John Stossel on a long standing, growing problem in journalism;
Newsrooms are full of English majors who acknowledge that they are not good at math, but still rush to make confident pronouncements about a global-warming “crisis” and the coming of bird flu.
Bird flu was called the No. 1 threat to the world. But bird flu has killed no one in America, while regular flu — the boring kind — kills tens of thousands. New York City internist Marc Siegel says that after the media hype, his patients didn’t want to hear that.
“I say, ‘You need a flu shot.’ You know the regular flu is killing 36,000 per year. They say, ‘Don’t talk to me about regular flu. What about bird flu?'”
Here’s another example. What do you think is more dangerous, a house with a pool or a house with a gun? When, for “20/20,” I asked some kids, all said the house with the gun is more dangerous. I’m sure their parents would agree. Yet a child is 100 times more likely to die in a swimming pool than in a gun accident.
Parents don’t know that partly because the media hate guns and gun accidents make bigger headlines. Ask yourself which incident would be more likely to be covered on TV.
“Yet a child is 100 times more likely to die in a swimming pool than in a gun accident.”
That’s because the water in the pool has either a) evaporated, or b) frozen, because of a) global warming, or b) climate change.
This just provides even more evidence why we must act now.
Journalists are not only not good at math, add economics, science and history. Having no core academics to draw from other than whatever the hell “journalism” is – stylizing a lame communications product – just about everything they report on is outside of their scope of knowledge.
You can predict headlines by imagining what the lamest of lemmings without logic, science and reasoning have misconstrued.
They can’t go away fast enough. Idiots.
Stossel’s column hit on a subject near to my heart – the vast innumeracy in North America. Take the second hand smoke farce. When you actually look at the data, the only people with a significant added risk are the spouses of smokers. I don’t even want to get started on the global warming scam.
People need calculators to figure out a 15% tip. They can’t fill out their own income tax returns. How can they assess statistics when they can’t add or subtract? I’ve made sure my two daughters are good at math; I wish everybody did the same with their kids.
The American media cannot even add up how much basic training its military get
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/04/americas_brokendown_media.html
“As disgusted as I am by the absolutely misleading nature of Mr. Thompson’s article and how it affects the general public’s perceptions, I am far more sickened by these vultures not explaining to the families of men like PVT Zeimer that their son was a hero, not a victim to be used in creating a political talking point for shoddy journalists and opportunist politicians. Army officials should explain what the standards of deployment training are to the families of our brave soldiers before rotten tomatoes like these convince them that heroes like Matthew died for lack of training.”
Ah yes, our beloved media. Watch the left hand as the other pulls the wool over our eyes. (Lots of wool in Kyoto.) Watch out, watch out. The bird-flu will get ya.
Without the media the world’s scam’s would fizzle quickly.
Maurice Strong, godfather of Kyoto, wrote this piece in the Globe & Mail, Mar 7 2007.
//www.rbcinvest.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/PEstory/LAC/20070307/COCLIMATE07/Headlines/headdex/headdexComment/1/1/7/
If only the so-called journos could see through the flim-flam as easily as most Canadians can.
“The pettiness with which the current controversy on Canada’s response to climate change is being argued is nothing to be proud of.” Maurice Strong.
[Pettiness ?? Oh really ?? Kyoto’s science is a fraud and and still Mo wants to shut down our lifestyles. The Kyoto Kult is based on the ‘hockey stick graph’, and even the UN now dis-ownes it]
“In 1992, I led the Earth Summit that produced the Climate Change Convention, and was involved in Kyoto when the contentious protocol on targets was agreed.” MS.
[Even Mo admits it was ‘he’ who caused all this trouble.]
“Most of my activities have been at the international level, though I did, along with many others, urge Canada’s governments to ratify Kyoto.” MS.
[So, it was Mo who convinced Chretien to allow Canada to be the biggest sucker in the world. If any country in the world could use a couple of degrees, it is we. Now we also know why Mo was to move into that Ottawa condo as soon as Paul Martin became PM]
“Kyoto was an essential, but all too modest, first step in dealing with this crisis, but it was severely weakened by the withdrawal of the United States, the main source of greenhouse-gas emissions, and by the retreat of others, including, regrettably, Canada.” MS.
[Modest ?? If ya think Kyoto is scary, ya ain’t seen nothing yet.]
” ..although, on a per capita basis, Canada is one of the main contributors to accumulated greenhouse-gas emissions, even greater than the United States.” MS.
[Canda is also the second largest country in the world. Canada as a piece of the surface of the earth, probably has one of the lowest global “footprints”. Very, very low number of people per square mile in Canada.]
“Inertia, however, continues to propel us along an unsustainable pathway.” MS
[Unsustainable ?? What do we have to give up Mo ?? This ?? “It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class — involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing — are not sustainable. A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns.” Maurice Strong, Rio Conference, Earth Summit II 1992″. Steak, frozen veggies, gasoline, dishwashers, air conditioning, our houses. And mostly everything else too. Gone. Nice !!]
“The process must begin immediately if the growing costs of inaction are to be avoided.” MS.
[Drink the kool-aide before the spaceship arrives. Believe me.]
“It is now clear that Canada, like many other countries, will not meet its Kyoto targets.”MS.
[That is what PMSH has been saying for years]
“Of course, China, India and other rapidly developing countries, which now account for most of the increases in greenhouse-gas emissions, will need to participate.” MS.
[Means that those countries can never live as good as MO and us have for the lasy 100 yrs. Can ya say hypocrital ??]
“Developing countries cannot be expected to freeze expansion at levels that will perpetuate the gap between their economies and those of the more developed countries.” MS.
[Does that mean that Mo’s Cherry Car Company of China will be “allowed” by the UN to continue ?? But not Oshawa ??]
“I propose a new kind of commission be established — a World Climate Commission.” MS.
[Something like A ‘One World Governance’ idea ?? As some in the United Nations are pushing ?? No more Canada sovereignty, eh ?? No more ‘made-in-Canada’s either. No more hockey-nights-in-Canada ??]
“The commission would be mandated by the United Nations and would be autonomous in its operations.” MS.
[Yep. Here it comes !! That ole One World Governance thing.]
“It would draw upon and reinforce the efforts and mandates of other organizations, notably, the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, as the primary source of scientific advice,” MS.
[You gotta be kidding !!?? The same IPCC that fell hook-line-and-sinker for Mann’s infamous hockey-stick graph ?? Now proven to be a fraud !!
This is getting to be toooo much.]
“It (Mo’s commission) would monitor all activities involving climate change and report to governments and to the UN, evaluating the progress and performance of all of the actors, providing specific recommendations that would be expected to have a significant influence on public opinion and on the actions of government, industry and others.” MS.
[Mo and the UN would be in charge of the Canadian gov’t. And GM Oshawa. And Ontario Hydro(was once already). And Canadian farmers. And Bombardier (Jets are the worst emmiters per capita). And Great Lakes shipping. And Buzz Hargrove. And Dion (already is). And our barbeques. And .. you get the picture.]
“This is the kind of initiative in which Canada could still take the lead. Despite the low level of influence Canada currently exercises on this issue, we can rise above narrow partisanship to forge an alliance that will put Canada in the forefront.” MS.
[After you Mo. And whatever country you are residing in now. I know, I know. You may not have been charged yet in Saddam’s oil-for-food-scandal , but that million dollar check from Tongsun Park sure looks fishy.]
Maurice Strong, former adviser to UN secretary-general Kofi Annan and onetime CEO of Petro-Canada, was head of the UN environment program from 1972 to 1976 and author, in 2001, of Where on Earth Are We Going?
If Paul Matin were still PM, phitt, can you imagine what we would be hearing from him on CBC ?? Something like; “well, I tell ya. Mo is one great Canadian. Right Julie Van Dusen ? I’ll say it from the bottom of my heart. I tell ya, we owe a great big gatitude to Oak Lake Manitoba. The world, of which Canada is such a wonder owes … oooowww.
I just pulled my dotter dog outta the pool,I dunno thot it was good Sturday or what,Good thang we got this global warmin goin on,Maybe
To KevinB at 10:02
As far as the spouses of smokers go and the dangers of second hand smoke. One of the largest longitudinal studies of this ever made was in California ,lasted 40 years and involved 35,000 couples (and administered by non-smokers). Result? no stastically reliable indication of harm; Other studies indicate a lead factor for a non-smoker of contacting pneumatory disease ,aside from heredity, was working professionally in a kitchen ( all those little micro-droplets of oil floating about)or other such work enviroment.
On a more serious note, I worry about the up-coming generation ;). After all mankind has been exposed for more than a million years to the all-enveloping choking wreaths of smoke caused by fire. From paleolithic caves to roving mesolithic hunters’ huts to neolithic hovels to Victorian draughty smokey homes; right up until the 20th Century there was no escape for humans anywhere on the planet (except for Tasmania where the secret of fire was lost after it became seperated from the Oz mainland during the flooding at the begining of the Holocene) from being enveloped by smoke. This applied especially to women and babes. Yes there was high infant mortality and adult morbidity, but does one million years of evolution and adaptation to smoke count for naught? Could it be that the modern rise of asthma rates is because those afflicted would otherwise have died in infancy or is it rather because they are missing a vital trigger in their enviroment i.e. smoke, necessary for the proper priming, armouring and development of their lungs?
But then, I am no expert.
Sincerely,
Robert Albin
Calgary
BTW, KNAC.com
Kick-Ass RNR.
In case you missed it.
All we want is the damn truth, but they all seem to have an agenda of fear and smear to satisfy their egos. If any one of them would start to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth they would be cannabilized and crapped out to the four corners of the universe.
We in northern BC are coming off the coldest winter since 1964.Still have 3 ft. of snow in the yard. Another winter like this one and I’m gonna buy me a Hummer.
The Pine Beetle. This poor guy is caught up in the media’s global-sky-is-falling hysteria also.
Lynn Moore, CanWest, writes
//www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=d41e854a-48fc-4f35-8f9c-d7ae7dcc652e&k=93014
that man-made-global-warming is making the pine beetle problem worse. States that the PB has crossed the Rockies into Alberta. Surviving in damn-colder Alberta now. Cause of GW, of course.
“Although it was believed the physical barrier and cold winters of the Rocky Mountains would keep the tiny insect in B.C., the beetle is now chewing through trees in northern Alberta. Where it will stop is not yet clear, according to industry and forestry experts.” Moore.
Lets get this straight, … “ex-spurts”.
Suzuki says our life style has caused the Earth to warm a degree during the last century. (never mind that the earths climate is always changing)
This single degree of warming has allowed the PB to survive more easily. “We-need-colder-winters” he rants.
I would think the poor ole PB HAS colder, much colder winters in northern Alberta but is, according to Moore, still surviving.
The average winter time temperatures of two BC and Alberta towns, of about the same latitude, in north central BC and Alberta;
Prince George; -7C
Barrhead -17C
So, according to the ‘chicken-littles’, -7C is not enough to control the PB anymore. And -6C before was, so they say.
But now the PB is surviving in Alberta at -17C.
So is Suzuki, along with Lynn Moore, saying that we have to drop the earths temperature by 10C friggin degrees !!??
Am I missing something or is the science AND the media THAT bad ???
Like, maybe the pine beetle, like all living things, is adapting/evolving ?? Has been happening for a couple of Billion years.
The fruit-fly “scientist” should know that.
The following is from the introduction to John Allen Paulos’s 1988 book Innumercy – tinyurl.com/2klh4k
“Innumeracy, an inability to deal comfortably with the fundamental notions of number and chance, plagues far too many otherwise knowledgeable citizens. The same people who cringe when words such as “imply” and “infer” are confused react without a trace of embarrassment even to the most egregious of numerical solecisms.
“I remember once listening to someone at a party drone on about the difference between “continually” and “continuously”. Later that evening we were watching the news, and the TV weathercaster announced that there was a 50 percent chance of rain for Saturday, and and 50 percent chance for Sunday, and concluded that there was therefore a 100 percent chance of rain that weekend.
“The remark went right by the self-styled grammarian, and even after I explained the mistake to him, he wasn’t nearly as indignant as he would have been had the weathercaster left a dangling participle. In fact, unlike other failings which are hidden, mathematical illiteracy is often flaunted: “I can’t even balance my checkbook”, “I’m a people person, not a numbers person”, or “I always hated math”.
/End Excerpts
I think that one of the biggest problems that is posed by innumeracy is the inability of the innumerate to reason with big numbers. For example, some time ago some people were complaining that the oil patch uses 330,000,000 liters of water a year from the Red Deer River. 330,000,000 liters! Ohh, be vewy afwaid!
But wait just a minute, how big is 330,000,000 liters in the Red Deer River context? Well, the river flow rate varies from 10 to 100 cubic meters per second. Assuming only 10 cubic meters per second, that’s still 10,000 liters per second. Which means the oil patch uses 33,000 seconds, or about 9 hours, or about 0.1% of the river’s annual flow.
Why weren’t those people complaining about the oil patch wanting to use 0.1% of the river flow? Why do they say 330,000,000 liters instead? Are they trying to hide a fraudulent agenda behind big numbers?
Ok, now let’s consider the case of atmospheric CO2 vapor. Humans produce about 50 giga-tonnes of atmospheric CO2 vapour per year. Be vewy afwaid!
But how big is 50 giga-tonnes of atmospheric CO2 vapour in the green house gas global warming context? Well, the portion of atmospheric CO2 vapor that is produced by humans is about 3% or 0.03. The portion of green-house gasses that is CO2 is about 1% or 0.01. Thus, the portion of green-house gasses that is human produced CO2 is about 0.03% or 0.0003. The heat-trapping effectiveness of CO2 compared to the average of green-house gasses is about 10% or 0.10. Thus, the portion of the green-house gas global warming caused by human CO2 is about 0.003% or 0.00003 or 30 millionths. Even if we stop producing any CO2 at all, 99.997% of green-house gas global warming will still happen (even if we ignore the Borrello Limit and the saturation effect).
Here’s one more case to consider, this one with a twist: the Canadian long-gun registry. Some people say, well, a billion dollars, you know these big projects are expensive, there’s nothing to fear. But how big is a billion dollars in the context of the long-gun registry?
Well, given that loaded staff costs of the sorts involved in such a project are about $100,000 per year, on the order of 10,000 man years have been spent on the registry. But there’s no legitimate way to spend 10,000 man-years on such a project. Therefore, some part of that money was spent illegitimately. In this case, innumeracy is used to hide a valid fear: that with a probability of 100%, our tax dollars are being wasted (or worse). (At tinyurl.com/ybnozb you can read my detailed analysis of the long-gun registry scam, which received Mark Steyn’s letter of the week award.)
Smoking, since it has been mentioned, is another such case. We are told that smoking kills. Nonsense; having a smoke won’t kill you. Smoking a lot for a long time has a tendancy to reduce one’s life expectancy by a few years. The fear-mongers tell us to be vewy afwaid. The numerate ask themselves: am I willing to spend a few end-years of my life on the overall cause of enjoying all the other decades of my life?
My point is: measured values mean nothing until they are scaled to a relevant context. People who fear-monger by deliberately hiding relevant context scaling are fraud artists.
(Today’s homework question: how much does owning an automobile cost, scaled to units of beers per day ?-)
Mo Stlong makes me wanna wretch. When are we gonna pull out of the UN? I would hope we pull out before the bastard child of Mo is conceived.
The ignorance/stupidity of the media is spreading to the general public. One of the most hilarious comments I have heard that sums this ignorance up is a lady phoning in to a radio talk show telling the host that she was knowledgeable about world events, as she watches “The John Stewart Show”.
What made it hilarious was that she thought this made her knowledgeable. What made it sad is that she is not alone.
My estimate;
17 beers per day(and night)
Tried it one time,.. so they say 🙂
Wait a min. That was 17 ‘dollars’ per day.
More like 6 or 8 ‘beers’ per day to own wheels. A $30K one at that.
We should keep in mind that every idiotic cause has it’s champions. We have far too many causes and far too many champions. We now live in society where everyone is minding everyones business and everyone knows what’s good for everyone else.Makes me wonder where we go from here.
I think the bigger problem is not just journalists,. .. but average joe.
People in general (as evidenced in the article) are not good at math either. Or common sense for that matter.
They do not really want to do any research or even learning to see if what they are spoon fed is true…. they only want to be told.
Google a grade school experiment called “dihydrogenous monoxide” a kid got most of the parents in his school to sign a petition to ban the dangerous substance…. H-O-H…. also know as water.
People want to ban evil chemicals. Like Round-up (Glyphosate). Compare that with the MSDS for Table salt (NaCl) which is 40 times more toxic. Or natural versus synthetic. Did you know most medicines are produced synteheticly? or that the most common chemical used in North America is BT a naturally occuring bacteria?
Ignoring opportunity cost and interest considerations, and state licensing fees, assume your capital cost for the vehicle is $10,000 to $40,000. Assume you own it for ten years, and then sell it for $2,000 to $8,000. Assume you spend between $500 and $2,000 per year on insurance, between $1,000 and $5,000 per year on fuel, and between $2,000 and $10,000 on maintenance over the life of the vehicle. Assume your beer costs between $2.00 and $6.00.
If you manage to line up all the numbers so you have a cheap car and expensive beer, you’re talking about roughly 1 beer per day:
( 10000 – 8000 + 10*500 + 10*1000 + 2000 ) / ( 10*365 * 6 )
If you have an expensive car and like cheap beer, it could be as much as 16 beer per day:
( 40000 – 2000 + 10*2000 + 10*5000 + 10000 ) / ( 10*365 * 2 )
And this brings up another matter of innumeracy: confidence intervals. Remember back in school when they tried to teach you about the notion of 1.2 ± 0.05 ft/s²? In order to attempt to get a handle on the scope of a problem, you have to run the numbers in your favour and again against you.
That provides you with the domain of discourse. The solution to the problem lies in that domain. If you are discussing matters outside that domain, then you are not working on the solution to the problem. The fear mongering fraud artists will always tell you about what will happen if the confidence intervals all go against you, but they never talk about what will happen if the confidence intervals all go in your favour. I wonder why that is?
(PS to Barcs: I was just eating some salt and vinegar potato chips, and I read the label, and I was horrified to find that they contained sodium chloride and acetic acid!)
Barcs…you are so right. By banning DDT we have sentenced millions of people to death(malaria) although DDT has never been proven harmful.We banned Asbestos but still produce and ship it all over the world.Activists are running the governments and common sense has been moved to the back row.Did not know about H-o-H. Always thought water was H2o.
“The media make it worse. Instead of educating people to real dangers, we scare them about things that hardly matter.”
Is that not liablous ??
Mo knows the people who stand for nothing – will not defend their own or their fellow man’s rights – will fall for anything. He wants control and he expects to gain control not by taking it but by us giving it to him. We MAKE our kids wear bike helmets when they ski or ride a bike but we don’t make them wear helmets in the school bus, in convertible cars, in the tin cans we call energy efficient cars, in motor boats or on water skis? We let them eat junk food, prescription drugs, and never exercise BUT ban them from a whiff of tobacco smoke – schools and public buildings now recycle the same old air over and over – it is low on oxygen and high in bacteria – from other people’s lungs, they can’t watch “Spartacus” – too violent but they can play computer games where they assinate and kill people themselves! And ‘they say’ has no influence?? We need a whole new crop of writers with some common sense and some good “Canadian” values to ‘preach’ to us minions, IMO. People like you folks above, Kate, Mark Styne, Western Standard….keep up the good work here – it is sinking in slowly. Happy Easter everyone. God Bless.
Mo knows the people who stand for nothing – will not defend their own or their fellow man’s rights – will fall for anything. He wants control and he expects to gain control not by taking it but by us giving it to him. We MAKE our kids wear bike helmets when they ski or ride a bike but we don’t make them wear helmets in the school bus, in convertible cars, in the tin cans we call energy efficient cars, in motor boats or on water skis? We let them eat junk food, prescription drugs, and never exercise BUT ban them from a whiff of tobacco smoke – schools and public buildings now recycle the same old air over and over – it is low on oxygen and high in bacteria – from other people’s lungs, they can’t watch “Spartacus” – too violent but they can play computer games where they assinate and kill people themselves! And ‘they say’ has no influence?? We need a whole new crop of writers with some common sense and some good “Canadian” values to ‘preach’ to us minions, IMO. People like you folks above, Kate, Mark Styne, Western Standard….keep up the good work here – it is sinking in slowly. Happy Easter everyone. God Bless.
Yup, people will fall for anything. Even celebrate a pagan sexual orgy called Ishtar in place of the Resurrection of Christ.
Ron makes a good point. If the MSM is a biased creator of factoids, and not an objective recorder of facts, it is giving us at worst propaganda, at best gossip.
For example, that the earth’s average temperature has risen .3 to .5 degrees over the last hundred years or so is a fact.
That Polar Bears are endangered by this is MSM propaganda. The Bears are increasing in number.
That warming will produce violently unstable weather, i.e. Hurricanes Tsunamis etc. is MSM gossip.
Alas Ron, we cannot sue the bastards. At least not individually. Perhaps a class action suit.
You have given me pause for thought. I may consult my brother-in-law Randy ‘Tort’ Whiplash.
1. april 8, easter sunday, and I look out to a fresh powdering of snow, and my furnace working overtime…..dr fruit fly owes me a refund
2. on the smoking thing….my great grandfather smoked 60 roll yer owns a day, yet he died at 92 when he was hit by a car, my grandfather smoked about the same, and died at 85 from too much booze
3. on the math thing – my oldest daughter graduated high school with honors in math, and my 15 yr old is seeing a math tutor to make sure she equals her sister’s grade(she does this on her own)
like sexual health, drug awareness, and the nasty ways of the world, any parent who relies on a system loaded with moonbat art’s degrees to teach their children is setting themselves up for serious failure
This trend of passing more and more regulations to protect people is having the opposite effect . I find that people who wear bike helmet are much more brazen in the way they ride their bikes(It like they think they are wearing a car not a helmet). They seem to think hat they are invulnerable with that helmet on and take a lot more risks. I worked in a field(for 30 years) where I regularly saw people with head injuries. I can only think of one case in all that time where a bike helmet might have made a difference. If you get hit by a car doing something stupid your head is the least of your worries. The other negative effect is that a lot of people will stop riding a bike because they don’t want to wear a bike helmet. Therefore many people lose the health benefit of bike riding.
“What do you think is more dangerous, a house with a pool or a house with a gun? When, for “20/20,” I asked some kids, all said the house with the gun is more dangerous. I’m sure their parents would agree. Yet a child is 100 times more likely to die in a swimming pool than in a gun accident.”
Statistically this is true and the accidental death stats make it irrefutable…. but statistics that do not “shock” scare or sensationalize are no good to the MSM who esentiall sell papers and air time with the blood of fate’s victims…which is why they buy into the incredulous “cooked statistics” of the current cultist crusade of the day run by the largest prohibitionist malignancy of the day.
In my life time I;ve never witnessed the MSM running public crusades to free people…to make us all more secure in individual liberty…but they sure gravites to ban, regulate, control, prohibit and remove individual free choice. Could be the nature of this beast or it could be the malignancy of its editorial/ownership or a combination of both.
Personally I lump gun grabbers(hoplophobes), climate/environment doomsday cultists (agoraphobics), multicult/diversity enforces (xenophobes) and pandemic mongers (hypochondria) in the same heap…they all crawled out of the same steaming heap of paranoid delusion which hopes to spread this fear as public manipulators…. that propagated fear produced the global cooling hysterics or booze-banning zero tolerance mothers and other sundry inspid politically correct cults which rob our personal freedoms and dignity of individual free choice….in all the great public manipulation scams in the 20th and 21st century the media has been the hand-maiden of political/cult hysterics and propagagted all the world’s most errant orthodoxies.
I truely believe that if you get your information from MSM you will never know the whole truth on any matter of public concern. The macrocosm and capricious nature of corporate media which prostitutes its influence as easily as their ideals to capitalize on vulgar sensationalism has been a net negative factor in the public dialectic and in the market place of ideas.
Stossel sure has a handle on all the Lefty Media bullshit. It knows no borders, it runs seamless, North to South in this North America.
With people like Stossel and Steyn at least we have hope. Hope to keep our sanity through these crazy times and hope some stop to THINK about some of the outrageous garbage being spewed by the likes of Strong, and know-little messengers of doom like Gore.
The most therapeutic of tools are Blogs like this to debate our stance and search for truth.
Really think the MSM is on the defensive, they’re slowly getting the message we didn’t all just fall off turnip trucks. The jig is up.
Comment to peterj and Barcs:
I just did the wikipedia thing on DDT – because I’m also interested in this GW/CC malaria hysteria. The banning of DDT in the early ’60’s is one of the key moments in the birth of the environmental movement – very interesting article – and a good example of media influence on the public – and how a large number of deaths could possibly have been prevented.
Malaria is a huge problem – and it can be erdicated – it takes political will in all countries to have a plan to to shut this down. Unfortunately, in way too many African countries their is no political will to stop this and promote economic development -which also goes hand in hand. (Also, hats off to the Bill Gates Foundation which has donated and targeted hundreds of millions to eradicate malaria.)
The planning in India is very significant on malaria – they are down to about a million cases a year – and about a thousand deaths (this is down from over 74M and millions of deaths – they had a big upsurge when DDT was banned).
Story. I had to go Indonesia a while ago (and then to India). I had to get about a million shots (and I hate needles) and I had to take a malaria prophylactic (big choking pills that you take once a week – starting 4 weeks before you go and completing 4 weeks after you return). On Bali, malaria had been eradicated directly because the government wanted tourists and economic development. The neighbouring island, Lombok, was still packed with malaria – as soon as the gov’t realized the tourist potential and hence economic potential of Lombok – guess what – huge eradication program. It’s all political will and having the countries people being able to take care of their own destiny and develop economically – instead of being looked down on from above.
(I was lucky too, I did not get bitten once – my colleague, a mosquito magnet – took all the hits. I just tried to stay close to him. He didn’t get malaria.)
Happy Easter
Vitruvius, have kept a copy of your 12:40 A.M. comment here-in-above, as well as your Letter of the Week (with your permission)… very shrewd, no question.
F.R. Turbo (7:09 A.M.)…
Might be a lot of people want a piece of that action!
Joe B.
P.S. I come up with 6 or 7 bottles per day just to operate the vehicle… not even factoring in the difference between the purchase price and the selling price.
Many people have died from “naturally safe” Organic food.
To my knowledge, no one has died from genetically enhanced foods. (the media’s so-called frankenfood) Not even so much as a stomach ache. (mother nature has been altering, enhancing plants since time began)
But, alas. The media does not headline; ‘Our Food Supply Is The Safest It Has EVER Been.’
Or, ‘Many Die. Organics Not Safe.’
Nope, they follow the hippy crowd. Some bearded boy-wonder with his goat standing in a patch of weeds. Can hardly feed himself, let alone 40 others.
But, alas. The media does not headline; ‘Our Food Supply Is The Safest It Has EVER Been.’
That’s more to do with proper storage than actually being safer in the long term.
If the food supply is really safer, why do most people die of some type of disease rather than old age?
Death because of ‘old age’ ?? What is the medical term ??
Perhaps we are living longer than ever because our food supply is very safe and very wholesome !!
kevinb
****Stossel’s column hit on a subject near to my heart – the vast innumeracy in North America. Take the second hand smoke farce. When you actually look at the data, the only people with a significant added risk are the spouses of smokers. I don’t even want to get started on the global warming scam.******
now yer barkin up a tree you kno sweet F all about, my spouse didn’t smoke, I didn’t smoke, my cancer wuz real
now go back to class and study hard!!!!!!!!!
More persons died in TED KENNEDYS a car then died at THREE MILE ISLAND and a bicycle is more dangerous to a kid then a gun ever will be
Lakeshore…you are correct. Studies have shown that overprotection does lead to chance taking and less awareness of possible danger.These studies were not done by activists,so there is probably some truth to them.
After hearing all this I think I’ll have a smoke then go and shoot my swimming pool.
Every now and then, I get an e-mail from a student asking me to help them with their high school journalism paper – they’ve been assigned to interview a working journalist, and contacted me for whatever reason – poor taste, I usually assume.
Once I agree to be their subject, they’ll send me an e-mail full of earnest questions about my work habits, the mission of journalism today, and what every young person should know entering the business – got one last week, in fact.
Whenever they ask what a journalist should study, the first thing I tell them is: not journalism. Oh, by all means, if you have money to burn, go get yourself a j-school degree, but before you do, go to a real school and learn something like law, or science, or economics or, hell, even literature, if you really feel like wasting your parents’ money. Then go get a j-school degree; if you’ve already done law or pre-med or engineering, you’ll probably breeze right through it, having already developed disciplined habits and a more rigorous way of thinking than studying at the feet of journalists will ever teach you. In addition, you might actually know something about the subjects you have to write about.
Or you could just get the degree, blow the rest of your extracurricular time at the college paper, and decide then whether you want to become a hack; my experience is that the people you meet at the college paper are almost exactly like the people you’ll end up working with later. Frankly, you might want to have that law degree in the end…
I wish I did.
I HAVE BIRD FLU AND IMMM GGGRROOWWWIIINNGGG FFEEAATTTHHEERRR AANNNDDD WWWIIINNGGG AANNND AAAA BBEEAAAKKK AAANNNDDDD II WWAANNTTT TTOOO BBBUUUIILLLDDD AAA NNNEEESSTTT SQUAWK SQUAWK
spurwing…And your point is ???
Here’s another interesting one for all those mass consumers/shopaholics out there in shopper’s fantasyland.
How much did that unbeatable sale priced item that you just had to have but didn’t know it ’till it was on sale really cost you?
The price seemed a bargain at the time n’est pas?
First of all in the context of purchase alone it may have been a deal…IF YOU REALLY NEEDED IT,however if it sits on your shelf and gathers dust then any am’t is wasted dough.
Here’s my example:
The much needed/coveted item is on sale for 39.95
Now as we all sadly know,we’re working for the Gov’t of Canada for approx. 6 months of the year so ones EARNED dollar is in fact only worth say 50 cents.
So in time spent earning that money for that sale item you actually had to work the equivelant of approx. $80 dollars.
Now factor in your transportation costs to get to and return the sale item to your home through using your vehicle an that adds to the item.
Further if you put it on your credit card and run it past 28 days then the 18% use of the bank’s money factor kicks in !
And if you were really foolish or needy and had to use the merchants’house based credit card’ then the 2%/month or 28% plus annual usury fees kick in and things get downright scary!
The point being that:
Was that sale priced item that you thought was such a ‘good deal,that you just had to have it, such a good deal after all when it cost upwards of a hundred bucks.
One needs to ask under these circumstances if had they had the cash on hand,would they have shelled out the ‘real’ cost of that so called deal!
Disclaimer;
This is just one man’s warped housebound musings on a rainy Easter Monday evening in B.C.
(Great finish to the NHL reg. season Western Division! Non?)
cheers everyone…hope you all had a great Easter weekend!