The hilarious thing is that your first example proves me right. Science has pretty firmly established that cellphone radiation is harmless. I understand why people raised questions about their safety, but for decades they've been researched repeatedly and the consensus is clear. You're taking a precaution against an imagined threat and in spite of the other risks you list that you try to manage, my point still stands that you're surrounded by countless other risks you accept or ignore or aren't even aware of. You're an excellent example of what I was talking about. Focusing on specific boogeymen that you imagine are considerable risks while ignoring much more meaningful risks around you because you're either just used to them or blissfully, naively unaware of them. You don't know how to assess where many of the higher relative risks are, so you jump on the risk bandwagon and keep your cellphone in your pocket so you feel safer.
I do not consider it a "considerable" risk. I consider it an unknown one, which is exactly what that article you were just lauding was explaining.
Your conclusion then, as far as I can tell, is that my inability to anticipate threats which I cannot identify means I should take it on faith that this shit is safe because the guy who built the thing has an off the cuff estimate of its danger and that estimate is relatively minimal compared to the ones I do actively avoid, or in the alternative, that the fact that I accept certain risks as necessary means I should accept this one, despite the fact that I don't believe there are any benefits to accepting it.
Let's put it this way: you've got a lot of new indicators in the environment over the years as industry becomes more and more sophisticated, and we ought to evaluate those risks as they appear. We're now talking about introducing a new device into the lives of hundreds of millions of people (let's not forget the TSA agents who work with them every day, either) and we're doing it without evaluating either its efficacy or it's safety. You're constantly repeating how we should be evaluating the risks logically and in comparison to other risks. Well, compare it to the reward we're getting out of implementing these things. On the negative side you have an unestablished risk of increased rates of cancer. On the positive side, you have nothing at fucking all. Why should this be a difficult decision for anyone?
(the cellphone risk, incidentally, is not one related to cancer. I didn't intend to conflate them.)
I think you're confusing what I'm saying as being general support for the scanners. It's not. And I wasn't really talking about risks you can not know about as much as risks that are fairly well understood but that you personally are blissfully unaware of simply because it never occurred to you that it could be a risk, or how much of a risk. I'm talking about how many of us focus unreasonably on a disproportionately small risk while continuing to expose ourselves to much larger risks every day without a second thought. Risks that are known, but we ignore or just blithely accept. I'm not even saying that we should be freaking out about these larger risks either. I'm just saying it's pretty goddamn inconsistent to worry about the safety of your cellphone (I can't even imagine what you're worried about if not the radiation) but not worrying about much more prevalent risks even after 20+ years of research has repeatedly failed to demonstrate any links between cell phones and any kind of cancer or other serious maladies.
What the the holy fuck are you people even arguing about at this point?
I bet its semantics
The correct form would be to say, "I will bet...", so the contraction should read "I'll bet it's..." and that is why Obama's birth certificate is fake.
Stupid Mr Whoopsie Name on
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MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
The hilarious thing is that your first example proves me right. Science has pretty firmly established that cellphone radiation is harmless. I understand why people raised questions about their safety, but for decades they've been researched repeatedly and the consensus is clear. You're taking a precaution against an imagined threat and in spite of the other risks you list that you try to manage, my point still stands that you're surrounded by countless other risks you accept or ignore or aren't even aware of. You're an excellent example of what I was talking about. Focusing on specific boogeymen that you imagine are considerable risks while ignoring much more meaningful risks around you because you're either just used to them or blissfully, naively unaware of them. You don't know how to assess where many of the higher relative risks are, so you jump on the risk bandwagon and keep your cellphone in your pocket so you feel safer.
I do not consider it a "considerable" risk. I consider it an unknown one, which is exactly what that article you were just lauding was explaining.
Your conclusion then, as far as I can tell, is that my inability to anticipate threats which I cannot identify means I should take it on faith that this shit is safe because the guy who built the thing has an off the cuff estimate of its danger and that estimate is relatively minimal compared to the ones I do actively avoid, or in the alternative, that the fact that I accept certain risks as necessary means I should accept this one, despite the fact that I don't believe there are any benefits to accepting it.
Let's put it this way: you've got a lot of new indicators in the environment over the years as industry becomes more and more sophisticated, and we ought to evaluate those risks as they appear. We're now talking about introducing a new device into the lives of hundreds of millions of people (let's not forget the TSA agents who work with them every day, either) and we're doing it without evaluating either its efficacy or it's safety. You're constantly repeating how we should be evaluating the risks logically and in comparison to other risks. Well, compare it to the reward we're getting out of implementing these things. On the negative side you have an unestablished risk of increased rates of cancer. On the positive side, you have nothing at fucking all. Why should this be a difficult decision for anyone?
(the cellphone risk, incidentally, is not one related to cancer. I didn't intend to conflate them.)
I think you're confusing what I'm saying as being general support for the scanners. It's not. And I wasn't really talking about risks you can not know about as much as risks that are fairly well understood but that you personally are blissfully unaware of simply because it never occurred to you that it could be a risk, or how much of a risk. I'm talking about how many of us focus unreasonably on a disproportionately small risk while continuing to expose ourselves to much larger risks every day without a second thought. Risks that are known, but we ignore or just blithely accept. I'm not even saying that we should be freaking out about these larger risks either. I'm just saying it's pretty goddamn inconsistent to worry about the safety of your cellphone (I can't even imagine what you're worried about if not the radiation) but not worrying about much more prevalent risks even after 20+ years of research has repeatedly failed to demonstrate any links between cell phones and any kind of cancer or other serious maladies.
I'm not focusing on this because it's a boogeyman that's going to cause a wave of cancer to spread over the land. I'm saying it's totally reasonable to opt out of it (and I intend to if asked to use one) on the grounds that it's just one more source of an indeterminate amount of cancer risk in my life that I don't need to add on to all the others in my life already, and that it's also reasonable to demand an accounting for exactly how much risk we're exposing the population to in comparison to the (probably) insignificant amount of security it is affording us. Terrorism deaths are worse than cancer deaths, (cancer deaths don't help start wars or influence our ideas about the Fourth Amendment) but when the math isn't available to us and the risk it is designed to prevent is so numerically small, I have no problem at all maintaining a presumption against a machine that operates by spraying x-rays into your dermis on health grounds until proven otherwise.
So you got your pannies in a bunch when I said "x will die" when I should have said "x are very likely to die".. ok yea you got me. Sorry bout that..... Does it make that much difference from a practical standpoint though? When is the chance of something happening significant enough that for all practical purposes it's good enough to just say it "will" happen?
Sematics, serious business.
Well, you know, in risk assessment, being able to coherently parse statistics matters. Going with your gut instinct might feel like the right thing to do, but yes, making a proper argument matters. If you're looking to preach to the choir and get a self-affirming sounding board regardless of logical consistency, you could probably just jerk off in front of a mirror or something.
The hilarious thing is that your first example proves me right. Science has pretty firmly established that cellphone radiation is harmless. I understand why people raised questions about their safety, but for decades they've been researched repeatedly and the consensus is clear. You're taking a precaution against an imagined threat and in spite of the other risks you list that you try to manage, my point still stands that you're surrounded by countless other risks you accept or ignore or aren't even aware of. You're an excellent example of what I was talking about. Focusing on specific boogeymen that you imagine are considerable risks while ignoring much more meaningful risks around you because you're either just used to them or blissfully, naively unaware of them. You don't know how to assess where many of the higher relative risks are, so you jump on the risk bandwagon and keep your cellphone in your pocket so you feel safer.
I do not consider it a "considerable" risk. I consider it an unknown one, which is exactly what that article you were just lauding was explaining.
Your conclusion then, as far as I can tell, is that my inability to anticipate threats which I cannot identify means I should take it on faith that this shit is safe because the guy who built the thing has an off the cuff estimate of its danger and that estimate is relatively minimal compared to the ones I do actively avoid, or in the alternative, that the fact that I accept certain risks as necessary means I should accept this one, despite the fact that I don't believe there are any benefits to accepting it.
Let's put it this way: you've got a lot of new indicators in the environment over the years as industry becomes more and more sophisticated, and we ought to evaluate those risks as they appear. We're now talking about introducing a new device into the lives of hundreds of millions of people (let's not forget the TSA agents who work with them every day, either) and we're doing it without evaluating either its efficacy or it's safety. You're constantly repeating how we should be evaluating the risks logically and in comparison to other risks. Well, compare it to the reward we're getting out of implementing these things. On the negative side you have an unestablished risk of increased rates of cancer. On the positive side, you have nothing at fucking all. Why should this be a difficult decision for anyone?
(the cellphone risk, incidentally, is not one related to cancer. I didn't intend to conflate them.)
I think you're confusing what I'm saying as being general support for the scanners. It's not. And I wasn't really talking about risks you can not know about as much as risks that are fairly well understood but that you personally are blissfully unaware of simply because it never occurred to you that it could be a risk, or how much of a risk. I'm talking about how many of us focus unreasonably on a disproportionately small risk while continuing to expose ourselves to much larger risks every day without a second thought. Risks that are known, but we ignore or just blithely accept. I'm not even saying that we should be freaking out about these larger risks either. I'm just saying it's pretty goddamn inconsistent to worry about the safety of your cellphone (I can't even imagine what you're worried about if not the radiation) but not worrying about much more prevalent risks even after 20+ years of research has repeatedly failed to demonstrate any links between cell phones and any kind of cancer or other serious maladies.
I'm not focusing on this because it's a boogeyman that's going to cause a wave of cancer to spread over the land. I'm saying it's totally reasonable to opt out of it (and I intend to if asked to use one) on the grounds that it's just one more source of an indeterminate amount of cancer risk in my life that I don't need to add on to all the others in my life already, and that it's also reasonable to demand an accounting for exactly how much risk we're exposing the population to in comparison to the (probably) insignificant amount of security it is affording us. Terrorism deaths are worse than cancer deaths, (cancer deaths don't help start wars or influence our ideas about the Fourth Amendment) but when the math isn't available to us and the risk it is designed to prevent is so numerically small, I have no problem at all maintaining a presumption against a machine that operates by spraying x-rays into your dermis on health grounds until proven otherwise.
Oh god, that abstract is hilarious. They don't even hint at how cell phone use could even cause this effect, they merely attribute it to cell phone use because they saw a correlation in the study. Man, I thought you were smarter than to fall for this bs.
edit: I should clarify, the study isn't bs for noting this pattern, rather it's silly for attributing it to cell phone use when simply based on the pattern as far as I can tell.
The hilarious thing is that your first example proves me right. Science has pretty firmly established that cellphone radiation is harmless. I understand why people raised questions about their safety, but for decades they've been researched repeatedly and the consensus is clear. You're taking a precaution against an imagined threat and in spite of the other risks you list that you try to manage, my point still stands that you're surrounded by countless other risks you accept or ignore or aren't even aware of. You're an excellent example of what I was talking about. Focusing on specific boogeymen that you imagine are considerable risks while ignoring much more meaningful risks around you because you're either just used to them or blissfully, naively unaware of them. You don't know how to assess where many of the higher relative risks are, so you jump on the risk bandwagon and keep your cellphone in your pocket so you feel safer.
I do not consider it a "considerable" risk. I consider it an unknown one, which is exactly what that article you were just lauding was explaining.
Your conclusion then, as far as I can tell, is that my inability to anticipate threats which I cannot identify means I should take it on faith that this shit is safe because the guy who built the thing has an off the cuff estimate of its danger and that estimate is relatively minimal compared to the ones I do actively avoid, or in the alternative, that the fact that I accept certain risks as necessary means I should accept this one, despite the fact that I don't believe there are any benefits to accepting it.
Let's put it this way: you've got a lot of new indicators in the environment over the years as industry becomes more and more sophisticated, and we ought to evaluate those risks as they appear. We're now talking about introducing a new device into the lives of hundreds of millions of people (let's not forget the TSA agents who work with them every day, either) and we're doing it without evaluating either its efficacy or it's safety. You're constantly repeating how we should be evaluating the risks logically and in comparison to other risks. Well, compare it to the reward we're getting out of implementing these things. On the negative side you have an unestablished risk of increased rates of cancer. On the positive side, you have nothing at fucking all. Why should this be a difficult decision for anyone?
(the cellphone risk, incidentally, is not one related to cancer. I didn't intend to conflate them.)
I think you're confusing what I'm saying as being general support for the scanners. It's not. And I wasn't really talking about risks you can not know about as much as risks that are fairly well understood but that you personally are blissfully unaware of simply because it never occurred to you that it could be a risk, or how much of a risk. I'm talking about how many of us focus unreasonably on a disproportionately small risk while continuing to expose ourselves to much larger risks every day without a second thought. Risks that are known, but we ignore or just blithely accept. I'm not even saying that we should be freaking out about these larger risks either. I'm just saying it's pretty goddamn inconsistent to worry about the safety of your cellphone (I can't even imagine what you're worried about if not the radiation) but not worrying about much more prevalent risks even after 20+ years of research has repeatedly failed to demonstrate any links between cell phones and any kind of cancer or other serious maladies.
I'm not focusing on this because it's a boogeyman that's going to cause a wave of cancer to spread over the land. I'm saying it's totally reasonable to opt out of it (and I intend to if asked to use one) on the grounds that it's just one more source of an indeterminate amount of cancer risk in my life that I don't need to add on to all the others in my life already, and that it's also reasonable to demand an accounting for exactly how much risk we're exposing the population to in comparison to the (probably) insignificant amount of security it is affording us. Terrorism deaths are worse than cancer deaths, (cancer deaths don't help start wars or influence our ideas about the Fourth Amendment) but when the math isn't available to us and the risk it is designed to prevent is so numerically small, I have no problem at all maintaining a presumption against a machine that operates by spraying x-rays into your dermis on health grounds until proven otherwise.
Oh god, that abstract is hilarious. They don't even hint at how cell phone use could even cause this effect, they merely attribute it to cell phone use because they saw a correlation in the study. Man, I thought you were smarter than to fall for this bs.
edit: I should clarify, the study isn't bs for noting this pattern, rather it's silly for attributing it to cell phone use when simply based on the pattern as far as I can tell.
I like how you've focused on this totally ancillary question in order to totally evade responding to the main thrust of my argument
I often think sounding arrogant is more important to you than making a point, and this is definitely one of those times
The hilarious thing is that your first example proves me right. Science has pretty firmly established that cellphone radiation is harmless. I understand why people raised questions about their safety, but for decades they've been researched repeatedly and the consensus is clear. You're taking a precaution against an imagined threat and in spite of the other risks you list that you try to manage, my point still stands that you're surrounded by countless other risks you accept or ignore or aren't even aware of. You're an excellent example of what I was talking about. Focusing on specific boogeymen that you imagine are considerable risks while ignoring much more meaningful risks around you because you're either just used to them or blissfully, naively unaware of them. You don't know how to assess where many of the higher relative risks are, so you jump on the risk bandwagon and keep your cellphone in your pocket so you feel safer.
I do not consider it a "considerable" risk. I consider it an unknown one, which is exactly what that article you were just lauding was explaining.
Your conclusion then, as far as I can tell, is that my inability to anticipate threats which I cannot identify means I should take it on faith that this shit is safe because the guy who built the thing has an off the cuff estimate of its danger and that estimate is relatively minimal compared to the ones I do actively avoid, or in the alternative, that the fact that I accept certain risks as necessary means I should accept this one, despite the fact that I don't believe there are any benefits to accepting it.
Let's put it this way: you've got a lot of new indicators in the environment over the years as industry becomes more and more sophisticated, and we ought to evaluate those risks as they appear. We're now talking about introducing a new device into the lives of hundreds of millions of people (let's not forget the TSA agents who work with them every day, either) and we're doing it without evaluating either its efficacy or it's safety. You're constantly repeating how we should be evaluating the risks logically and in comparison to other risks. Well, compare it to the reward we're getting out of implementing these things. On the negative side you have an unestablished risk of increased rates of cancer. On the positive side, you have nothing at fucking all. Why should this be a difficult decision for anyone?
(the cellphone risk, incidentally, is not one related to cancer. I didn't intend to conflate them.)
I think you're confusing what I'm saying as being general support for the scanners. It's not. And I wasn't really talking about risks you can not know about as much as risks that are fairly well understood but that you personally are blissfully unaware of simply because it never occurred to you that it could be a risk, or how much of a risk. I'm talking about how many of us focus unreasonably on a disproportionately small risk while continuing to expose ourselves to much larger risks every day without a second thought. Risks that are known, but we ignore or just blithely accept. I'm not even saying that we should be freaking out about these larger risks either. I'm just saying it's pretty goddamn inconsistent to worry about the safety of your cellphone (I can't even imagine what you're worried about if not the radiation) but not worrying about much more prevalent risks even after 20+ years of research has repeatedly failed to demonstrate any links between cell phones and any kind of cancer or other serious maladies.
I'm not focusing on this because it's a boogeyman that's going to cause a wave of cancer to spread over the land. I'm saying it's totally reasonable to opt out of it (and I intend to if asked to use one) on the grounds that it's just one more source of an indeterminate amount of cancer risk in my life that I don't need to add on to all the others in my life already, and that it's also reasonable to demand an accounting for exactly how much risk we're exposing the population to in comparison to the (probably) insignificant amount of security it is affording us. Terrorism deaths are worse than cancer deaths, (cancer deaths don't help start wars or influence our ideas about the Fourth Amendment) but when the math isn't available to us and the risk it is designed to prevent is so numerically small, I have no problem at all maintaining a presumption against a machine that operates by spraying x-rays into your dermis on health grounds until proven otherwise.
ZoelI suppose... I'd put it onRegistered Userregular
edited November 2010
don't drag bogey into this
Zoel on
A magician gives you a ring that, when worn, will let you see the world as it truly is.
However, the ring will never leave your finger, and you will be unable to ever describe to another living person what you see.
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ArtreusI'm a wizardAnd that looks fucked upRegistered Userregular
The hilarious thing is that your first example proves me right. Science has pretty firmly established that cellphone radiation is harmless. I understand why people raised questions about their safety, but for decades they've been researched repeatedly and the consensus is clear. You're taking a precaution against an imagined threat and in spite of the other risks you list that you try to manage, my point still stands that you're surrounded by countless other risks you accept or ignore or aren't even aware of. You're an excellent example of what I was talking about. Focusing on specific boogeymen that you imagine are considerable risks while ignoring much more meaningful risks around you because you're either just used to them or blissfully, naively unaware of them. You don't know how to assess where many of the higher relative risks are, so you jump on the risk bandwagon and keep your cellphone in your pocket so you feel safer.
I do not consider it a "considerable" risk. I consider it an unknown one, which is exactly what that article you were just lauding was explaining.
Your conclusion then, as far as I can tell, is that my inability to anticipate threats which I cannot identify means I should take it on faith that this shit is safe because the guy who built the thing has an off the cuff estimate of its danger and that estimate is relatively minimal compared to the ones I do actively avoid, or in the alternative, that the fact that I accept certain risks as necessary means I should accept this one, despite the fact that I don't believe there are any benefits to accepting it.
Let's put it this way: you've got a lot of new indicators in the environment over the years as industry becomes more and more sophisticated, and we ought to evaluate those risks as they appear. We're now talking about introducing a new device into the lives of hundreds of millions of people (let's not forget the TSA agents who work with them every day, either) and we're doing it without evaluating either its efficacy or it's safety. You're constantly repeating how we should be evaluating the risks logically and in comparison to other risks. Well, compare it to the reward we're getting out of implementing these things. On the negative side you have an unestablished risk of increased rates of cancer. On the positive side, you have nothing at fucking all. Why should this be a difficult decision for anyone?
(the cellphone risk, incidentally, is not one related to cancer. I didn't intend to conflate them.)
I think you're confusing what I'm saying as being general support for the scanners. It's not. And I wasn't really talking about risks you can not know about as much as risks that are fairly well understood but that you personally are blissfully unaware of simply because it never occurred to you that it could be a risk, or how much of a risk. I'm talking about how many of us focus unreasonably on a disproportionately small risk while continuing to expose ourselves to much larger risks every day without a second thought. Risks that are known, but we ignore or just blithely accept. I'm not even saying that we should be freaking out about these larger risks either. I'm just saying it's pretty goddamn inconsistent to worry about the safety of your cellphone (I can't even imagine what you're worried about if not the radiation) but not worrying about much more prevalent risks even after 20+ years of research has repeatedly failed to demonstrate any links between cell phones and any kind of cancer or other serious maladies.
I'm not focusing on this because it's a boogeyman that's going to cause a wave of cancer to spread over the land. I'm saying it's totally reasonable to opt out of it (and I intend to if asked to use one) on the grounds that it's just one more source of an indeterminate amount of cancer risk in my life that I don't need to add on to all the others in my life already, and that it's also reasonable to demand an accounting for exactly how much risk we're exposing the population to in comparison to the (probably) insignificant amount of security it is affording us. Terrorism deaths are worse than cancer deaths, (cancer deaths don't help start wars or influence our ideas about the Fourth Amendment) but when the math isn't available to us and the risk it is designed to prevent is so numerically small, I have no problem at all maintaining a presumption against a machine that operates by spraying x-rays into your dermis on health grounds until proven otherwise.
Oh god, that abstract is hilarious. They don't even hint at how cell phone use could even cause this effect, they merely attribute it to cell phone use because they saw a correlation in the study. Man, I thought you were smarter than to fall for this bs.
edit: I should clarify, the study isn't bs for noting this pattern, rather it's silly for attributing it to cell phone use when simply based on the pattern as far as I can tell.
I like how you've focused on this totally ancillary question in order to totally evade responding to the main thrust of my argument
I often think sounding arrogant is more important to you than making a point, and this is definitely one of those times
My point all along has been that people tend to focus on minor risks to feel like they have some control while ignoring larger risks that they willingly accept and live with every day because they're relying on instinct or emotion rather than logically assessing and understanding where the risks lie. I've been consistent about this all along. The only way your assertion that I've evaded anything makes sense is if you just flat out misunderstood what I was saying. I maintain that you putting your cell phone in your back pack instead of your pocket illustrates exactly the opposite of what you claim it does. You used it as an example of how you do in fact make intelligent choices about risks in your life, when in fact it demonstrates that you're operating on fear and flimsy reasoning while ignoring very real risks all around you that you could actually impact if you bothered to.
you can tell how banal it is by the rings, don'cha know
BEARD on
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MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
edited November 2010
except you're just assuming I'm ignoring the risks you're talking about and totally failing to enumerate, and, even after having conceded that the jury is still out on these machines, continue to act as though they represent a known "minor" risk. The mindset you're talking about does exist. You have, for some reason, assumed that I've fallen victim to it because... I'm not convinced that these machines are safe?
Now, regardless of whether it is "minor" or not, it's still yet another risk element being needlessly proliferated amongst all the others we already have to accept. The difference between this and, say, dealing with car fumes in order to commute or live close to your job, is that this one has such a minuscule positive benefit that the only reason to accept it without protest is on the grounds that "it's not so bad compared to the others that we already accept." (which we don't really have evidence of anyway) Even if that is the case, if you have a philosophy under which you just allow minor risks to proliferate on the grounds that they are minor relative to other environmental factors, you're going to end up with an environment chock fucking full of "minor" risks that add up to overall higher rates of cancer and various other diseases and birth defects. Do you evaluate a risk based on its comparability to other risks of a similar nature? Yes. But the only real reason to accept a risk in the first place is if it has some actual reward, and you have to evaluate the risks in light of their likely return.
if you feel comfortable dismissing the possible risks on the word of the manufacturer, that's fine by me
I'll just be over here getting the pat down until I'm convinced of the safety of the things
Nah, I can guarantee there are all sorts of more significant risks you just ignore. For example, has it ever occurred to you to consider the risks of walking to the market vs driving? Or biking? I assure you the risks are not the same. And yet it never occurs to you to actually analyze the risks or try to understand them. You just accept them and do whichever feels right for you for whatever reasons you use to make that decision. You're surrounded by decisions like this every day that you make without even considering the risk differentials, but someone mentions 1 in 30 million and it seems perfectly reasonable to you to get all worried about that, or to be concerned about the safety of your cellphone based on a single weak study. It's absurdly inconsistent and as a result, you make many decisions that seem intuitive but are in fact blatantly wrong. This is something we all do. The difference is I'm at least aware that we do this and that a 1 in 30 million chance is ridiculously small to be worrying about as an individual.
But go ahead and keep putting your phone in your backpack. At least it makes you feel better.
Not to mention that trying to rate the multitude of minor risks we face in our day-to-day life by severity and tackling them in order is pretty much impossible. Yeah, cell phones may put out a similar or greater amount of radiation than these machines, but trying to eliminate cell-phone usage would be like fighting god at this point. Body scanners, on the other hand, are pointless and are only going to be harder to abandon as people get used to them.
In the end, it's much less about how dangerous something is and more about how easily we can restructure our lives without it. There's a big difference between padding all of the right angles in your house and slopping on some SPF-500 before you go outside, and telling the TSA to kindly go blow themselves instead of shooting space rays at you.
Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
edited November 2010
Funny thing is, most of the long-haul drivers over here are Kiwis. Drivers, not owner/drivers that is. The vast majority of the hundreds of owner/drivers I have met are real 'salt of the earth' kinds of guys. Stand-up blokes just trying to provide for their families.
It's the contract drivers who are doing it just for a quick paycheck, don't give a fuck about other road users, the equipment or the load, and inhale speed like it's fucking sherbert or something.
Posts
I think you're confusing what I'm saying as being general support for the scanners. It's not. And I wasn't really talking about risks you can not know about as much as risks that are fairly well understood but that you personally are blissfully unaware of simply because it never occurred to you that it could be a risk, or how much of a risk. I'm talking about how many of us focus unreasonably on a disproportionately small risk while continuing to expose ourselves to much larger risks every day without a second thought. Risks that are known, but we ignore or just blithely accept. I'm not even saying that we should be freaking out about these larger risks either. I'm just saying it's pretty goddamn inconsistent to worry about the safety of your cellphone (I can't even imagine what you're worried about if not the radiation) but not worrying about much more prevalent risks even after 20+ years of research has repeatedly failed to demonstrate any links between cell phones and any kind of cancer or other serious maladies.
s'probably cancer
The correct form would be to say, "I will bet...", so the contraction should read "I'll bet it's..." and that is why Obama's birth certificate is fake.
It's your junk, bro
I'm not focusing on this because it's a boogeyman that's going to cause a wave of cancer to spread over the land. I'm saying it's totally reasonable to opt out of it (and I intend to if asked to use one) on the grounds that it's just one more source of an indeterminate amount of cancer risk in my life that I don't need to add on to all the others in my life already, and that it's also reasonable to demand an accounting for exactly how much risk we're exposing the population to in comparison to the (probably) insignificant amount of security it is affording us. Terrorism deaths are worse than cancer deaths, (cancer deaths don't help start wars or influence our ideas about the Fourth Amendment) but when the math isn't available to us and the risk it is designed to prevent is so numerically small, I have no problem at all maintaining a presumption against a machine that operates by spraying x-rays into your dermis on health grounds until proven otherwise.
Well, you know, in risk assessment, being able to coherently parse statistics matters. Going with your gut instinct might feel like the right thing to do, but yes, making a proper argument matters. If you're looking to preach to the choir and get a self-affirming sounding board regardless of logical consistency, you could probably just jerk off in front of a mirror or something.
Fert Stert dot org? Really?
I don't believe you've ever even sterted a fert in your life.
step off my ferts
Sorry, but when I am in your butt, the only place to stand is on all of your ferts.
when the hell did dru let you in
Oh god, that abstract is hilarious. They don't even hint at how cell phone use could even cause this effect, they merely attribute it to cell phone use because they saw a correlation in the study. Man, I thought you were smarter than to fall for this bs.
edit: I should clarify, the study isn't bs for noting this pattern, rather it's silly for attributing it to cell phone use when simply based on the pattern as far as I can tell.
Should I go for the scan or the feel-up?
I like how you've focused on this totally ancillary question in order to totally evade responding to the main thrust of my argument
I often think sounding arrogant is more important to you than making a point, and this is definitely one of those times
like, someone who's really good at dancing?
an understandable mistake
However, the ring will never leave your finger, and you will be unable to ever describe to another living person what you see.
but anyone who pronounces it like "bow gee man" is probably a filthy lobsterback and not to be trusted
My point all along has been that people tend to focus on minor risks to feel like they have some control while ignoring larger risks that they willingly accept and live with every day because they're relying on instinct or emotion rather than logically assessing and understanding where the risks lie. I've been consistent about this all along. The only way your assertion that I've evaded anything makes sense is if you just flat out misunderstood what I was saying. I maintain that you putting your cell phone in your back pack instead of your pocket illustrates exactly the opposite of what you claim it does. You used it as an example of how you do in fact make intelligent choices about risks in your life, when in fact it demonstrates that you're operating on fear and flimsy reasoning while ignoring very real risks all around you that you could actually impact if you bothered to.
you can tell how banal it is by the rings, don'cha know
Now, regardless of whether it is "minor" or not, it's still yet another risk element being needlessly proliferated amongst all the others we already have to accept. The difference between this and, say, dealing with car fumes in order to commute or live close to your job, is that this one has such a minuscule positive benefit that the only reason to accept it without protest is on the grounds that "it's not so bad compared to the others that we already accept." (which we don't really have evidence of anyway) Even if that is the case, if you have a philosophy under which you just allow minor risks to proliferate on the grounds that they are minor relative to other environmental factors, you're going to end up with an environment chock fucking full of "minor" risks that add up to overall higher rates of cancer and various other diseases and birth defects. Do you evaluate a risk based on its comparability to other risks of a similar nature? Yes. But the only real reason to accept a risk in the first place is if it has some actual reward, and you have to evaluate the risks in light of their likely return.
if you feel comfortable dismissing the possible risks on the word of the manufacturer, that's fine by me
I'll just be over here getting the pat down until I'm convinced of the safety of the things
But go ahead and keep putting your phone in your backpack. At least it makes you feel better.
I don't know how much relation that has to the quote redwood because fuck reading all that
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Microwaves?! I hear those aren't safe for you!
they dangle there for a reason, underwear is obviously unnatural and against the will of allah
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i tried explaining this the last time i was in Starbucks, but nooooooooo that woman totally refused to stop screaming.
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
What a prude.
Lots of long-haul truckers have problems with sterility.
Nuts being all cooped up for hours and hours...
Nowadays lots of nicer trucks have an aircon vent under the steering column that points straight at your junk to keep the boys cool and fresh.
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It's the contract drivers who are doing it just for a quick paycheck, don't give a fuck about other road users, the equipment or the load, and inhale speed like it's fucking sherbert or something.
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That might explain how batshit insane she was.
Satans..... hints.....
Well, yeah, trucker dads are often not around. 3-4 days driving from Perth to Sydney, swap out load, drive back.
Every week.