Questions you want answered (P&C Edition)

Tkyl wrote:

Can you link to this test?

Here ya go.

El-Taco-the-Rogue wrote:

Could anyone recommend me a podcast that'll help me get my head around international relations/current crises like Syria? I know this isn't a political question, but this seems like the forum that would offer the best suggestions.

http://www.noagendashow.com/

Canada geese poop when they fly.

Over my car.

groan wrote:

Canada geese poop when they fly.

Over my car.

Our parking lot was full of them this morning.

How is this not a declaration of war by Canada??

Canada declared war long ago when it released Brian Adams, Nickleback and Celine Dion upon the world. The geese are no more than a minor skirmish.

The internet tells me the Canadian goose is/was an endangered species. What's that about?

Seth wrote:

The internet tells me the Canadian goose is/was an endangered species. What's that about?

Well duh. Soldiers always have a lower life expectancy than the general public. Consider them not so much 'geese' as 'combatants'. As a bonus, this allows us to attack them using drones without feeling guilty!

Rallick wrote:
Seth wrote:

The internet tells me the Canadian goose is/was an endangered species. What's that about?

Well duh. Soldiers always have a lower life expectancy than the general public. Consider them not so much 'geese' as 'combatants'. As a bonus, this allows us to attack them using drones without feeling guilty!

Since when did we feel guilty about attacking things with drones?

Seth wrote:

The internet tells me the Canadian goose is/was an endangered species. What's that about?

I think that was only a specific subspecies. Giant Canada Goose, perhaps.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Rallick wrote:
Seth wrote:

The internet tells me the Canadian goose is/was an endangered species. What's that about?

Well duh. Soldiers always have a lower life expectancy than the general public. Consider them not so much 'geese' as 'combatants'. As a bonus, this allows us to attack them using drones without feeling guilty!

Since when did we feel guilty about attacking things with drones?

Touché!

Quintin_Stone wrote:

How is this not a declaration of war by Canada??

By sending in The Wild Geese? (Apparently I'm the only one who was watching war movies in 1978).

IMAGE(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4e/The_Wild_Geese_%281978_film%29_poster.jpg)

Funkenpants wrote:

By sending in The Wild Geese? (Apparently I'm the only one who was watching war movies in 1978).

It's on Netflix Watch Instantly. Just watched it a few weeks ago.

I know I have this WTF reaction every few weeks but I still feel the need to share. As I've mentioned a few times before, one of my co-workers is a hardcore adherent to the all-natural, herbal, organic, etc school of food and healthcare. At lunch today she was telling me about the newest thing she's trying and how amazing it is. Apparently it's called Oil Pulling and, at least in certain circles, it's all the rage. When she gets up in the mornings she puts a tablespoon of either coconut oil or sunflower oil in her mouth and swishes it around for 10-20 minutes. By doing that it "pulls all of the toxins out" of her body turning the oil white and making it taste horrible. She then spits it out thereby relieving her body of the toxins.

I mean, we've had the conversation on here bfore of the bunk which is "pulling toxins from the body" but I'm still amazed that stuff like this gains traction in this day and age. It just seems to me to be on the level of magical healing rocks and cure-all tonics. My big question is do you think the people that start these trends know they're bunk and just try to start this crap just so they can sell their books (which apparently the oil pulling guy has) or are they honest beliefs. I know, I know. No real answer here as it'll be "some do, some don't". But really, it just seems like the modern day snake oil salesmen and people are buying into them just because they have a website and a book.

I think they're mostly thought up by the snake oil salesmen, and spread by true believers.

Without going into potential reasons for why, it seems to be a common thread for our species to feel that its natural state is impure, soiled, sullied, dirty, etc.

silly things like sucking toxins out through your feet, doing a detox cleanse diet, or...using oil as mouthwash?? just seem to be another way of making the mind feel clean.

Stengah wrote:

I think they're mostly thought up by the snake oil salesmen, and spread by true believers.

I spent five years working at an organic foods co-operative which was basically a breeding ground for this sort of thing, and in my experience it's about a 50/50 split between the snake oil salesmen and naive people who think they have a better grasp on reality than they actually do.

Kehama wrote:

I know I have this WTF reaction every few weeks but I still feel the need to share. As I've mentioned a few times before, one of my co-workers is a hardcore adherent to the all-natural, herbal, organic, etc school of food and healthcare. At lunch today she was telling me about the newest thing she's trying and how amazing it is. Apparently it's called Oil Pulling and, at least in certain circles, it's all the rage. When she gets up in the mornings she puts a tablespoon of either coconut oil or sunflower oil in her mouth and swishes it around for 10-20 minutes. By doing that it "pulls all of the toxins out" of her body turning the oil white and making it taste horrible. She then spits it out thereby relieving her body of the toxins.

I mean, we've had the conversation on here bfore of the bunk which is "pulling toxins from the body" but I'm still amazed that stuff like this gains traction in this day and age. It just seems to me to be on the level of magical healing rocks and cure-all tonics. My big question is do you think the people that start these trends know they're bunk and just try to start this crap just so they can sell their books (which apparently the oil pulling guy has) or are they honest beliefs. I know, I know. No real answer here as it'll be "some do, some don't". But really, it just seems like the modern day snake oil salesmen and people are buying into them just because they have a website and a book.

I just showed this to my friend the New Age Fungus-Muncher (seriously, she has a tramp-stamp of that in Chinese), and she started laughing. When she thinks it's way out there, it's way way out there.

You should inform her that you just read something that said that oil pulling is way more effective if you do it repeatedly, once after another, for 8 hours constantly, ideally between 9am and 5pm.

Boom! You no longer have to listen to her bullsh*t, as she'll be too busy swishing the whole work day long

I believe that the body generates toxins and that it's necessary to remove them from the body regularly to remain healthy.

I generally rely on my kidneys to do that, though.

Stengah wrote:

I think they're mostly thought up by the snake oil salesmen, and spread by true believers.

Yep. They have the same appeal as get-rich-quick schemes, and usually hit the same people. I don't need to exercise and eat right, I can take this pill while my fat gets jiggled by this belt machine. I don't need to go to a doctor who might tell me to change my habits, I can lie on this crystal healing bed. My bad luck/laziness/financial ruin is caused by bad humors spirits toxins in my system, which must be purged with sacred special herbs and oils.

I've actually argued with my wife about this kind of thing quite a bit. She comes from a culture with a lot more superstition and folk medicine than mine, and she stills buys into some of it. The positive results of modern medicine and the lack of any reinforcement of belief in ghosts and spirits is slowly converting her, but the country she comes from isn't dropping them anytime soon.

Preaching to the choir by posting this here again, but there is rarely a bad time to watch it.

Thoughts on alternative medicine:

I think there's a deeper reason and that's the limits of medicine. There's a lot of situations and diseases where unfortunately there's just nothing left to do. Some people do get lucky and pull through. Some don't. But if you're staring into the face of inoperable cancer or something similar and an honest doctor has just explained 'there's nothing left we can do.' (Possibly with the addendum, 'pray.') alternative medicine atleast offers you the refuge of doing something. So you're bathing in wheat grass salts or whatever. At least it's something, and inactivity can be the hardest thing in the world. And you may have heard of someone's cousin bob who had the same disease, poked themselves in the leg with a holy crystal nine times a day, and survived. Sure, the holy crystal did nothing, but it's a bit of hope right? Hard to get that when an honest doctor admits, 'Dude, we got nothing.'

Secondarily is the arcane nature of modern science and medicine itself. 'Any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic' seems applicable. What's radiation therapy? We're shooting an invisible ray gun at you so kill all the bad stuff while leaving the good stuff alone. Yeah, there's a lot of depth to it but superficially, how is that different from a magical crystal? We've got modern medicine backing one thing up, while the crystal salesmen are claiming they have hundreds if not thousands of years of crystal science backing their side up too. It also ties into the powerful gnostic theory, which wouldn't have stuck around so long if it didn't resonate well.

Finally is the convoluted nature of modern science. Very few people are really going to understand what doctors tell them as things get sophisticated. Most people wind up with these self-constructed paradigms that mimic science but translate it to English and simplify things down. I've seen it a dozen times on this and other boards where people wonder ie 'how do magnets work?' but don't want to read a string of equations. The 'how' is the string of equations. It's not the words. Reading some words on physics is like analyzing French poetry in Russian. But in a strange and scary situation, ie sickness, they want something they understand to cling to, and there the crystal-mancy or as noted above, oil toxin purging, is given simply, put into cohesive English, and delivered by a guy who's probably a charismatic salesmen. A lot of doctor's aren't charismatic. When Dr Bob gives me a medicine I can't pronounce to treat some nitrate level I've never heard of, really it just comes down to trust. So trusting to oil-mouthwash swishing is is just trust in a different direction.

Lack of critical thinking. Some remedies described as "alternative" actually does work.

LarryC wrote:

I believe that the body generates toxins and that it's necessary to remove them from the body regularly to remain healthy.

I generally rely on my kidneys to do that, though.

I was going to post a picture of a slam dunk, but apparently there is a manga called Slam Dunk which has rendered GIS useless for finding pictures of actual slam dunks.

So here's an ASCII slam dunk instead:

 o/ò  |
//  V-|=.
/|        ||
           ||

Why the hell are Regal theaters playing something like 2016: Obama's America?

Kraint wrote:

Why the hell are Regal theaters playing something like 2016: Obama's America?

Sadly, because people will pay to see it.

momgamer wrote:
Kehama wrote:

I know I have this WTF reaction every few weeks but I still feel the need to share. As I've mentioned a few times before, one of my co-workers is a hardcore adherent to the all-natural, herbal, organic, etc school of food and healthcare. At lunch today she was telling me about the newest thing she's trying and how amazing it is. Apparently it's called Oil Pulling and, at least in certain circles, it's all the rage. When she gets up in the mornings she puts a tablespoon of either coconut oil or sunflower oil in her mouth and swishes it around for 10-20 minutes. By doing that it "pulls all of the toxins out" of her body turning the oil white and making it taste horrible. She then spits it out thereby relieving her body of the toxins.

I mean, we've had the conversation on here bfore of the bunk which is "pulling toxins from the body" but I'm still amazed that stuff like this gains traction in this day and age. It just seems to me to be on the level of magical healing rocks and cure-all tonics. My big question is do you think the people that start these trends know they're bunk and just try to start this crap just so they can sell their books (which apparently the oil pulling guy has) or are they honest beliefs. I know, I know. No real answer here as it'll be "some do, some don't". But really, it just seems like the modern day snake oil salesmen and people are buying into them just because they have a website and a book.

I just showed this to my friend the New Age Fungus-Muncher (seriously, she has a tramp-stamp of that in Chinese), and she started laughing. When she thinks it's way out there, it's way way out there. ;)

Does she know what the character means? I met a guy who had something to the effect of "chicken pieces" tattooed on his leg... he already knew, and seemed to have come to terms with it.

Oh, she knows. She did it on purpose. And it's sort of my fault.

I used to work with her. She's really good at her job. We've been good friends for over 10 years now, but I'm not certain we're the same species.

Years ago now she decided that she was going to go whole hog into several of the more interesting philosophies that are floating around out there. Went Ayurvedic, got into Reiki and about three other sorts of energy work, started Feng Shui, and I have no idea what else. Those are just the ones I recognized. We both give each other crap about what she calls our "life approaches". She calls me a "bun-wearing Bible-thumper", and I'll reply with "Confuscious" or "California" unless more specific inspiration strikes. It may strike the reader as mean, but we both respect the other's beliefs and this is just teasing.

She decided that she needed to get a tattoo. She looked around for various things. I told her about a friend who has ohm on her ankle, and she likes that idea a lot, but she wanted something bigger. She was going to get the seven chakras tattooed in their appropriate places, but that turned out to prohibitively expensive (and she wasn't sure how she was going to manage the top one). I told her that reminded me of those kids who write the answers to tests on their arms under their shirt-sleeves. Plus I can't even imagine how getting a tattoo on your forehead would hurt.

She was looking in one of her Feng Shui books for some stuff, and thought she might get her cardinal virtues in Chinese kanji tattooed across her lower back. Again with the ouch. She couldn't pick which ones, and brought the book to a coffee date we made and was rattling on about it. After several fairly expressive eyerolls, she asked me what I thought. I told her she should just get a guy we know from Taiwan to tell her the characters for New Age Fungus-Muncher. It would probably look really cool and would cover all her various disciplines in one stroke.

She spit green tea over half the table laughing, so it was a good joke. I just can't tell which one of us it was on. She had it done in henna for a while, just to see if she liked it. About a year later, she got it, and she loves it still. She still picks up new stuff on a fairly regular basis. Her most recent adventures have been in pet therapy by telepathy. I kid you not; I tell you true.

momgamer wrote:

I told her she should just get a guy we know from Taiwan to tell her the characters for New Age Fungus-Muncher. It would probably look really cool and would cover all her various disciplines in one stroke.

She spit green tea over half the table laughing, so it was a good joke. I just can't tell which one of us it was on. She had it done in henna for a while, just to see if she liked it. About a year later, she got it, and she loves it still. She still picks up new stuff on a fairly regular basis. Her most recent adventures have been in pet therapy by telepathy. I kid you not; I tell you true.

Ha well at least she's aware of her new age fungus munchiness.

Is there such a thing as an indefensible statement in politics any more?

In this highly partisan world we all live in, just how bad does a message from a politician have to be to not have someone from the same side leaping to the defense of the utterer?

The Akin thing is just the latest example but I'm starting to get the feeling that there is nothing that wouldn't be defended by another politician or pundit.

The problem with politics is that it is the last place where saying that you were wrong and have changed your mind is a bad thing. Doesn't matter that you didn't have all the data before, or that it was misinterpreted, or that someone misled you.

In politics, once you have taken a position, god help you should you decide to change.