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[LFC]

Good thing they aren't using unsafe Western medicine. Bold of particular stupidity mine.

To practice homeopathy, one must master the skill of diluting things in water—an awe inspiring talent, no doubt.

At its core, homeopathy is based on the idea that “like cures like,” and remedies are made by watering down selected poisons that cause or mimic the disease being treated. Practitioners must at least dilute those poisons until they’re safe for consumption, but often dilute them to the point that only plain water remains. Tossing aside the pesky rules of physics and chemistry, believers argue that water molecules have “memory.” Those liquefied ghosts of poisons can cure a wide range of ailments, from allergic reactions to HIV/AIDS, they say.

Though Ars has previously pointed out that this pseudoscience is clearly a “therapeutic dead-end,” providing a placebo effect at best, Americans still spent $2.9 billion on them in 2007. Some may argue that such spending on expensive placebo water is harmless. But the discussion changes dramatically when federal regulators catch homeopaths that aren’t so skilled at the art of dilution.

Last month, the Food and Drug Administration warned parents to stop using homeopathic teething gels and tablets, which may have been improperly diluted. Yesterday the agency said it is investigating 10 infant deaths and more than 400 reports of seizures, fever, and vomiting that may be connected to the use of the teething treatments in the past six years.

The FDA is urging parents to immediately stop use and trash the teething treatments. These products are distributed by CVS, Hyland’s, and possibly others, the agency noted, and are sold at neighborhood drug stores and other retail outlets.

Though the FDA hasn’t definitively nailed the teething products as the source of the illnesses and deaths, this isn’t the first time the products have raised red flags. In 2010, the agency got eerily similar reports of illnesses linked to the homeopathic teething products. Upon investigation, they found that the products weren’t diluted properly and some contained unsafe levels of belladonna, also known as deadly nightshade. Though it’s well-known that homeopaths use belladonna to treat a variety of ailments, it’s always supposed to be diluted heavily, leaving none or trace amounts.

[LFC]

Water is now so valuable in California that it's worth stealing by the truckload. (It's always been valuable enough to steal by the farmload.)

As an extreme drought grips California, making water increasingly scarce, thieves are making off with billions of gallons of the precious resource, tapping into fire hydrants, rivers, and even small family homes and farms.
State and local officials say water theft is a long running-issue, but the intensifying drought has driven the thefts to record levels as reservoirs dry up and bandits make off with stolen water, often to cultivate the growth of illegal marijuana crops.

"Water stealing has never been more severe," said John Nores, former head of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife Marijuana Enforcement Team. The agency has been fighting the thefts for years, usually in rural areas of the parched state, that have been "devastating" communities, he said.

At least 1.8 billion gallons of water are estimated to have been stolen across the state since 2013, impacting legitimate farming operations, drinking water sources, Native American tribes and small communities, Nores said.

Officials say the thieves are getting their hands on water by breaking into secure water stations, drilling into water lines, tapping into fire hydrants and using violence and threats against farmers, making off with truckloads of water for their crops under cover of darkness.

The issue has become so severe that some communities have been forced to place locks on fire hydrants or remove them altogether.

"The amount of water that is being stolen to water those (marijuana) plants has a huge impact on our local aquifers," Siskiyou County Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue told CNN. His rural county in the northernmost part of the state is one of the hardest hit by thieves, where many residents rely on well water.

Yvonne West, director of the State Water Resources Control Board's Office of Enforcement, told CNN that the board has recently received an "uptick in complaints" of stolen water. It is a "local problem" in smaller communities, West said.

In Southern California, about 300 residents in the Antelope Valley saw their water system crash last year after thieves used water trucks to tap fire hydrants and water mains illegally. Water pressure in the area north of Los Angeles dropped so low at one point, it caused "the system to fail," said Anish Saraiya, public works deputy for Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger.

The county has seen up to 18 water main breaks, forcing the waterworks department to spend about a half-million dollars responding to the incidents, Saraiya said.

"It's a growing problem," Saraiya told CNN.

[goldenvalley]

Aug 19, 2021 17:11:36 GMT LFC said:

(It's always been valuable enough to steal by the farmload.)

Or by the river load.  The Owens River valley story which inspired the movie Chinatown.

[AnBr]

Remember when Tom Selleck was doing this?

[goldenvalley]

California agriculture is very different from what I grew up around in the Midwest, all row crops.  Case in point:See the video of how prunes are harvested.   Nut trees are also shaken like this.  

[Bact PhD]

Not everything that happens in Flori-DUH is stupid or harmful:

www.usatoday.com/story/news/2021/08/20/gainesville-florida-restaurant-employees-get-10000-tip-from-generous-man/8221976002/

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — It was a slow night at the Wahoo Seafood Grill when a man accompanied by his wife and child walked into the restaurant.

There were only 10 employees working Tuesday night and only two tables had customers.

Seeing the employees' bustling about as they ran the restaurant, the mystery man called them all together, thanking them for their hard work.

Bryce Daniels, a cook at Wahoo, said as soon as the man began his speech they knew that something interesting was going to happen.

The mystery man then went to pay his family's $144 bill and decided to leave the employees a $10,000 tip, to be split between the 10 staff members. Each of them went home with $1,000 — just about a smidge under a 700% tip per.

The aforementioned restaurant is just off I-75 and not far from another hotel. TBH, I wasn’t crazy about the place…

[AnBr]

[pg]

Jul 12, 2021 17:04:35 GMT goldenvalley said:

Maybe this is just because I live in a hot real estate market, but I'm getting robotexts telling me that there are pending cash offers for my house.  Is this happening in your parts of the country?  

GV- I forgot to respond. Yep- I live in a hot RE market, also. I get robotexts, phone calls, letters.  "Hey sell now" etc. I live in a non disclosure state. Because of that, the info is only about my land value. Yep- cash offers. And I just laugh. These folks have no idea what is really going on- just trying to snake themselves in.

And the real fun? These are usually asking for my dearly departed husband to respond, even though my home is now only in my name. Eh? They have no idea.

Yep- it's getting hot out there. IGNORE the robo stuff. Make certain they are a blocked caller. Might need to do it more than once.

[goldenvalley]

I'm doing some deep thinking about human nature in light of the anti-anything related to slowing down COVID, the hurricane in the Southeast, and the fire closing in on Lake Tahoe here in CA.  All of them are nature made, not man made (not sure though the cause of the fire).  In the latter two situations evacuation orders were issued.  Many, many people obeyed them but not all. Schools in non burning but smokey areas are closed due to poor air quality. But no big social media outcry, picketing etc. With COVID we had an equivalent to evacuation in the form of stay at home orders.   We heard a lot more complaining about that and certainly very loud complaining about the alternative to stay at home...masks & vaccines.

So is there a difference in response to these life threatening natural events?  Of course hurricane and fire is not the slow rolling crisis that COVID is so the complainers may not have had time to get really vocal. But I am thinking that humans can watch the radar to track storms; they can see, smell, and taste the smoke.  But with a virus, you don't see it until someone is sick and then they are whisked away to hospitals where no one can see the devastation. Is that a difference that accounts for some of this?  

Or is it the uncertainty in terms of the length of time the preventative measures will last?  Storms blow through and MSM seldom looks at the affected areas once that happens...same with fire, so people move on unless they live in the affected areas. But COIVD has lasted a long time and then a more infectious version emerged so people continue to hear about it.  

[LFC]

Aug 30, 2021 17:19:29 GMT goldenvalley said:

So is there a difference in response to these life threatening natural events? 

Trump and the Republicans called it a hoax, said masks don't work, said we all had to get back to normal, invoked "herd immunity" without a clue about how it works, and on and on. Your beliefs about and reaction to COVID were intentionally turned into right-wing virtue signaling. Not so much other events. Perhaps it is that the other events are somewhat brief.

Of course the hoax of global climate change has nothing to do with the increase in number and intensity fires or hurricanes.

[goldenvalley]

Aug 30, 2021 17:24:56 GMT LFC said:

Aug 30, 2021 17:19:29 GMT goldenvalley said:

So is there a difference in response to these life threatening natural events? 

Trump and the Republicans called it a hoax, said masks don't work, said we all had to get back to normal, invoked "herd immunity" without a clue about how it works, and on and on. Your beliefs about and reaction to COVID were intentionally turned into right-wing virtue signaling. Not so much other events. Perhaps it is that the other events are somewhat brief.

Of course the hoax of global climate change has nothing to do with the increase in number and intensity fires or hurricanes.

Is that all it takes?  Some cult hero says don't believe anything but me and any risk assessment that humans are capable of vanishes?  

[LFC]

Aug 30, 2021 17:32:41 GMT goldenvalley said:

Is that all it takes?  Some cult hero says don't believe anything but me and any risk assessment that humans are capable of vanishes?  

Short Answer: Yes.

"If they're for it, we're against it." It's that tribal. Besides Tucker told them everything they need to know about COVID.

[LFC]

A bit of good environmental news.

The UN Environment Program announced on Monday that the world has officially banished leaded gasoline. The end of the use of this dangerous fuel has been a long time coming, and the day is finally here: According to the UN, the world’s last reserves of leaded gasoline were used up last month at a refinery in Algeria.

While the sale of leaded gasoline—or leaded petrol, as the rest of the world calls it—has been banned in the U.S. for decades, it’s posed a big problem in some parts of the world. Less than 20 years ago, the UN said, there were still 117 countries that used leaded petrol, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa and other countries with lower GDPs. Leaded gasoline poses a huge public health risk, with lots of devastating impacts: Prolonged, low-level lead exposure can have impacts on basically every system in the body, and is linked to blood pressure problems, kidney disease, heart disease, and problems with fertility. Children are particularly sensitive to the impacts of lead, with lead exposure being linked to a whole host of problems including behavioral issues and lower IQs.

In 2002, the UN formed the Partnership for Clean Fuels and Vehicles in order to work together to get leaded petrol permanently out of the world for good. The coalition included representatives from environment ministries across the world, independent experts, and industry representatives, all of whom worked for nearly two decades to solve this problem.

“This wasn’t easy,” Inger Andersen, the executive director of the UNEP, said on a press call Monday. “We had to overcome resistance from companies producing the lead additive. We sparked investments to replace lead while maintaining the same octane levels. We overcame concerns regarding the pricing of unleaded fuels, and we supported countries dealing with conflicts and stocks of [leaded fuel]. The success we note and celebrate today provides some clear lessons on dealing with environmental challenges; lessons on the need for independent science, for innovation, for free media, and for clear and objective end goals.”

So just how many people did corporate America kill early and how many young brains were damaged by burning a known poison in their cars? And how much did they pay to get a gov't go-ahead on using it?

Leaded gas was originally developed in the 1920s by American car companies in order to improve efficiency and eliminate noise problems in engines. From the get-go, auto and chemical manufacturers knew that the additive they were using—tetraethyl lead—was poisonous. Five workers at a refinery died from lead exposure the second year leaded gas was on the market, and the original inventor of leaded gasoline, a General Motors engineer, himself contracted lead poisoning at least once.

Car companies tightened up safety regulations in manufacturing the product, where the most serious exposure occurred. But a federal panel convened by the Surgeon General in 1926 to study the health impacts acknowledged that emissions from leaded gas could pose problems in years to come, writing in a report that the fuel could “constitute a menace to the general public after prolonged use or other conditions not foreseen at this time.” Nevertheless, the government greenlit the fuel for sale.

[indy]

Aug 30, 2021 17:19:29 GMT goldenvalley said:

I'm doing some deep thinking about human nature in light of the anti-anything related to slowing down COVID, the hurricane in the Southeast, and the fire closing in on Lake Tahoe here in CA.  All of them are nature made, not man made (not sure though the cause of the fire).  In the latter two situations evacuation orders were issued.  Many, many people obeyed them but not all. Schools in non burning but smokey areas are closed due to poor air quality. But no big social media outcry, picketing etc. With COVID we had an equivalent to evacuation in the form of stay at home orders.   We heard a lot more complaining about that and certainly very loud complaining about the alternative to stay at home...masks & vaccines.

So is there a difference in response to these life threatening natural events?  Of course hurricane and fire is not the slow rolling crisis that COVID is so the complainers may not have had time to get really vocal. But I am thinking that humans can watch the radar to track storms; they can see, smell, and taste the smoke.  But with a virus, you don't see it until someone is sick and then they are whisked away to hospitals where no one can see the devastation. Is that a difference that accounts for some of this?  

Or is it the uncertainty in terms of the length of time the preventative measures will last?  Storms blow through and MSM seldom looks at the affected areas once that happens...same with fire, so people move on unless they live in the affected areas. But COIVD has lasted a long time and then a more infectious version emerged so people continue to hear about it.  

You know, it's interesting. I watched a ted talk (https://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_higher_than_our_grandparents?language=en) about how cognitive abilities have changed over the last century. Basically he makes the case that we have gone from a very concrete to a much more abstract mode of thinking. He claims that people a century ago would average about 70 on a modern IQ test. (I'm not sure how he supports the claim but since he's a pretty well-known intelligence researcher, I assume it isn't made up out of thin air.) Yet I can't help but think there is some serious flaw in his work.

I agree with you that people seem more able to deal realistically with the things that they can actually interact with on a physical level, but I'm not sure these cognitive tendencies of the last century aren't some kind of negative multiplier for other sorts of thinking somehow. Real world experience serves as guardrails to constrain our thinking. If somebody tells you that things fall up it just violates so many experiences that you have had that you can't help but discount the person who tells you something like that.

But the more abstract the world is to you the less you have experience to fall back on and consequently significantly less ability to judge such (more abstract) claims. I just think that technology, which is responsible for a more remote and abstract form of experience, has outpaced our ability to adapt to it.

On a brighter note, I do think we will adapt (although I have no idea how long it will take) and I often wonder if we aren't currently in a transitory period which will the be the subject of many Ph.D. theses one day.

[Deleted]

I hope you're aware of what happened to the last person who did deep-thinking about human nature. On completion, that person died laughing.

[goldenvalley]

Aug 30, 2021 19:34:13 GMT @probabilistic3 said:

I hope you're aware of what happened to the last person who did deep-thinking about human nature. On completion, that person died laughing.

LOL  An excellent reminder but I could use a good laugh these days.  Probably we all do.

[Deleted]

indy - Things don't fall "down" in most of the universe. The curvature of space-time is flat (obviously when measured at a sufficiently large scale). At least according to classical physics. Blame local mass-energy distortions for any errant behavior like falling downwards.

While we're on this topic: why is inertial mass same as gravitational mass?

[GRowell]

m.republicworld.com/lifestyle/health/combination-therapy-reduces-risk-of-fatal-cardiovascular-disease-by-more-than-50-percent-study.html

Stoke & Heart attacks/2

[indy]

Aug 31, 2021 3:35:40 GMT @probabilistic3 said:

While we're on this topic: why is inertial mass same as gravitational mass?

For Einstein's math to work out?

And, technically, the question is why do they appear to be the same?

[andydp]

Aug 31, 2021 17:01:50 GMT indy said:

Aug 31, 2021 3:35:40 GMT @probabilistic3 said:

While we're on this topic: why is inertial mass same as gravitational mass?

For Einstein's math to work out?

And, technically, the question is why do they appear to be the same?

You lost me at "Einstein".

[indy]

Aug 31, 2021 17:04:27 GMT andydp said:

Aug 31, 2021 17:01:50 GMT indy said:

For Einstein's math to work out?

And, technically, the question is why do they appear to be the same?

You lost me at "Einstein".

If I remember it correctly, which is not a given by any means, one of the major assumptions underlying the general theory of relatively is that they these two masses are, in fact, equivalent.

They are the same within our limits to measure them, which is an important detail.

[LFC]

Aug 31, 2021 17:04:27 GMT andydp said:

You lost me at "Einstein".

He's the guy who theorized that the black hole at the center would draw in the majority of the cream cheese spread placed on a bagel, spewing it out the other side into a parallel universe, one in which the front of your shirt always gets hit by something whenever you eat. He was a frickin' genius.

[indy]

I'm just a layman here, so I'm interested in the actual answer to the question since, as far as I know, nobody has conclusively explained why they appear to be equivalent. I'm expecting a physics joke at the moment.

[LFC]

Got about $1.5M-2.0M burning a hole in your pocket? Have we got something for you to buy!

A Paris auction house will seek to sell in October the world's biggest known example of the dinosaur triceratops, known as "Big John", with the spectacular skeleton on show to the public beforehand, organisers said Tuesday.

The triceratops is among the most distinctive of dinosaurs due to the three horns on its head -- one at the nose and two on the forehead -- that give the dinosaur its Latin name.

"Big John" is the largest known surviving example, 66 million years old and with a skeleton some eight metres long.

It will be on display starting October 18 at the Drouot auction house in Paris, where it will be offered by the specialist auctioneers Giquello on October 21.

It is estimated that it will sell at 1.2 to 1.5 million euros ($1.4-$1.8 million), though dinosaur auction sales have proved very unpredicable in the past.

[LFC]

The results for the J&J HIV vaccine don't look so great.

Johnson & Johnson's highly anticipated HIV vaccine failed to demonstrate adequate protection in a clinical trial involving more than 2,600 young women in sub-Saharan Africa, the company and US health authorities said Tuesday.

Though the vaccine was found to be safe, with no serious side effects, its efficacy in preventing HIV infection was just over 25 percent.

As a result, the "Imbokodo" trial that began in 2017 will now be halted, and the participants, from Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe will be told whether they received the vaccine or placebo.

But the company will continue a parallel trial involving men who have sex with men and transgender individuals that is taking place in the Americas and Europe, where vaccine composition differs and so do the prevalent HIV strains.