141–150 of 251 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I will assume you tried chiropractor, acupuncture, and perhaps even yoga?
Yoga, perhaps, but it's on par with other low impact physical activity and stretching. The other two are just pseudoscience.
Yep. This is why every dollar spent on the TSA would be better spent on preventing car accidents, heart attacks, and falls in the shower. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/01/the_comparativ... But I like the OP's more practical point: personal attention to normal activities that are actually risky, based on a realistic view of those risks.
I am a little skeptical of this idea. We should spend no money fighting one threat until all greater threats (as measure by deaths/year) have been eliminated? I think rather we should spend money proportionally. And I do not think that we should completely ignore the fears of irrational people. If our citizens are unhappy because they fear something, it is worth some expense to set them at ease. Though perhaps a care…
...which is exactly what the TSA is.
This is a bit of an aside, but I have to say this: even as a young person, take falls very seriously . I was 22 or so when I slipped in the shower. I was falling to the side and was going to hit my head, so I decided to twist so that I'd fall flat on my back, figuring I'd be fine. Well, I was, until a few hours later, when I started having chest pain and my left arm went numb and started getting shooting pains. Think…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do not dismiss other techniques so easily. The human body is a very complex mechanism and we still don't know exactly how it works. Modern medicine has been based only on the knowledge that we have: which is thus quite limited. I'm not saying that they will work. But acupuncture and yoga are not the same as pixie dust, dung pills or what have you. To give an example of what I mean: the waters of the Ganges were said…
>But acupuncture and yoga are not the same as pixie dust, dung pills or what have you. Okay, so why don't they show any efficacy above pixie dust in double-blinded studies?
Seriously showering 365 times/year is, while normal in the US, really pretty bizarre and definitely decadent. Put on some deodorant, shower every other day and this guy could cut down his risk massively. And save colossal amounts of water! Does he sweat regularly? Play sports? If not, in the winter, shower twice per week. Doing otherwise is really falling into one of the weirdest forms of American prissiness. In gene…
Yeah, if by "massively" you mean he'll only be expected to have a possibly-fatal fall twice instead of five times.
Your post is extremely ignorant. It not only offensively and incorrectly ascribes daily showering to "prissiness" and "obsessiveness" (as if that's the reason I shower every day, instead of, you know, wanting to smell nice, look nice, and feel refreshed), it also claims that this is an American phenomenon (I'm Canadian, and many/most people I know shower daily. The ones I know who don't, smell). It also assumes all people are the same. Personally, I'd feel pretty sorry for your wife if you smell like I do after not showering that morning.
It's no more "bizarre" than the Japanese are bizarre for using those funky toilets with built-in bidets. Cultures may be different. Let them be different without judging, and without projecting.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am a little skeptical of this idea. We should spend no money fighting one threat until all greater threats (as measure by deaths/year) have been eliminated? I think rather we should spend money proportionally. And I do not think that we should completely ignore the fears of irrational people. If our citizens are unhappy because they fear something, it is worth some expense to set them at ease. Though perhaps a care…
>> Though perhaps a careful placebo would be most fitting ...which is exactly what the TSA is.
Yep. This is why every dollar spent on the TSA would be better spent on preventing car accidents, heart attacks, and falls in the shower. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/01/the_comparativ... But I like the OP's more practical point: personal attention to normal activities that are actually risky, based on a realistic view of those risks.
I am a little skeptical of this idea. We should spend no money fighting one threat until all greater threats (as measure by deaths/year) have been eliminated? I think rather we should spend money proportionally. And I do not think that we should completely ignore the fears of irrational people. If our citizens are unhappy because they fear something, it is worth some expense to set them at ease. Though perhaps a care…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in the middle of the book right now, the author goes to great pains to point out that there is no value judgment being passed on what is better, who is more advanced (in the moral, judgmental sense), or who is right. But at the end of the day, it is a study of how some parts of the world - particularly Europe - came to technologically, and subsequently politically/economically dominate everyone else. I don't thin…
I didn't disagree with that. I just wanted to point out that his reasoning is much more subtle than just "they had guns and the others only spears". That is exactly the point of the book, because the usual explanation people come up with is "they were too stupid to invent guns". The book explains how intelligence had nothing to do with it.
Jared Diamond is a very sensitive and empathetic man, and that really comes through if you watch the TV series by the same name. His work is not at all promoting Euro-centric supremacy as a race or culture, merely explaining a set of historical circumstances.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that from the original? There's a lot of 'e's in that passage.
Are you thinking of Gadsby? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_%28novel%29
Seriously showering 365 times/year is, while normal in the US, really pretty bizarre and definitely decadent. Put on some deodorant, shower every other day and this guy could cut down his risk massively. And save colossal amounts of water! Does he sweat regularly? Play sports? If not, in the winter, shower twice per week. Doing otherwise is really falling into one of the weirdest forms of American prissiness. In gene…
> Put on some deodorant, shower every other day and this guy could cut down his risk massively Yeah, if by "massively" you mean he'll only be expected to have a possibly-fatal fall twice instead of five times. Your post is extremely ignorant. It not only offensively and incorrectly ascribes daily showering to "prissiness" and "obsessiveness" (as if that's the reason I shower every day, instead of, you know, wanting t…