Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

[RadiantPhoenix]

Good news, unlike smoking, which is going to kill you, and by extension your brain, weed isn't going to hurt your brain.

Weed is more likely than tobacco to get your head banged around by overzealous enforcement. (at least in the 'states)

[fectin]

Regularly flooding your system with any chemical will probably adapt your brain to working with that chemical. So yes, weed will change your brain, but so will booze, caffeine, exercise, bacon, and likely even water. So, take claims about brain effects with a grain of salt.
That said, moderation is always a good policy.

Re ecigs: I don't know what Kaelik is on about. Normal mixture is propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin as a base, plus flavors and nicotine. You absolutely can just leave the nicotine out, but AFAIK, most commercial ones don't. You also could stick tar in, but then it probably won't disperse as cleanly.

[Kaelik]

Re ecigs: I don't know what Kaelik is on about. Normal mixture is propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin as a base, plus flavors and nicotine. You absolutely can just leave the nicotine out, but AFAIK, most commercial ones don't. You also could stick tar in, but then it probably won't disperse as cleanly.

It doesn't matter if they leave the nicotine out or put it in, because your body does not absorb the nicotine in the vapor. So congratulations on your placebo.

And they do but the tar back in, because as stated, people like that more, so since it isn't regulated, and they don't have to be honest, it is a good marketing technique to put the shit back in. And when they tested them, many manufactures were in fact doing that.

[Prak]

Re: Weed

While I am forced to admit that it is now the minority of people I know who smoke weed which give the image, I basically associate smoking pot with being incredibly stupid. Not like it's a dumb thing to do, like pot drops your IQ by about forty to fifty points.
Completely anecdotal, and the people who give that impression are probably stupid to begin with, but it's the mental association I have. I also cannot stand the smell, and said smell gives me a headache to boot.

It's also fucking expensive. I mean, American Spirits are pricey too, but $7 for a month of smoking is a lot better than, what, $80?

Re: ecigs

As far as I know, the FDA hasn't reviewed them or whatever yet, and it's basically a free for all as to what is put in the cartridges.

[fectin]

Kaelik, you are incorrect. Prescription nicotine inhalers have two ingredients: nicotine and menthol, and deliver about 50% of total nicotine (menthol slows nicotine removal). Why do you think flavor and fog would change that?

[Kaelik]

Kaelik, you are incorrect. Prescription nicotine inhalers have two ingredients: nicotine and menthol, and deliver about 50% of total nicotine (menthol slows nicotine removal). Why do you think flavor and fog would change that?

1) I am completely correct about that additions of carcinogens and tar. Do you dispute that with your claim of prescription inhalers?

2) There was a study. Why is that different from Nicotine Inhalers? Well A) whatever you add to create fog might in fact make it difficult to absorb the nicotine. Maybe the attempt to simulate a smoking experience by spreading it out over a long time of less concentrated dose prevents absorption, or the stupid shape. B) Maybe it isn't all that different, since inhalers are not set out to give you the same nicotine levels as cigarettes. In fact they are designed to provide significantly less, so ... I don't know.

EDIT: Also relevant: This study which primarily checked whether it reduced the desire to smoke, but did take Nicotine levels, and noted:

On average, the ENDD increased serum nicotine to a peak of 1.3 [n]g/ml in 19.6 min, the inhalator to 2.1 ng/ml in 32 min and cigarettes to 13.4 ng/ml in 14.3 min.

Which means they deliver less nicotine by a factor of 10 than cigarettes.

So now in answer to your above questions, I believe I can answer that you are wrong about prescription nicotine inhalers which do not deliver anywhere near half the nicotine of cigarettes, but e-cigs do act comparably to them, except without being regulated for additives.

[fectin]

http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/10/6/2500/pdf

Also this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/22311962/

Biased but cited analysis here: http://www.ecita.org.uk/blog/index.php/ ... rette-use/

And again: inhalers covered here, along with in depth summaries of smoking and nicotine: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2953858/

[Kaelik]

http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/10/6/2500/pdf

So you cite a study showing that current e-cigs have less than 1/4th the nicotine concentration required to achieve the same level as the ISO standard for cigarettes which "significantly underestimates nicotine delivery by tobacco cigarettes" according to your study.

I mean, did you even read the study? The entire conclusion of the study is that if you more than quadruple the nicotine concentration of e-cigs you would still be actually receiving the same amount of nicotine as is currently claimed to be in cigarettes, but the study points out specifically that the claimed amount in cigarettes is actually much less than the actual.

This isn't an argument for your position in any fathomable way.

And they didn't even get people to ingest as much nicotine as cigarettes in the study, they used a non commercial inhaler which is more than twice as concentrated as commercial ones, and they still didn't get people up to the level of cigarettes, and extrapolated that a further doubling would get people there.

EDIT: and your second study doesn't show any numbers in the abstract, so there is no reason for me to believe that "increased significantly" is any more than 1.3 ng/ml, which is still one tenth of a cigarette.

[fectin]

In fact, I did read it. I even kept going past the abstract, and so read the explanation for why this methodology was appropriate.

I had also previously read the Benowitz paper, which summarizes why your studies' methodologies are bad.

[Kaelik]

In fact, I did read it. I even kept going past the abstract, and so read the explanation for why this methodology was appropriate.

Hey dumbshit, I'm not disputing the methodology, I'm pointing out that the conclusion of that paper is that E-cigs are not getting you fucking high. That is literally the conclusion of the study. Yes, theoretically you could get as high as a cigarette if you used a device that is more powerful than all existing e-cigs and used a liquid four times as concentrated. That doesn't change the fact that e-cigs are not getting you high, which is what your study (the one that I can see the actual study of) says.

[Red Archon]

About libertarians. This is something I can't wrap my head around: what are they trying to accomplish right now? I mean, the heir ideology is obviously evil and/or explicitly wrong when starting from scratch, like if there was no economic infrastructure in place at all, they would like to create an entirely unregulated marketplace and that's idiotic. But that's not what confuses me about them. If their ideal terms were met, as in all government interference was shut down right now, how on earth do they suppose the market would be equal and free, what with Walmart and GE and Unilever and shit already in place? Without regulation, we'd go immediately to absolute monopolies in essentially all markets for all commodities.

So what do these baboons want right now, in this ready world?

[Koumei]

They want complete monopolies where like one company owns the entire world. Duh.

Usually the people pushing for this have some kind of stake in some kind of big-ish company, and they don't realise that A) somebody else would take their shares or whatever, and B) unless it's *the biggest* company, it'll still end up getting bulldozed by a bigger one. So they're bad people, they're just not very bright.

And then there are the ones who don't want that extreme. All they want right now is the government to "back off from some things in some undefined ways". They're the most likely to just be in favour of "legalise pot" and nothing else. But they also might be in favour of "Stop taxing me and spending those taxes on emergency services! Just let people pay their own personal police/fire-protection-racket/medical team, and if you're too poor for that, well fuck you."

[Red Archon]

My problem is with these seemingly smart people, especially in their late twenties, who are in no executive positions and for example study or have graduated in economics, law or so on. It's a surprisingly large group. I can't just ask these fuckwits, because I'm not usually in the best of terms with those I know. So excluding completely insane, very rich or very stupid folks, it seems they should have some sort of an idea of where they're going with this stuff, but I can't understand where.

The other extreme I understand and support, that is, socialising all core services entirely, driving out foreign mega corporations and such. When someone would ask me or a more vehement fan of the ideology the same question, ie., "what do you want right now, in this ready world?" I wouldn't have trouble answering in length and detail. The far right folks don't seem to have that.

[Maj]

I don't think people know what their government actually does. In some ways, the shutdown was a valuable lesson - people who didn't know that their lives were being assisted by the government learned that maybe there were useful functions after all.

[Username17]

Libertarian ideology spreads for two main reasons:

• It's really simple and easy to explain in soundbite-sized chunks.
• It's supported by billionaires who hire numerous intellectuals, pseudo-intellectuals, bloggers, mobs of actors, and pundits to create the superficial appearance of a vast grass roots effort and a deep intellectual tradition.

This allows the Libertarian "movement" to repeatedly collect new suckers, each of whom is convinced that there is a vast wealth of evidence and philosophical discourse supporting their beliefs.

Now as to what they want, that depends on what strata of the organization they are in. You've got your Koch brothers of course, the people who want to wield Libertarian mobs as a blunt instrument to take down taxes and environmental regulations that are costing them money. That is of course where all the money comes from, and all the people on "wing nut welfare" writing pseudo-scientific prose at the Cato Institute or political attack hackery at Americans For Prosperity are ultimately just hired goons for this upper echelon. At the lower end, you get the nakedly selfish douchebags who want to become Koch brothers and believe (falsely, as it happens) that they will have a better chance of making it big and becoming a slave holding corporate lord if taxes are reduced. But you also have true believers taken in by overly simplistic rants about pareto efficiency or market distortions who believe (falsely, as it happens), that reducing the taxation and spending of government would grow the economy.

There are at least four different levels of Libertarianism, and they support the movement for different reasons and think the movement will give them different things. You've got the corporate puppet masters, the mercenaries they fund directly, and at least two layers of useful idiots: the ones who have been taken in by the prole feed that claims that the Libertarian movement would be good for public welfare, and the ones who have been taken in by the second layer of prole feed that admits that the movement sucks for public welfare but promises that movement joiners can be part of the inner circle that lives in opulence while the public toils in darkness. There are probably actually more layers, because self empowerment cults tend to collect more layers of secret truths like dust on an abandoned car.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

My problem is with these seemingly smart people, especially in their late twenties, who are in no executive positions and for example study or have graduated in economics, law or so on. It's a surprisingly large group. I can't just ask these fuckwits, because I'm not usually in the best of terms with those I know. So excluding completely insane, very rich or very stupid folks, it seems they should have some sort of an idea of where they're going with this stuff, but I can't understand where.

I am friends with a fair chunk of those, except none of them are economics majors.

In my experience, they seem to genuinely believe that somehow people will choose not to support bad companies, and choose to not have monopolies. When I approach them about things like the fact that they smoke cigarettes, or the fact that people don't know who bad companies are without disclosure laws they seem to have this absurd essentialist belief about the inherent power of the human soul that would cause everyone to just not eat food unless the company selling them the food disclosed everything about the food.

It really is just a priori commitment to libertarianism with increasingly stupid and ad hoc justifications all the way down.

Unlike you, I do not find that surprising at all. That might be because in law school we are taught that obviously all your classmates are smart people too, but by definition, half of them are wrong because you are split into arbitrary halves to support positions at times, ect. And being a lawyer, you continue to have respect for opposing lawyers who argue well, but due to client bias, you also believe them to be completely wrong.

[tussock]

what are [Libertarians] trying to accomplish right now?

Nothing. They're 3e-Chaotic, there's no goals, just a love of individually awesome people and hatred of regulation and routine that was applied without meaningful consent. Show them a regulation and they'll hate on it for you, but not actually do anything about changing it because whut? You know, personal cost-benefit, be nice if someone else did something or whatever though.

And as Frank noted, some of them are rich enough to have different cost-benefit outlooks, because paying lots of other people to write crazy shit for a living is such a tiny cost to them. Most of the middle ranks are just self-involved in getting personally aggrandised, so a bigger car or whatever, because that proves they're better at ... something, and thus more worthy of love.

[Prak]

On the subject of incomprehensible political parties, what is the appeal of the republican party if one is not racist/homophobic/sexist/rich?

[Maxus]

The Good Old Days, I suppose.

As a filthy librul who lives in a red state, I'll say that outright racism and homophobia/etc is rarer than you ignernt Yankees would think (in that it's a notable event for me to hear someone openly advocating racism and years pass between such incidents; homophobia is more common. Such is life in Alabama), but the same ends are supported by people who really are afraid that America's changing for the worse and try to claim the various horrific shootings and so one and how "That never happened when I was coming up!"

And shit probably did happen at least as bad as that, but they weren't living in the information age.

Nostalgia's a poison to the mind and memory.

Another bunch are wrong about stuff like economics and social policy and think the Democrats will run the country into the ground because America's got a welfare system/not on the gold standard/is gonna be owned by China/etc.

Then you have the religious (head)cases who pay a lot of attention to Leviticus and less to the Jesus-y "Love everyone" parts of the Bible.

And then you have the good old Crazification Factor, where about 25% percent of the population is just crazy.

[Username17]

On the subject of incomprehensible political parties, what is the appeal of the republican party if one is not racist/homophobic/sexist/rich?

Mostly it's those things of course. But there's also simple nihilism, ignorance, and of course identity. Simple nihilism is obviously the easiest to explain. Some people want to burn everything down and either replace it with something better or not. The "Party of No" is obviously a good fit for that. If you want to dissolve the Union, then voting for the party which created the most dysfunctional, do-nothing congress in the history of the United States would seem like a pretty good start whether you agreed with their "hate the gays" stance or not.

During the Bush administration it became abundantly clear that a majority of Bush supporters did not support the Bush Administration's positions and indeed didn't know what those positions were. People were in favor of one thing and supported the Bush administration on the grounds that they were also in favor of it - despite it being public record that the actual Bush administration supported a position that was completely the opposite. There's also the issue that people are bad at math and don't want to pay taxes, so many people will support a "tax cut" even though it means like a hundred dollars to them and a hundred million dollars to some Mitt Romney looking asshole and it's going to be "paid for" by cutting services to them by a thousand dollars or more. Outright ignorance drums up a lot of Republican votes. There is a really well paid conservative noise machine drumming up confusion on a host of topics, trying to get low-information voters to check candidates with an -R after their name.

Republicans portray themselves as culturally aligned with the South and the Flyover states. This counts for a lot, actually. Many people in Missouri see themselves as being left behind by a United States that increasingly has its economic and population growth as well as its culture and media centered on the coasts. Now, you can make a pretty good argument that conservative policies are largely to blame for the center of the country being left behind to the extent that it is, but nevertheless the rallying cry of turning back the clock to a time when Kentucky was culturally important has natural emotional resonance there irrespective of unpleasant it would be to actually live in such a society.

And don't discount the importance of simple dissatisfaction. The Democrats have been the national majority party in terms of vote share for my entire adult life. Even when the Republicans had majorities in the legislature or sat in the White House, they still portrayed themselves as an opposition party. and indeed, they basically are. We have a two party system, which means that your only choices are to vote for the majority party or to vote for the opposition party. If you don't like the direction the United States is going (and indeed, why would you?), it is natural to want to vote for the opposition party. And people do this even when the opposition party is openly advocating moving more in the direction they don't want to go. So there are people who vote against Obama's party because they think he's too militaristic. Seriously. That happens. A lot.

-Username17

[Blicero]

Is it possible to make introductory and intermediate undergraduate statistics classes exciting? I've taken two such classes, and both of them have been astoundingly tedious. I've since done more advanced work in statistics and probability, and I've generally enjoyed that stuff. So I don't think that I'm just opposed to the concept of statistics. Nor do I think that it's necessarily the fact the classes were freshman-level, because all of the other intro-level classes I've taken at my school have been well-constructed.

(For reference, I go to a reasonably high-end school that prides itself on having professors who actually care about teaching and shit. The classes I took were not the sort of thing the department drew straws for to decide who has to teach them.)

[Shiritai]

Make them focus more on applied statistics? I took intro stats for bio majors and quite enjoyed it, since we got to review studies and research methodologies. Starting off with more concrete concepts and then moving on to the abstract seems to be a winning strategy in education in general.

[tussock]

Most of those things have a departmental language they need to teach people before they can even talk about real studies. Translating real studies into ordinary-people language can just confuse them later on when you have to re-explain the same things in the real language of the department.

Like how the ever-changing "Theory" of Evolution makes sense when you know what a scientific branch theory is, and makes it sound a bit vague to outsiders. Because theories are all-encompassing and flexible in light of new evidence and so on, makes them seem a bit uncertain (when they aren't).

[Meikle641]

Back in elementary school there was a book on Norse myths I found, and proceeded to read the shit out of repeatedly over the next year or so.

Going by the illustrations, looked like it was printed in the 70s, early 80s at latest. It was at least 12 inches in height, possibly as much as 18. Blue cover and spine with weird creatures made of knots and myth related imagery.

I've been trying to hunt this book down for fucking ages and have no idea what it would be called, and who made it.

[Cynic]

Back in elementary school there was a book on Norse myths I found, and proceeded to read the shit out of repeatedly over the next year or so.

Going by the illustrations, looked like it was printed in the 70s, early 80s at latest. It was at least 12 inches in height, possibly as much as 18. Blue cover and spine with weird creatures made of knots and myth related imagery.

I've been trying to hunt this book down for fucking ages and have no idea what it would be called, and who made it.

D'aulaire's book of norse myths.

It's done by a husband-wife team of french writer/illustrators. They also did a great one on Greek myth and a pretty good book on Troll myths.