Yeah, that's true, I'm sure the burden of glutenophobics on our medical system and taxpayer dollars is right up there with hangnails and "it hurts when I do this". Tempest in a teacup. If I'm going to get pissed about something chewing up taxpayer dollars that's related to healthcare for stupid people doing stupid things, it sure isn't going to be gluten. How about, oh, I don't know, smoking. For the years 2009–2012, economic cost due to smoking is estimated to be more than $289 billion a year. This cost includes at least $133 billion in direct medical care for adults and more than $156 billion for lost productivity from premature death estimated from 2005 through 2009**.

Any stats out on the gluten hysteria and burden on health care? I think that cumulative is going to take a long time to show up on the graph, and the fad will likely have died before the next leap year.

(**US Department of Health and Human Services. The Health Consequences of Smoking—50 Years of Progress: A Report of the Surgeon General. Atlanta, GA: US Dept. of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; 2014)

I think you missed the part about focusing on victims, punishing the guilty, and leaving everyone else alone.

I think you'll find that most people that kill others, are already doing something legally prohibited.
Focus on fixing/dealing-wtih those offending individuals.

I know people just want to "do something"... But leave me, my community, everyone else out of it, please. We didn't do it. Thanks.






side note :
Deadliest school killing in the U.S. was done without a gun. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster

The alternative to a gun is not merely 'a stick'.
You should read about the lethality of hydrogen sulfide. (Mixing 2 common household cleaners that you probably have right now)
1 breath can hospitalize. The gas commonly kills whoever is exposed, whoever finds them, and 1st responders, and it raises no alarm.
I would /not/ say that's /less/ harm than a gun.
Now think for a second about how much more damage one of those school shooters could have done with a simple super soaker from wal-mart.

Btw, you're already prohibited from owning a gun if you have mental health issues.
Check out ATF form 4473, and the electronic background check (granted some states don't have good records in the check).

Gun control still has 2 flaws.
1) It doesn't get gangsters/criminals to turn in their guns (essentially the entire 'problem population')
2) It puts non-violent people who have prohibited arms in jail - having done no harm.

With 1/3 of a billion people, something extremely rare will seem common if it's constantly reported.
You would live many many many lifetimes before you ever meet someone who knows someone who was shot.
We live in the least violent era of human history.
I feel very safe.

Since you mention an AR15, here's a stat :
In the U.S., more people die each year falling out of bed (~450), than are killed by all rifles combined (including an ar15 with massive 'clip'). The danger isn't as large as people imagine.

-scheherazade

Point of order - the previous record was not in 1966. This is the most number of saves *since* they started tracking stats in 1966.

Some interesting Rankings that weren't shown:
Canada 12th
Australia 14th
United States 21st

Brazil 49th
Mexico 66th
Saudi Arabia 92nd
Qatar 111th
Iraq 123rd
Lybia 125th


Some interesting Stats:

#1 Science & Technology = United Kingdom
#1 Culture = Belgium
#1 Int'l Peace and Security = Egypt
#1 World Order = Germany
#1 Planet & Climate = Iceland
#1 Prosperity & Equality = Ireland
#1 Health & Well Being = Spain

http://www.goodcountry.org/overall

Then I point you to somewhere which requires reading:

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/now-just-001-percent-of-climate-scientists-reject-global-warming

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2014/01/10/about-that-consensus-on-global-warming-9136-agree-one-disagrees/

http://www.independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/only-1-of-9136-recent-peer-reviewed-authors-rejects-global-warming,6094

I could go all day. But, of course, this study isn't without it's detractors, who honestly do have a claim, if substantiated. (I've read the math on it, and the 97% is indeed an accurate sum, however, it is misleading in the sense that it only accounts for papers that state a stance and don't outright deny climate change is solely anthropogenic.)

Perhaps you found your info on Forbes.com, a decidedly unbiased site whose solely interested in getting to the bottom of the facts, regardless of political ideology. (sarcasm)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/05/22/after-oklahoma-city-tragedy-shameless-politicians-unsheath-global-warming-card/

Or we could try a different route and try a group dedicated to statistics:

http://stats.org/stories/2008/global_warming_survey_apr23_08.html

"Eighty-four percent say they personally believe human-induced warming is occurring, and 74% agree that “currently available scientific evidence” substantiates its occurrence. Only 5% believe that that human activity does not contribute to greenhouse warming; the rest are unsure."

Now, we should work on your use of the word "some".

"some
səm/Submit
determiner
1.
an unspecified amount or number of.
"I made some money running errands"
2.
used to refer to someone or something that is unknown or unspecified.
"she married some newspaper magnate twice her age"
pronoun
1.
an unspecified number or amount of people or things.
"here are some of our suggestions"
2.
at least a small amount or number of people or things.
"surely some have noticed"
adverbNORTH AMERICANinformal
1.
to some extent; somewhat.
"when you get to the majors, the rules change some""

Don't worry, none of those came from a .gov link.

it's more like text adventure with embeded video:P
on the other hand, I'm all for giving power to the people. the way VS is set up now, you're driving people away. lately it seems like there are always the same avatars posting, not counting occasional spammers. and the visit to the site has surely dropped too (would be nice if you could inform us with some site stats from time to time, @dag) so you've got nothing to lose if you open up invocational powers for "the lower classes"

The thing is, we should be (and we were) doing better.

That line from 1800 to now is not a straight line. It rises steadily up to about 1980, but then flattens out sharply. Over the last 30 years the average worker actually earns less than they would have over the previous 30 (adjusted for inflation).

The top end basically figured out they could demand a larger slice of the profits at the expense of the middle and lower classes. We've all seen the stats on ceo vs worker pay and the obscene differences (200+ times a workers salary). That money didn't just appear from nowhere.

Personally I'd like to know more about the stat where it says we have 25% of the worlds incarcerated people.

Not saying our justice system is the best but considering how much worse it is/can get I don't think it's a fair statistic. To show how we have a problem.

GIVE THIS MAN A PULITZER! STAT!!!

I don't get the wait times argument from those who oppose a single payer system. They clearly never went to an emergency room in the US. I've never had a short wait time in a US ER/Stat Care/Ultra Care type facility. Even when they seem empty it seems like an hour wait before you finally see a doctor. Oh your 2 year old is having a hard time breathing, wait an hour and a half. Your one year old is running a high fever and vomiting, wait two hours. Heck, the wait times to find a doctor if you don't already have a family doctor can be weeks or months, forcing you to go to the ER for stuff you'd probably normally see a doctor for. That isn't an efficient medical system. They anti-single payer people then will say they don't trust the government to make decisions about their health insurance... but they trust the one of the most profitable, per dollar earned, business in the US? (I vaguely recall insurance being number 3 in per dollar earned profits, right behind banks and pharmaceuticals, with a rather large gap to get to number four.) They don't get those huge profits by making decisions in the best interest of the patients and consumers. Walmart could pay $3 more per hour to every employee, give them benefits, increase the work force, and still make profits without raising prices, meaning that while half the work force there needs food stamps now, none would if the company would do the right thing and pay a living wage, but instead we have people mad at the people who work there for not making enough rather than the people who run it... anyhow the point is people like that, who run the business, can't be trusted to make decisions about your health insurance as they only care about their bottom line and their paycheck. Getting you the proper health care costs them money and they will gladly sacrifice you and your family for a better paycheck for them.

You're right - it's a British institution if we're to take the books as they come. But let's look at it from a J K Rowling point of view - from a brief scan of wikipedia, she went to an average british school with presumably average british children probably around 30 years ago - vastly different from the stats quoted above in 2011. There weren't many africans, pakistanis, etc. nor were there many gay, bi, transgendered people when i went to school about 20 years ago (1 black girl and everyone was "straight"). What she wrote came from imagination based on her own experiences and why on earth would people chastise her for the sheer happen-stance of her life experiences? She didn't write a book to exclude people, she wrote a book that just happened to not include every type of person in a fantasy world where there existed entirely different sorts of people. Are we to expect another video from professional-offence-takers about how JRR Tolkein - another FANTASY writer - didn't represent the diversity of humanity in any of his books?

And that's selling her short; there are elements of the books that make allusions to homophobia, racism, etc. - "Mudblood," is a xenophobic term used by characters in the book and it's not accepted by any of the extended main characters, and people really should think long and hard before placing their own expectations and values on other people and judging them for it.

Whether you like the books or not, they are popular and i think their popularity stems from the belief she has in her characters and story. Sure, she could have replaced Ron with an albino lesbian transgendered midget who would have lived happily ever after with Hermione, but would the books have been as good with a character that didn't come from Rowling's heart, someone that Rowling felt like she understood? What if she wrote a gay part for someone and got it wrong, is she then liable to take an ear bashing from the gay community for misrepresenting gay people? Where do you draw the line? Do we - at the expense of the story - put one gay person in and then suddenly we're taking abuse for including a "token" gay person?

It should not be the responsibility of anyone to compromise their art to appease someone else's sense of right or wrong, especially when it seems that their right or wrong is balanced on "is there someone like me in there?" In my opinion, if you come away from a story like Harry Potter with the burning question "Where were all the gay/whatever people?" then it's probably you that has the problem with diversity.

I say this - homophobia and racism are dead when no one even considers the issue any more. Now you can't do that in the workplace and stuff, because there are genuinely racist people out there who we try and keep in check. But this is the absolute worst place to direct your anger - no one was hired or fired based on their creed, no one did anything wrong here, all this woman has done is draw attention to what i consider to be her own contradiction. We want to encourage the idea that "Everyone is equal; there is no black or white, straight or gay, everyone is simply the same - we're just people!" And quickly follow that up with "Hey, where are all the GAY people in this fictional story?"

And finally, how the fuck does she know that every character in the book was straight? Isn't it a bit strange (i want to say homophobic) for her to expect gay people to act differently to the degree that she can spot them in a crowd? 95% of the people in Huffelpuff could be single and gay for all anyone knows. The main 3 characters are straight, all of their parents had to be straight for them to be their parents, but all the rest of them we never need to know about their sexuality, so why should they stand out, why should we even discuss it in a kids book anyway? There's only about 4 relationships in 7 books and some of them happen to the same characters.

These are just some of the problems i have with this nonsense and i've written an entire page.

I overestimated. The actual stat is that there are more blacks in 'corrections' (including prison, jail, probation, and parole) than there were slaves in 1850.
Phew! Not a problem afterall!

http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindness/dp/1595586431

Thanks for the quality. This vid just isn't striking a chord with many folks. Only 3 out of 10 registered Sifters upvoted it... those aren't good stats.

And it is a good vid. Stats aren't everything!

Sorry man, the cost vs benefits of digging into the stats just isn't worth it for me in this case. I'd wish you the best at your birth, but it's all academic as you've said. I would certainly engage more if you had something at stake.

You make some fine points!

Two things,
First, considering the dregs topping the box office (Transformers, Battleship), and what passes as 'smart' (Prometheus, Star Trek), I'm afraid a good chunk of the business can be more-or-less predicted.
Second, they're not pretending to be oracles, they're just doing stats. They are probably only providing ballpark estimates, and as they've been around for decades, it looks like they're doing fine.

Large publishers, whether it is for books, music, or movies, all rely on the same strategy: for every 10 works produced, they expect 1 to be successful and pay for all the others. I'm guessing these people are in the business of providing estimates to budget the 9 others.