, and as of 2017 has detonated 6 nuclear devices, it seems highly unlikely that the United States would be willing to trust the government of North Korea now. | {
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38,141 | Is there any evidence that Queen Marie Antoinette said "Let them eat cake"? It is often purported that she said this in response to learning that the peasants had no bread to eat. | There is no good evidence to suggest she said this. Marie's Timeline 1755 - Born 1774 (aged 18) - Became Queen 1792 (aged 35) - Monarchy abolished 1793 (aged 37) - Executed Oldest attribution The oldest attribution of the quote to Marie was published by Alphonse Karr in Les guêpes: Volume 11 in January 1843: On se rappelle quelle indignation on excita, dans le temps, contre la
malheureuse reine Marie-Antoinette, — en faisant courir le bruit —
que, entendant dire que le peuple était malheureux et qu'il n'avait
pas de pain, — elle avait répondu : "eh bien ! qu'il mange de la
brioche". Le hasard m'a fait un de ces jours derniers rencontrer un
livre daté de 1760 — où on raconte le même mot d'une du chesse de
Toscane, — ce qui me parait prouver à peu près que le mot n'a pas élé
dit par Marie-Antoinette, mais retrouvé et mis en circulation contre
elle. Translated to: It has been recorded how indignantly they stirred, at the time,
against the unfortunate Queen Marie Antoinette, by starting a rumour
that, upon hearing that the people were unhappy and that they had no
bread, she replied: "Well, let them eat some cake." I recently chanced
upon a book dated from 1760 - in which the same phrase is attributed
to one of the Tuscan Duchesses, - which seems to me to prove more or
less that the phrase was not said by Marie-Antoinette, but found and
put into circulation against her. Potential source of the rumour In Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Lady Antonia Fraser, Fraser shows that this phrase had become a cliché associated with different female nobility over the years: Principal among them must be the notorious incident which has Marie
Antoinette urging the poor, being without bread, to eat cake. This
story was first told about the Spanish Princess who married Louis XIV
a hundred years before the arrival of Marie Antoinette in France; it
continued to be repeated about a series of other Princesses. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in book 6 of his autobiography titled The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau , says: At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, “Then let them eat pastry!” Some points to note about this quote: He does not mention who this great princess was. Marie would have been 8 when he would have recalled this story in 1764. Marie didn't move to France until 1770. Marie's attitude towards the poor Her attitude towards the poor does not seem to correspond with the "let them eat cake" attitude, as demonstrated in a letter written by Marie Antoinette. She states: It is quite certain that in seeing the people who treat us so well despite their own misfortune, we are more obliged than ever to work hard for their happiness. The King seems to understand this truth. from Lettres De Marie-Antoinette . Also, see Marie Antoinette: The Journey . Explanation of the phrase The phrase in French is: Qu'ils mangent de la brioche Which translates to Let them eat brioche For familiarity sake, brioche is often translated into English as cake . | {
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38,189 | According to a blog post by the Mises Institute : ...the court system in the United Kingdom, at the behest of National Health Service bureaucrats, abducted and murdered an 8-month-old baby... ...the courts in the UK ruled that Charlie Gard, against the wishes of his parents, must be immediately removed from life support and left to die. Unlike cases in the US where it is usually the family that is arguing for or against extending hope that their loved ones can be rescued, the only people arguing against continued efforts were government officials and some third party public onlookers. What makes the Charlie Gard case so disturbing is that this is a case where no family member made any argument to remove the child from life support. The government simply overruled them and took their child. Is this an accurate account of what occurred? | Not according to the BBC Doctors had argued that continuing life-support treatment would not
benefit Charlie but "prolong the process of dying". A lawyer representing Great Ormond Street Hospital said: "This is not
pioneering or life-sustaining treatment, but a purely experimental
process with no real prospect of improving Charlie's condition or
quality of life.". and from the Guardian In his full ruling, Francis said that no one with Charlie’s mutation
had ever been treated with the nucleoside therapy proposed, adding
that a US expert had said there was no direct evidence it could
improve the child’s condition, just a theoretical scientific basis it
could help. The US doctor later acknowledged, after seeing documents
about the severity of the condition, that it was “very unlikely” that
Charlie would improve with that therapy. so while the court did rule that the child should be taken off life-support, the claim that "the only people arguing against continued efforts were government officials and some third party public onlookers." clearly isn't true as the child's doctors and the hospital were arguing against continuing treatment. It is nothing to do with the government AFAICS, but the medics and the judiciary, although it appears to have raised concerns about the availability of legal aid in such cases. Very sad case, and a difficult ethical position for all concerned, but the blog article is not an accurate representation, based on these reports. From the blog article "Except a major feature of the free market, private charity, kicked in wonderfully." seems a rather "nuanced" view to me. Private charities are not a particular feature of free markets. "As government court systems are wont to do, they sided with themselves" the U.K. judicial system is independent of what would be considered there as "government" , and quite frequently go against it (see here for a recent notable example). As noted by @GordonM the language of the blog post is rather hyperbolic. These things, considered together, do not give [me] confidence that the blog is unbiased and without agenda. | {
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38,191 | I saw this image being shared on my Facebook feed, and I was wondering the truth (if any) to it. | The debt figures as a proportion of GDP appear to be correct according to the Office of National Statistics , which can be considered the official source . (Thanks @Henry for helping with the upload.) However, the national debt appears to start rising rapidly in early 2008 under a Labour government (presumably in response to the 2007-8 Global Financial Crisis ), when it was 35%, and has been rising at a lower rate since 2010 under the Conservatives, so it is at the same time a bit disingenuous in my opinion, plus ca change... | {
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38,202 | I've seen multiple news sites and tweets claiming that the new United States health care plan lists some really odd 'conditions' as valid pre-existing conditions (reasons for an insurer to deny insuring you, or ask for a higher fee). One of these pre-existing conditions that stood out to me is that being a victim of sexual assault is a pre-existing condition. An implicit claim in these tweets is that this did not used to be a pre-existing condition under Obamacare or even before that. It seems an unnecessarily cruel extension just to save some insurers some extra costs on (much needed) psychological and maybe even physical care. So I'm highly skeptical if its true. Some sources that list this claim Trump's healthcare bill allows rape to be a pre-existing condition (Independent) Rape and domestic violence could be pre-existing conditions (CNN) 5 Ways the New GOP Health Care Bill Is Even Worse Than Before (Rollingstone) | Tl;dr: the American Health Care Act of 2017 (AHCA) doesn't specifically consider sexual assault a pre-existing condition (PEC), (an unknown amount of) insurance companies consider (the consequences of) sexual assault a PEC. The AHCA only regulates how those companies can treat people with PECs. Reader beware: This is an emotional and controversial topic. And the answer which will satisfy you will probably come down to semantics (i.e. what does it mean to "allow rape" to be a pre-existing condition? Or what does it mean to "consider sexual assault a pre-existing condition" ?). I'll try to be as comprehensive as I can, but I'll let the reader decide if the answer to this question is a yes or no. What is a pre-existing condition? If you read around on the internet, you'll find that there are more than one definition of the term. One Wikipedia article describes a PEC as such: The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center defines a pre-existing condition as a "medical condition that occurred before a program of health benefits went into effect" (Emphasize mine) Something along these lines is most likely the definition a health care insurance provider would use. However, there are others who use PEC to describe a type of loophole used by insurance companies. To quote the OP: [PECs are] reasons for an insurer to deny insuring you, or ask for a higher fee. Or take a look at this article from Politifact: Obamacare to stop domestic violence as pre-existing condition . This is also a good example of people using the term PEC to refer to a "loophole". To make this answer valid for this site I'll use "the most scientific" definition (IMHO). So from here on out, a PEC is considered a medical condition that occurred before a program of health benefits went into effect . Obamacare and PECs: If you have the "correct" definition of a PEC in mind than those articles listed in the question are somewhat misleading. As an example, consider this one snippet from the Independant : Before Obamacare, some insurance companies considered rape and domestic abuse pre-existing conditions. They still do. Obamacare only regulated how insurance companies can treat people with a (certain) PEC. As a matter of fact, the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act pretty much says that domestic violence is a PEC: SEC. 2705. PROHIBITING DISCRIMINATION AGAINST INDIVIDUAL PARTICIPANTS AND BENEFICIARIES BASED ON HEALTH STATUS . (a) IN GENERAL. — A group health plan and a health insurance issuer offering group or individual health insurance coverage may
not establish rules for eligibility (including continued eligibility) of any individual to enroll under the terms of the plan or coverage based on any of the following health status-related factors in relation to the individual or a dependent of the individual: ... (7) Evidence of insurability (including conditions arising out of acts of domestic violence ). (Emphasize mine) American Health Care Act of 2017 (AHCA) and PECs: The AHCA follows the same style as Obamacare, i.e. it doesn't contain a comprehensive list of "acceptable" PECs. It does however (de)regulate how insurance companies can treat them. Politico.com explains the differences between Obamacare and the AHCA: [The insurance companies] have to provide access to coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. It says nothing about the rates of that coverage. That means if the AHCA passes, it would allow for people with pre-existing conditions to be charged more per year for their insurance coverage – possibly to the tune of thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars more per year, some studies have found. (emphasize mine) So people can not be denied coverage, but theoretically they can be charged extra to the point that some can't afford it. Conclusion: Health care insurance companies see a PEC as a medical condition that a person has before or while getting a health insurance. Before Obamacare this meant that they could deny service or charge extra. Obamacare made it harder for insurance companies to do this. The AHCA made it again possible that these companies can charge extra. | {
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38,227 | On Friday 21st April, the UK National Grid announced the following on twitter : National Grid can confirm that for the past 24 hours, it has supplied GB's electricity demand without the need for #coal generation. They further clarified in a following tweet : Today's average generation mix so far has been gas 50.3%, nuclear 21.2%, wind 12.2%, imports 8.3%, biomass 6.7%, solar 3.6% When I speak to people living here in the UK or abroad about this, they bring up that it is unclear whether: coal stations were totally shut down for that 24 hour period (and other 6–8 hour periods earlier that week) and thus not burning coal or generating pollution, or coal stations were running, burning coal, and generating power (which was either consumed elsewhere or entirely wasted) but Great Britain was powered without coal generation for the period. I agree with them that it's ambiguous. A common point of doubt has been that surely they can't just shut down and start up the coal plants that fast. Someone in the twitter thread requested some clarity around this , to which National Grid did not reply: “Were there plants burning coal, but they weren't feeding the grid? Or were they all totally cold?” Were coal power stations running and generating power that Great Britain didn't use, or were they actually shut down? | Quick Take: There doesn't appear to be available information to determine if the coal plants were burning coal, although not contributing electricity to the grid; there is sufficient information to say that the coal plants were not exporting electricity out of Great Britain. It looks like the event actually included all the coal-fired power plants in Great Britain going off-line: The control room tweeted the milestone on Friday. It is the first continuous 24-hour coal-free period for Britain since use of the fossil fuel began. West Burton 1 power station, the only coal-fired plant that had been up and running, went offline on Thursday. Source: British power generation achieves first ever coal-free day, The Guardian This sort of thing is very possible - Wikipedia only lists 9 extant working coal power plants left in Great Britain. It is, however, not clear what "offline" means in this context. Offline could mean that the West Burton (and other coal-fired) plants were in "Non-spinning Reserve," which would mean the turbines were not being driven by any coal burning and a considerable start-up time would have been required to start the power plant up again; or it could mean the at least some of the coal-fired power plants in Britain were in "Spinning Reserve," where they would not be actively contributing electricity to the grid, but coal was being burned and the turbines were spinning so that contributions of electricity to the grid could start quickly if demand picked up. Without information on which of these states the power plants were in, it is not possible to say whether coal was being burned in Britain. However, the National Grid did clarify in a later tweet that coal did not contribute to the generated mix of power including exports (which is why the percentages in the tweet below add up to higher than 100%.) Imported power, on the other hand, did include some fraction of coal generation, as clarified by this tweet: So even if Great Britain wasn't generating any electricity produced by coal, imports from continental Europe mean that coal is being burned somewhere. Even when all British coal plants are phased out, as is being planned for the 2020s, electricity production on the continent may provide some fraction of coal-generated electricity unless coal plants are phased out there as well. | {
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38,295 | From The Spectator: Wind turbines are neither clean nor green and they provide zero global energy : Here’s a quiz; no conferring. To the nearest whole number, what percentage of the world’s energy consumption was supplied by wind power in 2014, the last year for which there are reliable figures? Was it 20 per cent, 10 per cent or 5 per cent? None of the above: it was 0 per cent. That is to say, to the nearest whole number, there is still no wind power on Earth. Even put together, wind and photovoltaic solar are supplying less than 1 per cent of global energy demand. From the International Energy Agency’s 2016 Key Renewables Trends, we can see that wind provided 0.46 per cent of global energy consumption in 2014, and solar and tide combined provided 0.35 per cent. Remember this is total energy, not just electricity, which is less than a fifth of all final energy, the rest being the solid, gaseous, and liquid fuels that do the heavy lifting for heat, transport and industry. Did wind power account for less than half a percent of total global energy usage in 2014? | Yes. They refer to International Energy Agency 's 2016 Key Renewable Trends report , which contains these 2 graphs: Combining these two graphs shows that Wind energy is 3.3% of the 13.8% of the renewable fuel share. 13.8% * 3.3% = 0.46% | {
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38,350 | Got this today on my facebook wall... Alarming New Study: Unvaccinated Kids are Healthier The study’s findings really make you wonder. Here’s some of the specifics: Vaccinated children were more than three times as likely to be diagnosed on the Autism Spectrum (OR 4.3) Vaccinated children were 30-fold more likely to be diagnosed with allergic rhinitis (hay fever) than non-vaccinated children Vaccinated children were 22-fold more likely to require an allergy medication than unvaccinated children Vaccinated children had more than quadruple the risk of being diagnosed with a learning disability than unvaccinated children (OR 5.2) Vaccinated children were 300 percent more likely to be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder than unvaccinated children (OR 4.3) Vaccinated children were 340 percent (OR 4.4) more likely to have been diagnosed with pneumonia than unvaccinated children Vaccinated children were 300 percent more likely to be diagnosed with an ear infection than unvaccinated children (OR 4.0) Vaccinated children were 700 percent more likely to have surgery to insert ear drainage tubes than unvaccinated children (OR 8.01) Vaccinated children were 2.5-fold more likely to be diagnosed with any chronic illness than unvaccinated children Are unvaccinated Kids are Healthier? | Summary: The survey this article was based on was biased, poorly designed and poorly implemented. The conclusions cannot be trusted. This study was examined by Orac who has been "checking in with and covering periodically ever since its inception in 2012, when antivaxers were fundraising for it." The study has had a history of being retracted: I’ve written about this study before. Hilariously, when it was published in its first form, the full study wasn’t published, only the abstract. Then the abstract was, in essence, retracted . Even more hilarious, it was a Frontiers journal, which is an even bigger dis because Frontiers journals are known for tending to be pay-to-publish predatory open access journals. If a Frontiers journal retracts your paper , it’s plenty bad indeed. It turns out that the manuscript had been reviewed by a chiropractor and a peer reviewer without expertise The next day, Orac returned to announce it had been retracted again! The first article complains of some minor issues: Apparent bias in the statement of purpose and having antivaccine organisation as the funding source. He also criticised the misleading description and a biased sampling Notice how Mawson claims that this is a cross-sectional study, when in reality it’s a survey targeting parents who homeschool. Of course, parents who choose to home school are not like your average parents. There are a lot of confounding factors that go along with home schooling, including the association between home schooling and antivaccine views. This association is very clear in the data, which show that 261 of the 666 subjects were unvaccinated. He also describes the recruitment techniques as a source of bias too. no effort was made to construct a representative sample. In conclusion, he writes: So what are we to make of the results of this study [...]? Nothing. The bias and flaws in this study guaranteed no other result, particularly when you consider another confounding factor, namely that the parents of children who are fully vaccinated are very different in their health-seeking behavior than those whose children are unvaccinated. They tend to take their children to visit the doctor more regularly, which means that health disorders their children have are more likely to be diagnosed and treated. They’re also less likely to be seeing naturopaths and other alternative practitioners. I looked for literature to bolstered Orac's unreferenced claim that "parents of children who are fully vaccinated are very different in their health-seeking behavior than those whose children are unvaccinated." My findings were mixed. I only found minor support for Orac's position. Understanding vaccine hesitancy around vaccines and vaccination from a global perspective: A systematic review of published literature , 2007–2012 Vaccine, Volume 32, Issue 19, Pages 2150-2159 Heidi J. Larson, Caitlin Jarrett, Elisabeth Eckersberger, David M.D. Smith, Pauline Paterson This paper was useful to me in demonstrating some of the complexity behind the question - there has been a fair amount of research, and it has revealed geographic differenes. Qualitative Analysis of Mothers' Decision-Making About Vaccines for Infants: The Importance of Trust Pediatrics May 2006, VOLUME 117 / ISSUE 5 Andrea L. Benin, Daryl J. Wisler-Scher, Eve Colson, Eugene D. Shapiro, Eric S. Holmboe This provided some fairly support for both Orac's statements about visiting doctors and also naturopaths and alternative practitioners: Inhibitors [for parent vaccinating] included feeling alienated by or unable to trust the pediatrician , having a trusting relationship with an influential homeopath/naturopath or other person who did not believe in vaccinating, worry about permanent side effects, beliefs that vaccine-preventable diseases are not serious, and feeling that since other children are vaccinated their child is not at risk. However, I don't want to overstate this - one of the "emerging themes" they discovered was: there is overall trust in the pediatrician but a lack of trust in the information they provided about vaccines. | {
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38,351 | According to The Economist (May 13th, 2017, print edition, webpage ), America has more tax preparers—over 1m, according to a project at
George Washington University—than it has police and firefighters
combined. Is this true? | No As per the statistics that @gerrit cited , the statement as listed is untrue. There are almost as many firefighters alone as tax preparers. There is a true way of stating it. If we explicitly limit to just full time paid fire fighters and law enforcement professionals, then there are more tax preparers. However, this is a fundamentally unfair way of counting. If we are going to limit fire fighters to just the full time paid members, we should also limit the tax preparers in the same way. Many tax preparers are themselves part time. They work just for the few months after W-2 and 1099 forms are issued and before 1040 forms are due. If we limited just to professional, full-time tax preparers, there are only about 70,000 as per the Bureau of Labor Statistics . To get the larger number, we have to include seasonal tax-preparers and accountants/auditors who fill out tax returns. So there are fewer career tax preparers than there are career fire fighters or law enforcement professionals separately, much less added together. Regardless, the Economist's formulation is incorrect. As written, the statement would include volunteer firefighters and paid-per-call firefighters. But including them means that there are about as many firefighters alone as tax preparers, even including seasonal workers and people whose profession is listed as accountant or auditor. | {
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38,383 | I was listening to BBC news radio last night - 18th day of May 2017 and I heard this guest who was campaigning for people to stop dumping trash in the oceans. Probably not the same very words but the meaning is the same: "... some oceans are so remote such that if you are standing there the
closest person to you is in the space station" I thought to myself, hmm another flat earth troll who needs an atlas but I realized I couldn't even estimate the distance from the oceanic pole of inaccessibility at 46°17′N 86°40′E (2700km from land) to the ISS http://iss.astroviewer.net/ How true is this claim? | It is a common misconception that something in ( Low Earth ) orbit (like the ISS) is far away. This is not the case -- orbit is more about going sideways really fast than it is about "being up ". ( xkcd -- Orbital Speed ) The ISS has perigee at 402 km and apogee at 409 km ([ 1 ]). Unless you're further north / south than 51 degrees (The ISS' orbital inclination), at some point the ISS will be directly overhead, i.e. a bit over 400 km away from you. Compared to that, the oceanic pole of inaccessibility... ...lies in the South Pacific Ocean, 2,688 km (1,670 mi) from the nearest lands. ([ 2 ]). So, allowing for some ship being closer while the ISS is on the other side of the earth, at least some of the time the claim is true , and quite possibly by a comfortable margin. You can possibly find places on land where the ISS crew is closer to you than the next person on earth... | {
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38,386 | I was doing some extra research on the question: Did wind power supply less than half a percent of global energy in 2014? The question was based on an article that claimed: But out of sight and out of mind is the dirty pollution generated ... by the mining of rare-earth metals for the magnets in the turbines. This generates toxic and radioactive waste on an epic scale ... The Spectator: Wind turbines are neither clean nor green and they provide zero global energy - 13/05/2017 (emphasize mine) I found this claim quite interesting, but after investigating I found an even more detailed claim: [In 2012] between 4.9 million and 6.1 million pounds of radioactive waste were created to make these [U.S.] wind turbines. For perspective, America’s nuclear industry produces between 4.4 million and 5 million pounds of spent nuclear fuel each year. That means the U.S. wind industry may well have created more radioactive waste last year than our entire nuclear industry produced in spent fuel. Institute for Energy Research: Big Wind’s Dirty Little Secret: Toxic Lakes and Radioactive Waste - 23/10/2013 (emphasize mine) Just to be clear, this is an article from 2013 and the claims are about 2012. The article continues to explain that "the nuclear industry seems to be doing more with less" and that we are being deceived by the "wind lobbyists" . I wasn't entirely sure what "spent fuel" means in this context, but according to Wikipedia , world-nuclear.org , The Hiroshima Syndrome and whatisnuclear.com : nuclear power plant waste = spent fuel So the question is: Did the production of U.S. wind turbines produce more radioactive waste than U.S. nuclear power plants in 2012? | While the numbers provided by the sources seem to be strictly correct, they are lacking a significant amount of context. Once this context is injected into the discussion, the manufacture of Wind Turbines does not create as much radiation as Nuclear waste. The primary claim, from the Institute for Energy Research (second quoted block in the question) seems to be true. The 4.9 million pounds of waste number is calculated using data from an MIT Research study and an Institute for the Analysis of Global Security study (although the IAGS study quotes a Chinese Society of Rare Earths article that I cannot seem to find an original source for.) The radioactive waste from Nuclear power production seems to be quoted from a Nuclear Energy Institute page that claims that The nuclear industry generates a total of about 2,000 - 2,300 metric tons of used fuel per year. which would translate into roughly the numbers given by the report. However, there are two things that negate the argument made by Institute for Energy Research. 1. The numbers quoted for radioactive waste generation is an apples to oranges comparison. The quoted number for Wind Turbines is the amount of waste generated by producing and constructing a Wind Turbine. Once the turbine is constructed, the Turbine should no longer produce radioactive waste over its lifetime. Many different sources claim different values , but the general consensus is that a Wind Turbine should last from 12 to 25 years. While there may be a large upfront cost for the Turbines, there is no more waste produced after it comes online. The quoted number for Nuclear plants, on the other hand, is the amount of waste produced per year by operating the plant. The plant must continue to produce that waste or it will shut off. The article, by comparing these two numbers, can be translated to the claim that The amount of radioactive waste generated by increasing the amount of Wind Energy produced by the United States by 13.1 GW for the next 12-25 years is slightly more than the waste generated to maintain current Nuclear Energy production. 2. All radioactive waste is not created equal. The article uses "tons of radioactive waste" as if all waste is interchangeable. To quote Comparing the Amount of Radioactivity Found in Radioactive Wastes It should be noted that just as knowing the number of gallons or pounds of a toxic chemical substance is not sufficient to completely predict the hazard posed by the chemical, knowing the number of curies in a radioactive material is not sufficient to predict the hazard posed by the material. The EPA, in a study titled Rare Earth Elements: A Review of Production, Processing, Recycling, and Associated Environmental Issues , says the radiation levels from waste rock and sludges[sic] associated with the production of REOs range from 5.7 to 3,224 pCi/g. Taking the high estimate of this number, we can calculate the total Curies (amount of radioactivity) given off by this toxic waste as (4.7 Mlbs) * (453 g / lb) * (3,224 pCi / g) = 6.659 trillion pico-Curies = 6.659 Curies. Compare this to the numbers provided by "Comparing the Amount of Radioactivity Found in Radioactive Wastes" Total curies in a typical spent fuel rod after 120 days of cooling : 1,800,000 Ci Total curies in a typical spent fuel rod after 10 years of cooling : 130,000 Ci A single spent fuel rod is several orders of magnitude more radioactive than the radioactive waste produced by the manufacture of Wind Turbines for an entire year . Note that, even with these numbers, it is still a significant concern of the international community. Quoted from Wikipedia pollution concerns associated with the extraction of this rare-earth element have prompted government action in recent years,[43][44] and international research attempts to refine the extraction process.[45] Research is underway on turbine and generator designs which reduce the need for neodymium, or eliminate the use of rare-earth metals altogether.[46] Additionally, the large wind turbine manufacturer Enercon GmbH chose very early not to use permanent magnets for its direct drive turbines, in order to avoid responsibility for the adverse environmental impact of rare earth mining.[47] There are efforts to reduce the amount of radioactive waste generated by Wind Turbine manufacturing, but the amount produced does not outweigh the waste produced by fission reactions. | {
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38,435 | The official QI Twitter account (@qikipedia) today said the following : If you sent a letter in 19th century London you could expect a reply within 2 hours Is there any merit to this claim? | I interpret the claim to not be about how responsive a particular recipient could be, but to be about how long it took to deliver a letter, and how often this service ran. i.e. if the recipient was attentive, and quick to respond, how long would it take for a response to be delivered? The Dictionary of Victorian London includes a number of quotes from contemporary sources about the London Postal service. One source from 1844 shows that there are seven deliveries daily "in town", and they were collected every two hours: Morning by eight o'clock, for the second delivery.
Morning by ten o'clock, for the third delivery.
Morning by twelve o'clock, for the fourth delivery.
Afternoon by two o'clock, for the fifth delivery.
Afternoon by four o'clock, for the sixth delivery.
Afternoon by six o'clock, for the seventh delivery. A source from 1879 shows it varied by postal district: London is divided into 8 postal districts, in which the number of deliveries varies from 12 to 6 daily, between 7.30 a.m. and 7.45 p.m. Again, collections occurred every couple of hours: Take care to post before ¼ to 8, 10, 12, and 2, 4, 6, 8, in one of the Iron Pillar Boxes (first erected 1855) on the kerb stones of the leading thoroughfares. This doesn't show that the letters would be delivered quickly, just that they were collected and delivered frequently. There may still be a large "lag". A source from 1879 shows: the third delivery in [Eastern Central District] [...] is made at about 10 a.m., and includes the letters collected in London generally at 8.45 a.m [...] This shows that a lag of a little over an hour is expected. It seemed to get better later in the day (as they got over the backlog of the overnight deliveries): The next nine deliveries are made in every district hourly, and include all letters reaching the General Post Office or the district offices in time for each despatch. In summary, while it depended on the year and the region, once could expect to receive mail every hour or two, with a lag of around an hour or so. This doesn't support the idea that a response might be typically expected within two hours, but it does suggest that such response times would be sometimes possible on a good day. | {
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38,478 | In xkcd comic #936 , Randall Munroe claims that passwords like "Tr0ub4dor&3" (uncommon base word, caps, common letter substitutions with a number and punctuation suffix) has ~28 bits of entropy, while taking four random common words, like "correct horse battery staple", has ~44 bits of entropy, and is therefore much much stronger. I am confused because I've always been told that having numbers, cap/non-cap letters and special characters was essential for a strong password... Is XKCD right on this? | It is true that you do not need numbers, special characters, etc for a strong password. If you instead increase the length of the password, the entropy will increase as well. See for example this entropy table . To get 64 bit of entropy, you could have a 14 character lowercase password, or you could have a 10 character password with all printable ASCII characters, or you could have a passphrase with 5 words randomly selected from a list of 7776 words (Diceware). The XKCD approach is also called a passphrase or - if done correctly, ie randomly selected words in the passphrase - as Diceware . The math was checked at security.SE and is approximately correct if we assume a small word list for diceware (~2000 words) and - and this is crucial - randomly selected words. Do note that the XKCD comic assumes randomness for the words in the diceware passphrase, but assumes a pattern for the password (which is a fair assumption and also the point of the comic, as nobody remembers a truly random 11 char password). Note that people are bad at random selection , so the actual difficulty to guess the password when not using dice to generate it - and accepting the first result - will be lower. The claim about memorability was examined in the paper Correct horse battery staple: Exploring the usability of system-assigned passphrases (note that the paper uses correctly generated passphrases instead of relying on users "randomly" choosing passphrases): Contrary to expectations, system-assigned passphrases performed similarly to system-assigned passwords of similar entropy across the usability metrics we examined. Passphrases and passwords were forgotten at similar rates, led to similar levels of user difficulty and annoyance, and were both written down by a majority of participants. However, passphrases took significantly longer for participants to enter, and appear to require error-correction to counteract entry mistakes. Passphrase usability did not seem to increase when we shrunk the dictionary from which words were chosen, reduced the number of words in a passphrase, or allowed users to change the order of words. | {
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38,520 | Jimmy Dore says in this video , Their owner has a 600 million dollar deal with the CIA. Six hundred million dollars, how much is that Jimmy? That's three times what the Washington Post is fucking worth. He has a deal with the CIA, and they never put an editor's note next to story they run about the hacking, or Russia, or Syria. They never put a "hey by the way, the owner of this newspaper has a 600 million dollar deal with the deep state." So is the owner of The Washington Post benefiting from CIA funds to the tune of 600 million dollars? | This claim has two parts: an explicit claim (that the CIA has a deal with Jeff Bezos), and an implicit one (that this creates a conflict of interest). The explict claim is FALSE The CIA has no deal with Jeff Bezos. They have a deal with Amazon, which is a publicly traded company. Sources (swiped verbatim from ChrisW's excellent answer ):
The current owner of The Washington Post is Jeff Bezos , who also founded Amazon. News from Fortune.com (among others) in 2015 reports, Intelligence community loves its new Amazon cloud Two years ago, the CIA selected AWS to build and run a special, secure cloud to be used by 17 intelligence-related agencies, in a contract valued at $600 million. That was a watershed event for Amazon, the leader in public cloud services. The implicit claim is unproven, and probably unprovable It seems likely to us (us being the non-billionaire users of this site) that it certainly creates the appearance of a conflict of interest for Jeff Bezos, since he owns big chunks of both Amazon and the Washington Post. And we can assume that if the CEO of the paper chooses to get involved, the writers and editorial staff of the Post might feel a conflict. But there's no proof of that actually happening. For an intervention in the Post's policies to occur without us knowing about it, dozens of people are likely to have to agree to suppress the truth. Should the Post acknowledge this linkage? Let's do a thought experiment: does Jimmy Dore acknowledge who contributes to his support? If some group were to have bought large blocks of tickets or CDs, or to have committed to underwrite a show, should he have to? | {
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38,533 | I recently saw this posted on social media; it caused quite a stir, with over 200 comments from people debating the veracity of the claims. “It’s funny how people get outraged at parents putting their kids at
risk by defying scientific fact and basic logic by not getting them
vaccinated. Yet they still feed their kids red and processed meat,
despite the fact that it is proven to cause as much cancer as smoking
(plus a load of other health and environmental problems). It’s amazing how people are so easily manipulated into making poor
decisions based on social norms. It’s also amazing that people find the idea of banning the consumption
of red meat cadavers to under 18s wacky and mad. Ahh humans…how can we
have come so far yet still be capable of being so illogical. (Also if your first reaction to this is “bacon” you’re as
unimaginative as you are daft.)” It was later clarified that “ despite the fact that it is proven to cause as much cancer as smoking” was meant in relative terms. i.e. One processed hamburger raises the risk of cancer roughly as much a 3 cigarettes. (This was given as an example rather than an actual equivalent measurement.) Basically, the claim was that in equivalent terms, meat causes as much cancer as smoking. (i.e. Not the total cases of cancer as people get more carcinogens from smoking because they smoke a higher number of cigarettes.) Dose the claim “processed meat causes as much cancer as smoking in relative terms” hold up to scrutiny? Edit: The basis of this claim appears to be from claims made by the World Health organisation. As stated in this guardian article : Bacon, ham and sausages rank alongside cigarettes as a major cause of
cancer, the World Health Organisation has said, placing cured and
processed meats in the same category as asbestos, alcohol, arsenic and
tobacco. | According to the US CDC : People who smoke cigarettes are 15 to 30 times more likely to get lung cancer or die from lung cancer than people who do not smoke According to Carcinogenicity of consumption of red and processed meat (Lancet 2015) citing to Red and Processed Meat and Colorectal Cancer Incidence: Meta-Analysis of Prospective Studies (2011): Positive associations of
colorectal cancer with consumption of
processed meat were reported in 12 of
the 18 cohort studies...an 18% increase
(95% CI 1·10–1·28) per 50 g per day of
processed meat In other words, smoking will increase risk of lung cancer by a factor of 15-30, while 50 grams a day of processed meat will increase the risk of colorectal cancer by a factor 1.1-1.3. Furthermore, it is found that at high levels of processed meat consumption, the risk levels off, never exceeding 1.4 relative risk (see Fig. 3 of 2011 reference). Additionally, the annual number of US deaths from lung cancer (155,870) is greater than from colorectal cancer (50,260). See https://www.cancer.gov/types/common-cancers . Taken together, the <1.4 maximum relative risk factor and the 50,260 annual colorectal cancer deaths, there is an upper limit (supposing everyone switched from zero processed or red meat to maximal processed meat) of 20,000 deaths due to the processed meat consumption, whereas most of the 155,870 lung cancer deaths are due to smoking. So, " no ", eating processed meat is not as bad as smoking a typical amount that a smoker smokes. | {
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38,536 | Recently this map of terrorist attacks in Europe went viral and was reposted many times in social media. Does it present actual data about terrorist attacks? Background: The map gained popularity because of ongoing discussion about immigrants. Poland firmly opposes immigration from Muslim countries (North Africa, Middle East) and obligatory limits of immigrants European Commission want to impose. This country is also a big gap on this map. Some nationalists claim that there is no terrorism in Poland, because of their immigration policy. Examples of usage: "Map of terrorist attacks in Europe after 9/11" on Reddit, submitted by HoodieCrow on Thu Mar 24 12:16:24 2016 UTC "No terror attacks in Poland because the Polish government protects its people." on Twitter, posted by Voice of Europe (@V_of_Europe) on "7:49 PM - 25 May 2017". | tl;dr : The map is likely correct and based on the GTD from 2001 to 2014. As the map is not about Islamic terrorist attacks, but all terrorist attacks, no conclusion about Islamic attacks or refugees can be drawn from it. Source of the Map It is very likely that this map uses the Global Terrorism Database as a source, likely from 2001 to 2014, and there is no reason to doubt its accuracy. The two dots in Iceland are the two terrorist attacks in Akureyri and Reykjavik in 2012 and 2014. The dot in Portugal represents a terrorist attack in Lisbon in 2011. Note that this was not an Islamic attack, but an Anarchist attack. We can assume that the map shows attacks after 2001, because before then, there are recorded terrorist attacks in Poland . This is the earliest occurance of the map that I could find, which mentions 2001. We can also assume that the map is from before 2015, as the high number of attacks in Finland are not included. A similar map can be seen here which visualizes the GTD data from 2011 to 2014. The GTD also provides their own map , but it's for a 40 year span. Still, it shows a similar tendency as the map from the OP. Quality of the map Note that the map from the OP displays attacks as dots, which is a poor representation for what the map wants to express. In countries in which terrorist attacks are concentrated on a specific location, it makes it appear as if there was less terrorism than there actually was, and for countries were terrorist attacks are spread out, it leads to the opposite effect. The heatmap from the GTD linked above better visualizes the concentration of terrorist attacks. About the GTD Note that the definition of terrorism by the GTD does not just include major attacks or attacks with multiple fatalities. It also is not limited to a specific motivation (Islamic for example): Criterion I: The act must be aimed at attaining a political, economic, religious, or social goal. Criterion II: There must be evidence of an intention to coerce, intimidate, or convey some other message to a larger audience (or
audiences) than the immediate victims. Criterion III: The action must be outside the context of legitimate warfare activities. Conclusions to draw from the map We can't draw the conclusions proposed in the OP from this map for various reasons, among them: It is a map of all terrorist attacks, not just of terrorist attacks committed by refugees, and also not just Islamic attacks. This can easily be seen by the high amount of attacks in Ireland and Spain (specifically Basque Country), as well as the anarchist attack in Portugal. A considerable number of the attacks (even worldwide) in the GTD are non-Islamic . Even if we were to accept the map as showing attacks by refugees - which it does not - the map does not match the data of refugees by country (see also here ; note the relatively high number of refugees in Sweden in 2014, and compare it to the very low number of refugees in Spain). | {
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38,606 | A recent essay in the New York Times by Claire Cain Miller, entitled How to Raise a Feminist Son , claims that: Until the mid-20th century, pink was the boy color and blue was for
girls. It, in turn, cites an Ask Smithsonian blog post by Jeanne Maglaty. How well-grounded in the historical evidence is this claim? | According to the 1930 version of Stack Exchange, Popular Questions Answered : What are the clothing colors for baby boys and girls? According to a traditional color scheme, which is of unknown origin, baby boys are properly dressed in pink clothing and baby girls in blue, although in some parts of the country, particularly in the Southern States, this symbolical color arrangement is reversed and baby boys are dressed in blue and girls in pink. One writer says that blue was assigned to girls because that was the color assigned to the Virgin Mary and the royal house of David to which she belonged. At any rate, blue and pink have become associated with babies. When friends are notified that the stork has paid a visit to a home the announcement cards are often decorated with blue ribbons if the baby is a girl, and with pink ribbons if it is a boy. Apparently, however, this traditional color arrangement based on the sex of the child is giving way to more practical considerations. In the issue of Forecast for May, 1927, Mollie Amos Polk says on this subject : "According to the buyer of one of the most famous shops pink and blue are now used interchangeably for boys and girls. Pink, however, since it is universally becoming and will stand frequent tubbings, is much more popular for both." According to the 8 October 1914 Shoe and Leather Reporter article Children's Shoe Fashions for Spring and Summer 1915 : shoes trimmed with blue for baby boys, and pink for baby girls are shown in the spring samples Like fredsbend commented, there are lists of additional sources on Wikipedia . Sources saying "blue for girls, pink for boys" can be found up to about 1941; however, it was not a strong tradition. During the same time period, as the above shoe reference shows, people also dressed boys in blue and girls in pink. Another clear counter-example is the article Women's Part in the New Renaissance Century Magazine , April 1923: Mothers take good care to discover the suitable color and adornment for their little ones, blue for the little boy, pink for the little girl... The strongest evidence I can find for a tradition of pink for boys, blue for girls, is that there was criticism of president McKinley's wife for sending blue booties to former president Cleveland's wife on the occasion of a boy being born: as all the world which has had experience in such things knows, blue boots are for girls and pink for boys Omaha Daily Bee 7 November 1897 (similar articles 6 November 1897 in Desert Evening News , the Salt Lake Herald and Blackfoot News ) Additional articles recommending pink for boys, blue for girls include: The earliest article, Styles Here and Abroad , The Sun, New York, 09 January 1888: Pinks and reds are the colors for boy babies, blues and creams for girls A Word about Babies: Appropriate gifts St. Paul Daily Globe 22 October 1889 (the advice spread to several other newspapers a month later, the Hickman Courier , the Ohio Democrat and the Macon Beacon ): pink for boys, blue for girls, the gossip says About Fall Fashions Evening Star, Washington, 20 September 1890 (same article in Indianapolis Journal ): white ribbon for the first three months, afterward pink for a boy, blue for a girl-clover pink for a blonde boy and very pale blue for a dark baby girl Article in The Sun, New York 03 July 1892: pink for a boy, blue for a girl, according to French fashion Baby's Wardrobe Lawrence Democrat 29 September 1893: "Pink for a boy and blue for a girl" is a generally accepted dictum For Small Fry Salt Lake Herald, but with New York dateline, 19 April 1896 (also published in The Morning Times , Washington, and days later with the title For Small Children in the Norfolk Virginian): Pink pique is also used for small gentleman in the baby stages... Blue being a girl's color the sky blue pique is not used for boys Article Omaha Daily Bee 26 July 1896 ( same article in Salt Lake Herald ): generally pink for a boy and blue for a girl Article in The Daily Morning Journal and Courier, New Haven, 01 March 1900: it's pink for a boy and blue for a girl An Arbitrary Rule The Denison review, 29 July 1902 (also published in The Columbus Commercial , the Willmar Tribune , the Barbour County Index , and The Columbian ): you know blue is only for girl babies, pink's for boys.-Philadelphia Press Sending Christmas Gifts Sisseton Weekly Standard, 21 December 1906: If you are sending a gift to a baby, tie it up with blue ribbons if the baby is a girl, pink ribbons if it is a boy Blue for Girls El Paso Herald, 11 December 1912: Dear Miss Fairfax: To settle an argument ... what colors are used for babies..." ...custom has given blue to the girl baby and pink to the boy. Birth Announcements The Monett Time s 14 February 1913: For boys a pink border, for girls a light blue Baby Books Bridgeport Evening Farmer 17 March 1913: blue for girls and pink for boys After a reader disagreed with columnist Cynthia Grey's (pseudonym) advice "pink for a boy, blue for a girl", Grey responded in The Tacoma Times 28 November 1916: According to the authorities at the public library...Pink is for boys and blue for girls. This is an old Dutch custom. When a boy was born a pink ball was hung out and when a girl was born a blue ball was displayed. So in conclusion, though numerous sources can be found starting around 1888 saying that "pink for a boy and blue for a girl" is traditional, others expressed that the tradition was visa versa. A quantitative study was done in 1921. See Correct Color for Birth Card Announcements in volume 89 of The American Stationary and Office Outfitter , 6 August 1921, page 18: Our questionnaire replies showed cities totaling 12,000,000 people using blue for a boy, cities totaling 6,000,000 using pink for a boy. The study was conducted by the National Association of Steel and Copper Engravers with the stated purpose of standardizing the colors and was published in several other journals, such as Geyer's Stationer ; Dry Goods Economist ; Walden's Stationer and Printer and Modern Stationer and Book-Seller | {
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38,629 | According to a Fox News post on Facebook , Comey said during his testimony before the Senate committee that in his opinion, Trump did not try to obstruct justice: Comey said flatly that President Trump did not tell him to drop his investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election; did not try to obstruct justice in his opinion. However, I wasn't able to find any quote by Comey expressing this. Most articles on the matter - such as this one - seem to only include quotes about obstruction in the case of the Flynn investigation, such as Comey saying that the issue is disturbing and concerning, and that a special counsel should work on determining if obstruction occurred. Did Comey say that in his opinion, Trump did not try to obstruct justice? If so, was this in relation to the Flynn investigation, or in relation to the Russia investigation as a whole? | According to the transcript , he did not make a commitment one way or the other: MANCHIN: Do you believe this will rise to obstruction of justice? COMEY: I don’t know. That — that’s Bob Mueller’s job to sort that out. MANCHIN: Thank you, sir. Also: BURR: ....In your estimation, was General Flynn, at that time, in serious legal jeopardy? And in addition to that, do you sense that the president was trying to obstruct justice, or just seek for a way for Mike Flynn to save face, given he had already been fired? COMEY: General Flynn, at that point in time, was in legal jeopardy. There was an open FBI criminal investigation of his statements in connection with the Russian contacts and the contacts themselves. And so that was my assessment at the time. I don’t think it’s for me to say whether the conversation I had with the president was an effort to obstruct. I took it as a very disturbing thing, very concerning, but that’s a conclusion I’m sure the special counsel will work towards, to try and understand what the intention was there, and whether that’s an offense. | {
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38,693 | According to US President Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton destroyed phones with a hammer, presumably during the email scandal mid-2016. This is the first I've heard of that and it sounds... suspicious. Is there any evidence of Clinton or her campaign destroying mobile phones with a hammer? | There are several claims to be addressed in that tweet: Explicit claims: 1. Hillary Clinton is crooked. The definition of "crooked" is unclear . One particular definition would require Hillary Clinton to be guilty of some specific crimes beyond reasonable doubt - for that particular definition the claim is false. Another definition of crooked merely requires Hillary Clinton to be dishonest, which - as with most public figures - is subject to debate. Yet another definition only requires her to be a professional politician, in which case it is true. 2. Hillary Clinton destroyed phones with a hammer. Hard to prove, there is no evidence she personally destroyed a phone with a hammer, and no evidence otherwise. Some of her phones were physically destroyed on disposal, so this is likely a misrepresentation of something else, which I'll get to in the implicit claims. Also, I'm adding "destroy phone with a hammer" to my bucket list. 3. Hillary Clinton bleached emails. Probably no, considering that emails cannot be bleached. "Bleached" might be intended as a stand in for a series of verbs, such as "deleted", "wiped any trace of", or "attempted to wipe any trace of". Depending on the exact meaning of "bleached" this statement could be true or false . Because we can't know the intended meaning of "bleached", the truthfulness of this statement is unclear . 4. Hillary Clinton had Bill Clinton meet with Loretta Lynch. Unproven . Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch did meet , but there is no evidence this happened on Hillary Clinton's request. The source of this claim is Donald Trump, but he himself was unsure at the time, and offered no evidence. His tweet was " Bill's meeting was probably initiated and demanded by Hillary ,". This new information lacks the "probably" of his initial claim, so unless Trump gained additional information this is just a guess. Implicit claims: 1. Hillary Clinton and/or affiliates destroyed phones with a hammer, thus destroying evidence. This seems to be a misrepresentation of the fact that phones were destroyed after migrating data to a new phone, as outlined by BobTheAverage's answer . Destroying a device after migrating data is not usually destruction of evidence. 2. Hillary Clinton and/or affiliates deleted emails to destroy evidence. Unproven , although debatable. The story about how some emails were deleted involves a sufficient amount of details and incompetence to be either completely believable or completely made up, depending on the observer's point of view. 3. Bill Clinton met with Loretta Lynch in order to successfully obstruct the email investigation. The obstruction part is unproven , and the "successful" part seems to be false , considering that the way the investigation was conducted cost Hillary Clinton the Presidency with a reasonable level of confidence. 4. People who talk about obstruction of justice in the Trump case are Hillary Clinton supporters. This is most likely false given that at least one poll claims a quarter of Republicans think Trump tried to obstruct or impede the Russia investigation. 5. If Hillary Clinton commits a crime, it is legal for Donald Trump to commit a similar crime. This is false . For completeness, let's also rate the claim this tweet responds to: Donald Trump committed obstruction of justice in some of his interactions with James Comey. Unproven , although debatable. If we assume Comey's account of the events is untrue then we can assume the claim is false. If we assume Comey's account of events is true, then it's a matter of which law professor you ask . | {
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38,696 | Rasmussen Reports say that Donald Trump's approval rating is at 50%. The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 50% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. While naturally subject to sampling errors, this number seems very high to me. Is Donald Trump truly this popular in the United States? Is this an outlier report? | It seems like this is an outlier. FiveThirtyEight is a data blog that covers politics heavily. One of their projects tracks what different polls say about Trumps approval ratings. They also track pollsters across time, and rate their reliability. As Oddthinking pointed out in the comments, "this is tricky to answer." Five Thirty Eight attempts to answer this by looking at reams of data from many different pollsters. They give Rasmussen a C+. Rasmussen's polls tend to over predict Republican support. Five Thirty Eight's aggregate numbers for Trump's approval are currently 38.6% approval. The Rasmussen poll is included in this aggregate reporting. It shows far higher support for Trump than the other polls. Here's a graphic 538 put together to illustrate this. Further reading on Five Thirty Eight's method for tracking Trump's approval ratings. Further reading on Rasmussen's methodology. Further reading on how Five Thirty Eight rates pollsters. They look at how well results of polls compare to actual outcomes of elections. | {
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38,844 | From Slashdot : A new study by Environmental Progress warns that toxic waste from used solar panels now poses a global environmental threat. The Berkeley-based group found that solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than nuclear-power plants . I'm specifically interested in whether: The article accurately summarizes the study The study withstands scrutiny and whether it has valid criticism The study conclusion is supported by other studies | This study, by a nuclear advocacy group, is based on treating a cubic meter of used solar panels as being equivalent to a cubic meter of spent uranium. Just digging around the links, I find the following: Yes, slashdot's description is pretty accurate. "Environmental progress" is a pro-nuclear advocacy group. The website initially presents as a general environmentalist and social advocacy group, but looking at their "this is a source of concern that we need to mobilize about" pages makes it clear that pro-nuclear is what they do and are. The "study" was made from relatively small amounts of generally available data with a lot of assumptions. It also equates "solar waste" (ie, discarded solar panels, which contain relatively small quantities of things like lead) with nuclear waste (ie, discarded radioactive materials) and compares them by volume (discarded solar panels being significanly less dense than spent uranium). It's pretty blatantly biased. the "study" : The study defines as toxic waste the spent fuel assemblies from
nuclear plants and the solar panels themselves, which contain similar
heavy metals and toxins as other electronics, such as computers and
smartphones. To make these calculations, EP estimated the total number of
operational solar panels in 2016 and assumed they would all be retired
in 25 years — the average lifespan of a solar panel. EP then estimated
the total amount of spent nuclear fuel assemblies that would be
generated over a 25 year period. EP then divided both estimates by the
quantity of electricity they produced to come up with the waste per
unit of energy measure. While nuclear waste is contained in heavy drums and regularly
monitored, solar waste outside of Europe today ends up in the larger
global stream of electronic waste. Solar panels contain toxic metals like lead, which can damage the
nervous system, as well as chromium and cadmium, known carcinogens.
All three are known to leach out of existing e-waste dumps into
drinking water supplies. This was then seized on and amplified by the National Review - not exactly known for a strong pro-environmental stance. ...and the initial bullet points from the site's "Clean Power In Crisis" US Section In the 1960s and 70s, the US was the world leader in nuclear
technologies. Half of the US nuclear fleet is now at risk of premature closure by
2030. Wind and solar receive, respectively, 17 and 140 times more in federal
subsidies than nuclear. Thirty states have mandates to deploy clean energy that exclude
nuclear. It would take 12 years to replace the 120 billion kilowatt-hours of
yearly production from the eleven at-risk nuclear plants with wind and
solar, and 81 years to replace the entire reactor fleet. Dozens of
climate scientists and conservationists urged former president Barack
Obama to do everything in his power to protect and expand America's
largest source of clean energy. They have also written to President
Donald Trump and the leaders of large environmental organizations. So, yeah. A blatantly biased group is twisting the numbers hard to try to make nuclear look good at the expense of non-nuclear clean energy sources. | {
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38,907 | This image claims the following: 2016 was recorded to be the deadliest year for the LGBTQ community. 27 transgender people were murdered in 2016, overtaking previous
records in 2015 (21 deaths), 2014 (20) and 2013 (18), which shows that
transphobic violence is at an all-time high. I want to know two things. First, is the first statement accurate, that 2016 was the deadliest year for the LBGTQ community? If it wasn't, then is the implication from the second sentence, that 2016 was the most deadly date for the transgender community only, not the entire LGBTQ, accurate? To address the usual concerns I've seen mentioned, this image is from cracked.com. However, the site in general claims to provide accurate information, in a comedic fashion, not false information. In addition the 'pictofacts' this image is from are reputed to be 100% accurate and non-comedic facts. As such I would consider this noteworthy, as it will be seen by a large number of individuals and is depicted as being an accurate claim. | The data this claim seems to be based on is severely limited. I applaud their efforts to bring attention to this issue, but they do not appear to be using scientific counting methods, and their data only goes back a few years. Although not explicitly stated in the claim, the claim appears to be specific to the United States. This document published by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) appears to be the source of the 2015 murder numbers in the image. It gives names, pictures and details of 21 trans people murdered in 2015. They do not give details on how they found or verified these names. On page 27 it discusses how the FBI's data collection methods undercount anti-trans violence. The FBI tables for 2015 list 1 trans person murdered. The HRC report says of the FBI's numbers. The FBI has taken important steps toward improving data collection for bias-motivated crimes based on gender identity and expression, but the most
recent data reported (2013) suggests that local jurisdictions fail to report many of these crimes, including homicides, as bias motivated. Note: This report was published in 2015, when the FBI numbers I just linked were not available. Based on the HRC's discussion of the challenges of collecting data, I believe their numbers are also an undercount. I applaud both their effort, and their openness about the weaknesses in their data. The HRC states that "in 2009, the FBI began tracking bias-motivated crimes based on the victim’s actual or perceived gender identity." So not only are the FBI numbers an undercount, they don't go back very far in time. This article , published by an advocacy group for LGBTQ issues, reports the number of murdered transgender people in 2016, but does not say where there data comes from. It also lists the names, and a few details for each murder. It repeats the claim, that 2016 was the deadliest year for trans people, but does not attempt to prove it by presenting any historical data. In summary, I found what appears to be semi-quality data going back a few years that comes from independent organizations. The FBI, which should compile authoritative crime statistics, appears to be severely deficient on this count. The claim that 2016 had more anti-trans murders than any other year ever is not based on historical data. If the claim were revised to say that 2016 had more trans murders than any year since 2013, that claim is grounded in some evidence. In recent years, trans people have gotten more organized, and gotten more media attention. It is entirely possible that the rate of trans murders is flat, but more of those murders are being recognized for what they truly are. The claim could be true, or it could be a case of reporting bias. | {
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38,921 | It is being frequently claimed by Catholic sources (e.g. Catholic News Agency , Catholic Herald ) and even Wikipedia that eight Jesuit priests survived the nuking of Hiroshima with very minor physical damages in spite of them being located very close to the ground zero. It is also claimed that they did not experience any bad long-term effects of radiation. Did they really survive the blast? | Yes, they survived the blast. No, their survival was not unexplainable. The Jesuits are at two locations : They reside at Novitiate of the Society of Jesus in Nagatsuke two kilometers from the edge of the city (and 3 kilometers from the epicenter of the blast), but at the time of the explosion some are at Central Mission and Parish House closer to ground zero. While their survival was uncommon, it was not exceptional. Thirteen percent of the 31,200 people living within one kilometer of ground zero survived the blast, according to this map on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembered , (Computed from data in A. W. Oughterson and S. Warren (Editors), "Medical Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Japan," McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., Chapter 4, 1956). From 1.0 to 2.5 kilometers, 73% survive; from 2.5 to 5 kilometers, 98% survive. According to The Avalon Project at Yale Law School : The central portions of the cities underneath the explosions suffered
almost complete destruction. The only surviving objects were the
frames of a small number of strong reinforced concrete buildings which
were not collapsed by the blast; most of these buildings suffered
extensive damage from interior fires, had their windows, doors, and
partitions knocked out, and all other fixtures which were not integral
parts of the reinforced concrete frames burned or blown away; the
casualties in such buildings near the center of explosion were almost
100%. The Novitiate was on a hill above the city of Hiroshima, according to Siemes . The parish house was in the city next to the church school. Both Siemes and Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge say the wooden structures built by "Brother Gropper" were heavily reinforced due to Gropper's concerns about earthquakes. Kleinsorge later related his experiences to reporter John Hersey, whose Hiroshima was published in The New Yorker : Father Kleinsorge never knew how he got out of the house. The next
things he was conscious of were that he was wandering around in the
mission’s vegetable garden in his underwear, bleeding slightly from
small cuts along his left flank; that all the buildings round about
had fallen down except the Jesuits’ mission house, which had long
before been braced and double-braced by a priest named Gropper, who
was terrified of earthquakes Siemes wrote a separate account of his experience starting at the Novitiate, which he later determined was 3 kilometers from ground zero: I jump to the window to find out the cause of this remarkable
phenomenon, but I see nothing more than that brilliant yellow light.
As I make for the door, it doesn't occur to me that the light might
have something to do with enemy planes. On the way from the window, I
hear a moderately loud explosion which seems to come from a distance
and, at the same time, the windows are broken in with a loud crash.
There has been an interval of perhaps ten seconds since the flash of
light. I am sprayed by fragments of glass. The entire window frame has
been forced into the room. I realize now that a bomb has burst and I
am under the impression that it exploded directly over our house or in
the immediate vicinity. Down in the valley, perhaps one kilometer toward the city from us,
several peasant homes are on fire and the woods on the opposite side
of the valley are aflame. A few of us go over to help control the
flames. While we are attempting to put things in order, a storm comes
up and it begins to rain. Over the city, clouds of smoke are rising
and I hear a few slight explosions. I come to the conclusion that an
incendiary bomb with an especially strong explosive action has gone
off down in the valley. The survivors from the parish house later told Siemes about their experience: "The Church, school, and all buildings in the immediate vicinity collapsed at once." Valuables were removed from the rubble and buried in a clearing to protect them from the spreading fires. "Father Schiffer was buried beneath a portion of a wall and suffered a severe head injury. The Father Superior received most of the splinters in his back and lower extremity from which he bled copiously." Kleinsorge and another priest soon display symptoms of what may be radiation exposure, Siemes wrote: Father Kleinsorge and Father Cieslik, who were near the center of the
explosion, but who did not suffer burns became quite weak some
fourteen days after the explosion. Up to this time small incised
wounds had healed normally, but thereafter the wounds which were still
unhealed became worse and are to date (in September) still
incompletely healed. Siemes was doubtful of radiation's effects and suspected the poor healing was due to malnutrition. Kleinsorge suffered terribly. Hersey relates the story of what happened to the priest, dating it to about three weeks after the explosion as he was walking back from an errand: His knees grew weak. He felt excruciatingly tired. With a
considerable expenditure of spirit, he managed to reach the Novitiate.
He did not think his weakness was worth mentioning to the other
Jesuits. But a couple of days later, while attempting to say Mass, he
had an onset of faintness and even after three attempts was unable to
go through with the service, and the next morning the rector, who had
examined Father Kleinsorge’s apparently negligible but unhealed cuts
daily, asked in surprise, “What have you done to your wounds?” They
had suddenly opened wider and were swollen and inflamed. These four [Kleinsorge and three other survivors] did not realize it, but they were coming down with the
strange, capricious disease which came later to be known as radiation
sickness. Kleinsorge would be hospitalized in Tokyo for four months and was back in the hospital a year later. According to this 1984 New York Times review of Hiroshima : Suffering from fever, diarrhea and utter exhaustion, [Kleinsorge's] was a classic
case history of ''A-bomb sickness.'' But he bore this life of misery
''with the most extraordinarily selfless spirit,'' continuing the
self-abnegating pastoral life. In 1961, his energy flagged, and he
developed liver dysfunction, high blood pressure, back and chest
pains. On his hospital chart in 1976 was written ''a living corpse.''
He died the next year. As of 2007, there were 226,598 officially certified survivors of the atomic bombings still alive in Japan, according to Children of the Atomic Bomb . One note: many of the stories about the Jesuits use this image: Which is the concrete remains of the Nagarekawa Methodist Church of Christ , a Protestant church, not a Catholic Church or Jesuit mission. The actual mission is located behind it, visible in this link: https://bigpulpit.com/2018/12/17/monday-afternoon-edition-76/ | {
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38,962 | In this article Elon Musk is quoted to say that the US can be powered by a solar grid shaped as a square (in video he says "a corner of Utah or Nevada") 100 miles x 100 miles big. “If you wanted to power the entire United States with solar panels, it would take a fairly small corner of Nevada or Texas or Utah; you only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire United States,” Musk said during his keynote conversation on Saturday at the event in Rhode Island. “The batteries you need to store the energy, so you have 24/7 power, is 1 mile by 1 mile. One square-mile.” I'm skeptical, since if it true, then why didn't anyone build this square already? | Can the US be powered by a 100 x 100 miles solar grid? Desertec is basically the same idea, solar plants located in North Africa supplying power to Europe. The article includes a map showing the area required to power Germany, Europe, and the whole world, respectively , as estimated by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). That estimate puts 100x100 miles for the USA in the "plausible" ballpark. Why didn't anyone built this square already? This isn't part of the claim by Elon Musk, but some thoughts on this: One, solar power is dependant on sunlight (obviously). Your solar plant would produce power only at daytime, and at limited capacity when it's overcast. You would need to build excess capacity to cater for bad weather, and you would need to store the energy somewhere during daytime to cater for nighttime demands. Or you'd need to keep some conventional plants on standby. [1] Two, if all the power for all the USA were produced in Nevada, you would need to build massive power lines running all across the continent to supply the east coast, for example. Losing a lot in the transfer, so you need even more excess capacity to make up for those losses. [2] Three, you would need to redeem your investment in that massive solar power plant, so even while sunlight is for free, your solar energy won't be. And you will be competing with existing power providers which already provide 100% of the power required by the US. [3] Four, while you would create a lot of jobs in the solar panel and power line industry, you would also make a lot of people in other industries lose their job. Coal miners, plant workers etc., and that will run into a lot of resistance from the associated lobby groups. There are probably a couple more items I have missed. But it's not as easy as "just plaster a couple of square miles with solar panels and we're done". So, yes, it could be done. But it should be obvious why people are not really eager to do it just that exact way. | {
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38,989 | I was reading a Wikipedia article about Karl Hess . The article contained this quote (emphasis mine): During that time [1967], President Johnson, a Democrat, ordered the Internal Revenue Service to audit him [Hess]. When Hess asked if a certain deduction he had claimed was right, his auditor reportedly replied, "It doesn't matter if it's right; what matters is the law." Incensed that the auditor would show deference to what was "law" over what was "right," Hess sent the IRS a copy of the Declaration of Independence with a letter saying that he would never again pay taxes. The IRS charged him with tax resistance, confiscated most of his property and put a 100% lien on his future earnings . When implementing the penalty, the IRS told Hess that he no longer would be permitted to possess money ; he reminded them that without money he could not buy food and would soon die. The IRS said that was his problem, not theirs. Remarkably, Hess was never incarcerated on this matter, probably due to astute, pro bono legal representation and his status as a folk hero. He was supported financially thereafter by his wife and used barter to keep himself busy. Is it true that the IRS can decree that an individual will no longer "be permitted to possess money?" That seems hyperbolic and extreme. I definitely understand that the government can garnish wages for various reasons but it seems incomprehensible that garnishing all of your future income is lawful. If this action is lawful did this really happen to Karl Hess? | No, the IRS cannot garnish 100% of your income. Before I begin, obviously, IANAL. Some of my sources will come from law advice websites that also have that disclaimer. There is a process that the IRS will follow before any garnishment of wages will take place. According to Nolo , in an article titled "Can the IRS garnish my wages for taxes?", they explain the process that the IRS goes through. The IRS will not start garnishing your wages without giving you notice and an opportunity to make payment arrangements. But, unlike most other creditors, it does not have to first use[sic] you and get a judgment in order to start the garnishment process. To start the process, the IRS must send you a written notice stating the amount you owe. The notice must itemize all of the charges (tax, penalties, and interest) and give you a date by which you must pay the balance in full. If you don't comply with the demand for payment within the stated time, the IRS will then explore how it may most effectively force you to pay the tax. This may include seizing your assets, placing liens on your property, taking future refunds, and garnishing your wages. So to start, the IRS will attempt to reach a resolution with the taxpayer before forcibly seizing property, assessing leins, etc. Writing a check for the missing amount, setting up a payment plan, or negotiating a settlement will forgo the IRS collection process, of which wage garnishment is a part. However, even if you do not come to a settlement with the IRS, they are required to leave a certain amount of your wages. The IRS will take as much as it can and leave you with an amount that the tax code says is necessary for you to pay for basic living necessities. The amount that you can keep corresponds to the number of exemptions you claim for tax purposes. The article links to this datasheet provided by the IRS which details "an individual's income that is exempt from a notice of levy used to collect delinquent tax" for 2017. Note that these protections have been in place since at least 1977 . The source for the story linked within the Karl Hess Wikipedia page seems to be from the book "We Won’t Pay!: A Tax Resistance Reader" by Robert W. McGee and David M. Gross. The relevant section is from pages 437 to 438, reproduced here. About 10 years ago, back in the days when I worked for Republican politicians battling Democratic presidents, constant harassment by the Internal Revenue Service caused me to snap my twig and just stop paying taxes altogether. I won't go into the tedious details, but I will note that I announced my decision to the I.R.S. by sending along a copy of the Declaration of Independence. By return mail, my tax collector informed me that a lien would be placed against all my property, that they would take every cent, literally 100 percent, of every penny I might earn and that they could discern. I asked, then, how they would handle it if I decided to just barter for a living. They had a ready answer: "If you get some turnips for your work, we'll take the turnips." There are a number of things to note in this story The IRS supposedly was communicating with Mr. Hess via mail. However, despite paper records of this correspondence, there seems to be no proof offered besides the word of Mr. Hess. The IRS never told Mr. Hess that he "no longer would be permitted to possess money" With the attached IRS form above, the IRS is not permitted to put a lien on 100% of a person's income, and written correspondence would be proof of this threat. There is no discussion detailed in the book where Mr. Hess tells the IRS "without money he could not buy food and would soon die". The whole incident was started because Mr. Hess decided he did not want to pay taxes anymore after being audited. Mr. Hess, in the book, believed that he was audited in retaliation for "his service to a losing presidential candidate." Note that Mr. Hess was not an advisor, or a close aide, but a speechwriter for Barry Goldwater. Also note that the audit rate around that time, according to this article , was 5.6% of all Americans. There is no indication that, even if all of the above were true, that the IRS actually garnished 100% of his wages. | {
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39,025 | The Heritage Foundation , an American Conservative think tank, has recently published a report listing over a thousand individuals who committed voter fraud: The United States has a long and unfortunate history of
election fraud. The Heritage Foundation is providing a list
of election fraud cases from across the country, broken
down by state, where individuals were either convicted
of vote fraud, or where a judge overturned the results
of an election. This is not an exhaustive list but simply
a sampling that demonstrates the many different ways
in which fraud is committed. Preventing, deterring, and
prosecuting such fraud is essential to protecting the
integrity of our voting process. 1,071 PROVEN INSTANCES OF VOTER FRAUD 938 CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS 43 CIVIL PENALTIES 74 DIVERSION PROGRAMS 8 JUDICIAL FINDINGS 8 OFFICIAL FINDINGS This is at odds with other sources such as Politifact, which states News 21, a national investigative reporting project funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, found 150 alleged cases of double voting, 56 cases of noncitizens voting, and 10 cases of voter impersonation across all elections from 2000 to 2011. Many of these allegations never led to charges, while others were acquitted or dismissed. Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School and an expert on voter fraud, found an even smaller number: 31 credible incidents out of more than 1 billion votes cast from 2000 to 2014. The Washington Post makes similar claims , with regards to the 2016 election There have been just four documented cases of voter fraud in the 2016 election There wasn't evidence of widespread voter fraud before the election. There isn't evidence of widespread voter fraud afterward, either. In fact, there's not evidence of even modest voter fraud. These sources seem to be contradictory. Have there truly been 1,071 proven cases of voter fraud? | The sources are not contradictory. The time period being considered needs to be understood. Heritage is going back to about 1982 (except for one earlier case from 1948 as Antlersoft and Nat point out!). For example: In 1982 , 27 individuals participated in an illegal scheme to boost
Honolulu voter registrations for candidate Ross Segawa. Segawa
was convicted on 10 counts of election fraud, criminal solicitation,
and evidence tampering. Segawa served a year in prison and was
expelled from law school. State Sen. Clifford Uwaine was convicted
of conspiring to illegally register voters and served three months in
jail; and Debra Kawaoka, an aide to Uwaine who also played a part
in the false registration, served numerous weekends in prison. Brian
Minaai and the other students each pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. ... A DOJ investigation of the Illinois election in 1982 estimated that
100,000 fraudulent ballots were cast in the gubernatorial primary.
The investigation was tipped off by a party worker from Chicago’s
39th Ward who was upset by his precinct captain’s broken promise
to award him a city job for his participation in the vote fraud
scheme. The conspirators cast ballots for people who were elderly
and disabled. The investigation resulted in 63 individuals being
convicted, the largest voter fraud case in DOJ history. ... Vander Beatty, a former New York state senator, was convicted
of multiple criminal charges, including forgery and conspiracy,
in relation to election fraud. He led others in a scheme to forge
hundreds of voter registration cards to challenge the result of the 1982 congressional primary that he lost. He was sentenced to 16
months in prison and fined $5,000. The categories of fraud need to be considered. Heritage is considering many types of fraud. Specifically: IMPERSONATION FRAUD AT THE POLLS: Voting in the name
of other legitimate voters and voters who have died, moved away, or
lost their right to vote because they are felons, but remain registered. FALSE REGISTRATIONS: Voting under fraudulent voter
registrations that either use a phony name and a real or fake address
or claim residence in a particular jurisdiction where the registered
voter does not actually live and is not entitled to vote. DUPLICATE VOTING: Registering in multiple locations and voting
in the same election in more than one jurisdiction or state. FRAUDULENT USE OF ABSENTEE BALLOTS: Requesting
absentee ballots and voting without the knowledge of the actual
voter; or obtaining the absentee ballot from a voter and either filling
it in directly and forging the voter’s signature or illegally telling the
voter who to vote for. BUYING VOTES: Paying voters to cast either an in-person or
absentee ballot for a particular candidate. ILLEGAL “ASSISTANCE” AT THE POLLS: Forcing or
intimidating voters—particularly the elderly, disabled, illiterate, and
those for whom English is a second language—to vote for particular
candidates while supposedly providing them with “assistance.” INELIGIBLE VOTING: Illegal registration and voting by individuals
who are not U.S. citizens, are convicted felons, or are otherwise not
eligible to vote. ALTERING THE VOTE COUNT: Changing the actual vote
count either in a precinct or at the central location where votes
are counted. BALLOT PETITION FRAUD: Forging the signatures of registered
voters on the ballot petitions that must be filed with election officials
in some states for a candidate or issue to be listed on the official ballot. For comparison, the News21 source (2012) relied upon by Politifact says: The nation has 2,068 cases of alleged election fraud since 2000 . By category, Unknown had the highest percentage of accused at 31 percent (645 cases), followed by Voters at 31 percent (633 cases). The most prevalent fraud was Absentee Ballot Fraud at 24 percent (491 cases). The status of most cases was Pleaded at 27 percent (558 cases). So, while Politifact may portray the News21 source differently, its database contains more cases than Heritage in a shorter period of time, and includes 648 case where someone pleaded guilty or was otherwise convicted, plus 213 consent orders, in the 2000-2012 time period, plus additional cases of pending or unknown outcome. Similarly, the list of 31 cases from Professor Justin Levitt is from 2000 to 2014, and is limited only to: Credible allegations of potential fraud since 2000 that might have been prevented by a rule requiring ID at the polls | {
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39,028 | The Wikipedia page, Languages user on the Internet provides two different ways of ranking the most popular languages on the Internet. By content: Estimated percentages of the top 10 million websites using various content languages as of 4 March 2017 Under this list, Arabic appears 16th, at 0.8%. By user: Estimates of the number of Internet users by language as of June 30, 2016: Under this list, Arabic appears 4th, at 4.7%. The source for the latter statistic is Internet World Stats . It estimates there are 173,538,690 Arabic Internet users - 42.5% of the Arabic population. I find this source doubtful: it implies that almost half of Arabic speakers (including children) have Internet access and that they use the Arabic "language" (let's assume they all use Modern Standard Arabic ). How do they collect such stats? Is this accurate that there are that many Arabic speakers using the Internet and yet producing a disproportionately low percentage of the content? | The sources are not contradictory. The time period being considered needs to be understood. Heritage is going back to about 1982 (except for one earlier case from 1948 as Antlersoft and Nat point out!). For example: In 1982 , 27 individuals participated in an illegal scheme to boost
Honolulu voter registrations for candidate Ross Segawa. Segawa
was convicted on 10 counts of election fraud, criminal solicitation,
and evidence tampering. Segawa served a year in prison and was
expelled from law school. State Sen. Clifford Uwaine was convicted
of conspiring to illegally register voters and served three months in
jail; and Debra Kawaoka, an aide to Uwaine who also played a part
in the false registration, served numerous weekends in prison. Brian
Minaai and the other students each pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. ... A DOJ investigation of the Illinois election in 1982 estimated that
100,000 fraudulent ballots were cast in the gubernatorial primary.
The investigation was tipped off by a party worker from Chicago’s
39th Ward who was upset by his precinct captain’s broken promise
to award him a city job for his participation in the vote fraud
scheme. The conspirators cast ballots for people who were elderly
and disabled. The investigation resulted in 63 individuals being
convicted, the largest voter fraud case in DOJ history. ... Vander Beatty, a former New York state senator, was convicted
of multiple criminal charges, including forgery and conspiracy,
in relation to election fraud. He led others in a scheme to forge
hundreds of voter registration cards to challenge the result of the 1982 congressional primary that he lost. He was sentenced to 16
months in prison and fined $5,000. The categories of fraud need to be considered. Heritage is considering many types of fraud. Specifically: IMPERSONATION FRAUD AT THE POLLS: Voting in the name
of other legitimate voters and voters who have died, moved away, or
lost their right to vote because they are felons, but remain registered. FALSE REGISTRATIONS: Voting under fraudulent voter
registrations that either use a phony name and a real or fake address
or claim residence in a particular jurisdiction where the registered
voter does not actually live and is not entitled to vote. DUPLICATE VOTING: Registering in multiple locations and voting
in the same election in more than one jurisdiction or state. FRAUDULENT USE OF ABSENTEE BALLOTS: Requesting
absentee ballots and voting without the knowledge of the actual
voter; or obtaining the absentee ballot from a voter and either filling
it in directly and forging the voter’s signature or illegally telling the
voter who to vote for. BUYING VOTES: Paying voters to cast either an in-person or
absentee ballot for a particular candidate. ILLEGAL “ASSISTANCE” AT THE POLLS: Forcing or
intimidating voters—particularly the elderly, disabled, illiterate, and
those for whom English is a second language—to vote for particular
candidates while supposedly providing them with “assistance.” INELIGIBLE VOTING: Illegal registration and voting by individuals
who are not U.S. citizens, are convicted felons, or are otherwise not
eligible to vote. ALTERING THE VOTE COUNT: Changing the actual vote
count either in a precinct or at the central location where votes
are counted. BALLOT PETITION FRAUD: Forging the signatures of registered
voters on the ballot petitions that must be filed with election officials
in some states for a candidate or issue to be listed on the official ballot. For comparison, the News21 source (2012) relied upon by Politifact says: The nation has 2,068 cases of alleged election fraud since 2000 . By category, Unknown had the highest percentage of accused at 31 percent (645 cases), followed by Voters at 31 percent (633 cases). The most prevalent fraud was Absentee Ballot Fraud at 24 percent (491 cases). The status of most cases was Pleaded at 27 percent (558 cases). So, while Politifact may portray the News21 source differently, its database contains more cases than Heritage in a shorter period of time, and includes 648 case where someone pleaded guilty or was otherwise convicted, plus 213 consent orders, in the 2000-2012 time period, plus additional cases of pending or unknown outcome. Similarly, the list of 31 cases from Professor Justin Levitt is from 2000 to 2014, and is limited only to: Credible allegations of potential fraud since 2000 that might have been prevented by a rule requiring ID at the polls | {
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"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/39028",
"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com",
"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/32827/"
]
} |
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