There are plenty of studies and tests done on alt med. What makes something alt med instead of medicine is not if it is efficacious (as you falsely believe) but if it is part of the prevailing medical tradition. This is the definition used by the FDA, the NHS, the WHO, and every other major health organization in the world. So if you don't like the definition of alt med, take it up with them.

We have plenty of studies on the efficacy of St. John's Wort. It is already 'approved'. End of story. Your 'simple answer' would require some company to pony up millions to billions of dollars to get it to pass FDA approval, when it is not patentable and so they would not be able to recover the extreme costs. Your 'simple answer' would mean simply removing all of these supplements from store shelves and forcing people into taking meds that are ten times as expensive with the same efficacy.

@ChaosEngine
@poolcleaner

I live in Japan and if I were to dive under my desk every time there was an earthquake, I'd be under there at least 3 times a day. Since the 2011 earthquake we've had constant aftershocks, some as strong as 5 and 6 on the Richter scale (which makes the panic seen over California's most recent quake somewhat amusing).

ChaosEngine is correct, you can gauge how bad the earthquake is by the amount of shaking. On March 3rd, 2011--the only time I have actually dived under a table during an earthquake--plates were flying off my kitchen shelves and shattering on the floor.

That said, Japan is a country that is truly prepared for quakes. Any big items you buy like refrigerators or big screen TVs usually come with fasteners to bolt them down so they don't fall over during a quake. The buildings here are incredibly well-engineered to survive a severe quake--very few people during the 3.11 quake were killed by collapsing structures.

Most other countries aren't that prepared. If I were vacationing in a developing country and a quake struck I would probably get the hell out of the building as soon as possible regardless of if it seemed small because I wouldn't trust the engineering to be as sound as it is here.

tldr:

You're both right. You need to use your experience and critical thinking to decide the best course of action in an emergency. And if you don't have any experience with that particular emergency, then you need to trust the people who do have experience to know what they are doing and follow them. For example, if I were ever in an airplane crash the first person I'd look for is the flight attendant to see what they were doing and follow their lead.

Wow, so many of these people are so far out of touch with reality.
It's not a choice to work at Wall Mart - It's a last resort. If people had other options, they wouldn't be there. Few people chose to live in poverty

And Who cares about the cheap prices that Wal Mart is able to give. It's self serving. The largest employer keeps it's employees poor so they have no choice but to shop at their own store, which in turn just gives their wages back to employers. Sure other people reap the benefits of some cheap stuff, but let's stay real. It's cheap because the quality is often lowered to meet the competitive contracts targeted for manufacturers to be able to be Walmart's choice product. Nothing bought at WalMart lasts more than a year or two, you always end up re-buying it. So where is the cheap affordability now?

And while Wall Mart works hard to choke out the competition so they can raise their prices on certain products, their merchandising does the same thing. They only target certain manufacturers and give then the lion's share of the merchandising space on their shelves. Selection at Wal Mart is Slim. They are great at choosing your brands for you. The companies that play ball with WalMart. I have better selection on items at non department stores. Case in point Groceries. They have great prices on certain grocery items, but I don't have any choice on the brands I'm buying. And sooner or later, I'll still need to go to the grocery store, because WalMart just can't give me what I need to stock my kitchen with the basics. My Wall Mart doesn't even sell large bags of sugar.

Yeh. It just flies off the shelves.

Welcome to the capitalistcal entry-side of China not available on shelves at WalMart or Tesco....yet.

all for the plastic shit they feed the world having class-C ordinance innit-Remember the good old days when the only thing we DID get outta communist China was their fireworks??

That reminds me, "Fuck you Walmart, for cashing-in on the soul of the United States and fuck all my fellow lazy-American fucks who sold it to em. That pretty much covers 95% of y'all dimbulb motherfuckers.

Crappy over-loaded shelves!

Saw this on Junkee:

"“I am so sick of my T-shirt getting wet whenever I pour a lot of liquid on it!”

“I wish my iPhone 4 or 5 would not get so damaged every time I carefully place it at the bottom of a jug filled with water!”

“My new white shoes have been stained by the chocolate sauce and mustard I squeezed on them earlier! What gives?!”

“This cardboard box I chose to hold all of the water is just not doing a great job of it! ”

These are all things you’re used to saying, but you will be saying them no longer! After a two year wait, Rust-Oleum’s NeverWet – an invention of Ross Nanotechnology (great business name, Ross) – has just hit shelves in the States.

It is “a family of super hydrophobic coating that completely repels water and heavy oils,” and you can buy it online here for $20 a can."

&
"Couple questions left unanswered:

A) What does it taste like?

B) What does it feel like?

C) How much cancer will it give me, and how quickly?

D) What happens if you get it on your hands and then you want to wash it off your hands? Will you be NeverWet forever?

5) If you spray the inside walls of a glass tumbler with NeverWet but not the inside base of that tumbler, and then you fill up the tumbler with water or with another liquid of your choice, like mustard, will it form a mustard tower inside the tumbler? Can you take a photo of the mustard tower and send it to us very soon?"

@artician has a point, I remember a Gary Larson story about a cartoon he'd done on Jane Goodall, one chimp is cleaning another and finds a blonde hair and accuses the other chimp of hanging around 'that Goodall tramp' again.

He got an angry letter from the Goodall foundation and shelved the cartoon, never to be published again.

Years later, he happened to be talking to someone else from the Goodall foundation and she brought the cartoon up. He told her about how he'd pulled it and would never re-print it anywhere because of the reaction, and she said, "That doesn't sound like Jane!"

She contacted Goodall who personally contacted Larson and told him she thought the cartoon was hilarious and he was welcome to re-print it as often as he liked.

Long story short, bureaucrats often get a bug up their ass about things that would never bother the true powers-that-be.

You could also blame books and homing pigeons -- Encyclopedia sets? Libraries? I spent many hours of my time as a child reading in these original information databases. I feel like the internet just brought a bunch of base fucks into a spectrum of reality that has always existed. Fucks that normally wouldn't spend their time consuming information in a database. Fucks that would market the shit out of every aspect of it. The perception of this video is a direct result of our internet being ground into dust.

At its mid-range potential, the internet is not much different than a library. I recall a lot of book-learned facts which are plain WRONG, including false and biased information, and unlabeled, incorrectly scaled maps being fairly constant. Yay Christopher Columbus! Yay happy natives! Yay dropping nuclear bombs on people! Yayyyyyyyyyyyyy

The internet brings ourselves closer and closer to instant, multi-perspective, peer-reviewed information, because we no longer need to thumb through catalogs, shelves, and pages, and everyone can contribute in a trusted, merit-based environment. Identify the fuckers of the internet. They pollute us with their bullshit. (I posit that I am not a fucker, I am merely disgruntled.)

One of my best friends is a librarian and the major difference he sees between Wikipedia and published books is that published books require new editions to replace outdated and incorrect information, potentially screwing over human memory for as long as that book isn't burned. (Sorry, rofl, I thought it was a funny way to phrase that. Plz don't burn books.)

The key is to avoid nonstop popular culture and focus on the vast educational potential of the internet.

And don't use social media.

And keep your mobile device's sound and vibration OFF. I love technology but don't let it reverse your human potential, let it augment. Focus on augmentation and factual checks & balances of the information you take in.

No to the conclusions from this video. No. No. NO! The net doesn't make us more superficial, we do and we always have.

'spent 2 months on the Palmer's sister ship, the Laurence M.Gould. These are fine ships, and a great asset to the study of our world.
...with congress requesting to review National Science Foundation funding, I wonder how long it is before these projects are shelved?

Actually, cereal companies do this already. The 'kids' cereal is always on the bottom shelves (most of the time) and the characters logos are designed to have their eyes follow you.

Edit: I know that isn't the exact technology you were referring to, but it's a similar concept.

Ok, I read more comments. He turned himself in. Scary dude.

As to this evolving into a gun discussion, as far as I'm concerned, no one was hurt or killed in this incident, so it's a good thing guns weren't involved. It's easy to rationalize using deadly force after the fact (and no witnesses; Trayvon Martin), but the point at which a person crosses that line, when threatened, and actually chooses to kill another human appears to run a gamut from "I'm being really inconvenienced/disrespected right now" to "I'm going to die right now". I don't think George Zimmerman was about to die, or even get his ass kicked. I would rather kick someone's ass, if necessary, than they kick mine, but I'd rather take an ass-kicking than sentence someone to death. That's probably not going to be a popular opinion.

As far as gun control possibly keeping the badguy in this video from having a gun... then "yay" for gun control. That's exactly its purpose, and not so you can't defend against the gov'ment when they come to break down your door.

Hell, I hope some sort of car control is used in this situation and this guy isn't allowed to drive for a long time (after he gets out of jail). He had a car, he used it as a weapon. If he had a gun... ?

EDIT: Admittedly, some seeming contradictions to a prior rant, but I'm sure I wasn't the only one jolted into a somewhat clearer reality by what happened at Sandy Hook.

All systems are in decay upon conception and the rate of decay accelerates upon implementation there, Trancecoach...

Walmart is to unions as grouper is to red tide. Their current "fuck our employees as we fuck the planet" model would flash incinerate the moment their employees had a say in a future with Walmart other than the one they have: "Stay poor, stay ill, do your job, insect, then die."

I'd love to see Walmart burn this year. ALL power to their employees, sweatshop-showcase lackeys all!!


You know ho to save money at Walmart? Buy only goods from their shelves that are manufactured in the United States. You won't need a shopping cart.

>> ^Murgy:

Seeing as how the discussion is about the widespread use and ownership of guns, your comparison is illogical. Would it not stand to reason that incidences in which planes were purposefully flown into buildings would increase if piloting licenses were no longer mandatory? Seeing as how accidental death by firearms as been represented in the relevant statistics, I suppose one wouldn't even be required to include the prerequisite of purposeful, either.

The topic of the discussion has nothing to do with my point about ignoring statistics. If you are going to make a statement about violent crimes and back it up with statistics, you can't just ignore a large part of the statistic.

Seeing as how the discussion is about the widespread use and ownership of guns, your comparison is illogical. Would it not stand to reason that incidences in which planes were purposefully flown into buildings would increase if piloting licenses were no longer mandatory? Seeing as how accidental death by firearms as been represented in the relevant statistics, I suppose one wouldn't even be required to include the prerequisite of purposeful, either.


>> ^jimnms:
You can't pick out a small portion of a larger statistic to base your argument on, you need to take into account the whole picture. That's like saying 2001 was a slow year for terrorism, if you don't count the World Trade Center attacks.