Nobody is asking you for compassion, which is clearly a lost cause. The scientific evidence on the subject shows that harm-reduction, decriminalization approaches cost less (less policing and medical expenses) and reduce crime and homelessness. This means that continuing with the current approach is akin to spending more money to punish addicts because of your so-called morality. Even more, with harm-reduction, addicts have a better chance of functioning and recovery, and their kids thus have a better chance at getting lunch and perhaps some parenting.

Call this a pragmatic argument if you will, but I think ethically there's a strong case to be made for trying to do what's best for those lunchless children, especially if it costs less and has other societal benefits. Unless your definition of ethics is basically that people you judge as "bad" should be punished with no regard to collateral damage. We don't even need to open the box of the links between childhood trauma or mental illness causing addiction, which in some ways literally hijacks a person's brain like a parasite might.

Why do you associate adolescents having unfettered access to hardcore, typically trashy/demeaning/reductive pornographic fiction with "progress"? It is not puritan to say that the developing adolescent is better off with realistic/artful depictions of sex, frank conversation/education, and ideally healthy + safe + consensual + fun sexual experiences with real human beings, rather than isolated screentime with extremely compelling fictional sex videos. Not just emotionally, but also in terms of actually developing physiologically (e.g., look at rates of erectile dysfunction in young, healthy men).

To me, this is progress -- like with alcohol, it was neither ideal to ban it nor to send kids to school with alcoholic cider (done regularly in France throughout the 20th century). Progress can mean balancing protecting the young with letting adults make their own choices.

There is a world of difference between various levels of pornography. I.e. static images, tasteful nudes, hardcore stuff, and at the far end: multiple high-definition videos simultaneously playing extreme fetishes.If you look at what the latter does to the brain and the future sex-life of kids who grow up with this stuff, you might understand that it's a very important distinction.

For example, look at the erectile dysfunction/sexual dysfunction rates in young men -- it's a problem that is essentially unique to highspeed online porn video watchers, with its associated supraphysiologic dopamine surges and ensuing tolerance.

It is not an MRI. It's magnetoencephalography, which is very very different than Magnetic Resonance Imaging. It's much more analogous to an EEG (electroencephalography), and a more portable version is is impressive but not nearly as impressive as shrinking the liquid helium-cooled magnets needed for MRI would be.

How is this different than the Problem Based Learning (PBL) approach pioneered at McMaster medical school in the 60s (and since adopted worldwide)?

As students at Mac, we often got a kick out of seeing even our fiercest crtics at schools like the University of Toronto slowly come around to our pedagogy, but with subtly different names of course (ie, case-based learning).

It works great for medical school, and I think would also apply well to graduate school, where you have pressure to obtain results or not embarass yourself on the wards to drive your learning -- often jokingly called "Shame-based learning" in medicine. On the other hand, the students that I met that used PBL during their undergrad often had frighteningly large gaps in their knowledge if they weren't interested in a particular topic. And PBL is not at all suited to giving grades out, which is not a problem at med school which are almost exclusively pass-fail, but does not help you sort the wheat from the chaff at an undergrad level.

It always struck me as intentional that there is far too much focus around global warming because its complexity lends itself to endless debate/FUD about the relative contributions of the solar cycle/volanoes, etc, the differences between climate and weather, and so on.

Ocean acidification alone would probably justify more than even the most extreme carbon-policies that are being negotiated, but it's almost never discussed publicly -- probably because anyone with a glass of water and pH meter can demonstrate the cause and there's so much less room for manufactured doubt.

Dog wants to go outside? No need to stop playing with your virtual animals! International travel? You can stay immersed in the same game world the whole time! Hip millennial friends invite you to come socialise? Don't forget to bring the screen!

But seriously, the ad is stunning for its honesty. Normally, video game ads go to pains to avoid reminding you of what it feels like to see another human staring blankly at a screen, but this ad was basically one example after another. Always the 3rd-person, with almost no focus on the 1st-person experience... amazing.

Took some digging, but here is the original study (paywalled).

Contrary to the click-baity Telegraph article linked, the brains were not shrinking -- there was a correlation between the most strongly linked genes to Alzheimer's and relatively smaller/thinner areas of the brain associated with things like memory and executive function. There was also a correlation between these thin areas and reduced ability of the tested children.

If reproducible, this result would be absolutely shocking. Our current understanding is that the genes in questions (APOE 4) are not even associated with early-onset Alzheimer's, only late-onset, and even then the association is so weak that screening is unjustifiable.

Ask and ye shall receive. Here's a meta-review of some of the best and biggest studies comparing vegetarians to health-conscious omnivores. Almost all studies showed a longevity benefit, and pooled they found a significant longevity beneift. This is a nice plot of the risk ratio as the study data is cumulatively pooled.

It goes without saying that this field of research is tricky -- evidence is never iron-clad and you can always find a study or two to support your biases. But, as a medical student and someone interested in nutrition, I'll go out on a limb and say that there is no diet except the Mediterranean diet that has so much supportive evidence of health benefits. (Prove me wrong!) But in any case, this should be enough to at least stop the FUD about vegetarianism causing everything from diabetes to psychosis as per above. It's at least not causing harm.

Now, the question is -- will bacon-loving Slashdot rejoice that a citation request was answered, or continue on with the usual group-think?

There's at least some merit in laying blame on both:

I'm not sure where you live, but here in Ontario we have a law that all prescriptions must be automatically replaced with generic versions unless otherwise specified by the physician (very rarely). And guess what? There have not been many new antibiotics discovered in the past 15 years, so the vaaaast majority prescribed are generic. We further make use of all sorts of topical antibacterial solutions containing iodine and hydrogen peroxide, for example.

In other words, if there was any validity at all to what you were saying, physicians would jump at the chance to prescribe silver.

I've read hundreds of the best and biggest nutritional studies, and here's my quick and dirty what nutritional "science" has actually proven beyond doubt (mostly from country-country comparisons and massive epidemiological studies):

• --Trans fats are poison, there's no good amount.
• --Processed sugar is bad, there's no good amount.
• --Rapidly digested processed carbs are nearly as bad as sugar.
• --Red meat is either bad or neutral, but processed red meat is definitely bad -- avoid.
• --Complex carbs are ho-hum, don't overdo it.
• --Saturated fats are ho-hum, not bad but better replaced by good unsaturated fats.
• --Most unsaturated fats (especially in nuts/olives/fish) are great, eat as much as possible.
• --Fresh fruits/vegetables are great, eat as much and as many different types as possible.

The ideal diet as we currently know it from available evidence is essentially the Mediterranean diet, which is the only intervention that is consistently and clearly linked to longer and healthier lives. Note that an American-Vegan diet with adequate protein intake is closer to it that the typical fast-food, red-meat, fruit/vegetable-free, processed-sugar heavy disaster that most Americans consume.

My point is that I agree mostly with your summary, but it's not as simple as blaming carbs -- many countries that do better nutritionally eat more carbs than the US (though they're typically complex) -- and there's no reason to villainize vegans and worship bacon from a nutritional stand-point like so many in the geek culture do. Except to be instantly modded up to +5, that is.

I guess you intentionally didn't mention Ireland in this sentence?

What about the assasination of the Prime Minister of Israel by a Jewish extremist, for starters?

You can find extremist nutters in every religion, but the root of country-wide religious warfare is always economic and political, first and foremost. The difference between Islam and Christianity in terms of modern-day violence has everything to do with the fact that the Middle East has been continually torn up by colonial powers and local warlords, whereas most Christian countries enjoy relative stability.

I'm proudly agnostic, but if you read through any of the holy texts, you'll find more than enough justification for violence if you're motivated to -- Islam isn't unique. It's the readers' lives that are the determining factor in extremism.

The US pays its doctors some of the highest salaries in the world, publishes the most and best medical research in the world, and also charges its patients the most in the world.

You can find the best and worst care in the US. For the rich who want the best care -- American or not -- the US is their destination of choice. It's just that the rest of the developed world gives a damn about providing decent care to the vast majority of citizens who are not rich. By focusing on that, they take care of the rank and file and still leave the opportunity for the richest to travel abroad to pay through the nose for better care, so nobody really suffers.

And as the poster below points out, medical tourism is not exactly the best metric of your system's quality. India and Mexico aren't exactly shining models of medical care.