Yeah, don't scare the natives, who haven't realised there's a world outside the jungle of their own navel fluff.

As others have already pointed out, plastic does harm the fish, even if it doesn't kill them outright. Not only does a lot of the plastic come as very small fragments, which may well pass into the bloodstream, but they also give off harmful chemicals. Since much of the plastic debris in the ocean has been floating around for decades, part of it will contain chemicals that are now banned. The problem of accumulation is exacerbated by the fact that many of the fish we eat, have eaten smaller, that have eaten something even smaller and so on; and on top of that, we catch a huge amount of fish that go directly into animal feed, so even if you never touch fish, you are still likely to be affected. Bon appetit.

I'm not a Tory supporter by any stretch of imagination, but I think it sticks deeper than that. - it goes all the way back to the ridiculous idea of part privatisation "to improve efficiency through competition, thereby driving down costs". It is strange that anybody bought in to this - the obvious effect has been that private clinics and hospitals have been able to offer higher pay, so any doctor worth his salt took work in the private sector if at all possible, thereby starving the NHS of their best staff. Ultimately this has been driven by blind ideology - neo-conservatism or whatever. Personally, I can't see a solution short of re-nationalisation of health care, but perhaps better minds than I can.

The British government places certain, strict responsibilities on banks when it comes to business accounts, especially when it comes to identifying who is the ultimate beneficiary. These requirements have changed quite a lot in recent years, with the last round of changes being as late as last autumn - here's a link to a relevant page on the government's official site: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/.... It's sort of in the middle of the Money Laudering Regulations, but it sums up the gist of things: they are really keen on making life difficult for white collar criminals, and it will only get tougher. I think this is well overdue - London has been far too easy for shady, financial activity for a long time. Unfortunately, it places a burden on the banks that they have not done enough to lift, for example by training staff to understand the regulations and know how to deal with affected, but legitimate customers, so a lot of particularly smaller companies, who really didn't see this coming, have got into trouble and have no-one capable of giving them advice. In most cases it ought to be simple enough, but when faced with the question "Who is the ultimate beneficiary?" a small, 2-person company may not understand what they are talking about, and unfortunately, the support staff at the bank appear to be unable to translate it into language that people do understand. I worked with a small business who got thrown out because of this - the company owner started on a long story, which only served to make them look suspicious; it would have helped a lot if the bank staff had had enough insight into things to say "In your type of business, what we are after is simply the director that is registered with Companies House" - weirdly, HSBC's account managers are not allowed to refer to Companies House (which is the official register of companies in UK and freely available online), but have to use an intermediary, who do little more than skim information from Companies House - but in this case were some 10 years out of date. Bizarre, but such is life.

Indeed. For some reason, part of my comment went missing - I quoted a bit from the previous post, then added my comment (which disappeared for some reason), then quoted a bit from wikipedia, which now shows up as the unquoted part. As for Mrs Nightingale's contributions to nursing, I think mathematics and scince were only minor contributions; far more important were things like hygiene, nutrition and simply being organised and prepared before the event, to take care of the wounded with trained nurses rather than whoever was available at the time. She didn't simply improve on nursing and care, she invented it.

I wonder - what does one call this sort of argument that tries to make everything into a black/white question with only 1 possible answer? A false dicotomy? Whatever - the world is not as simple as that. The output of Hollywood is only entertainment, perhaps, but even entertainment influences how people think and behave, and there is much more in this than simply attracting underrepresented groups into STEM. For example, if you are a scientist or engineer, or you work as SW development - do you want people in general to perceive you as one of these stereotypes that see in a Hollywood movie? To most people, that is the only kind of impression they will get of people in science and technology.

But to answer your question: *Everything* that Hollywood produces already has a social impact, whether this is intended or not, and since we all depend for our daily lives on the stability and cohesion on society, we should be interested in promoting the influences that make society more stable and coherent. Inequality and injustice are two of the main factors that threaten stability and cohesion, thus we should strive to achieve social justice. Isn't that kind of obvious?

Waste disposal certainly seems like the most important issue, but I would like to know more about the other end of the logistical chain: the supply side. It seems always to be tacitly assumed that this is under control. The other thing I wonder about is why we don't use the waste products for something - isn't a lot of energy released still? That is after all why radioactive waste is radioactive.

Apart from being factually wrong about what hippies are/were and what they believe, I think being abusive is only likely to hurt your credibilty. Abuse and violence is what people resort to, when they don't have the wit to produce a sober argument.

Indeed, Nightingale is described as "a true pioneer in the graphical representation of statistics", and is credited with developing a form of the pie chart now known as the polar area diagram,[53] or occasionally the Nightingale rose diagram...

I was being polemical, but I think there is some justification in that there are actual scientists, who get awfully dogmatic about what they feel must be the truth; that is not to say that they go to some sort of 'Church of Science' to worship. One has to bear in mind that 'Scientist' is like a job title: you work with science - you're a scientist, and scientists are just people. They aren't all strict followers of a pure form of scientific philosophy throughout all aspects of their lives, even if they mostly subscribe to a strong version of the scientific method within their field of research. Scientists can be just as opinionated as anybody else and have a hard time accepting that they are wrong.

That does not contradict what the GP said, IMO. The fact that there are people who work in science and treat it as a kind of religion doesn't mean that science is not about seeking truth and being willing to change your opinion, if the data prove you wrong; it just means that there are poor scientists as well as good ones. And just because there are religious people (perhaps even many) who think like a (real) scientist, doesn't mean religion is somehow validated by them. The difference between science and religion is fundamental: in science, you start with observable data (the closest thing we have to 'facts'), and we try to approach the truth by winnowing out the falsehoods from our theories; we know our theories are not true in an absolute sense, but we think they aren't too far off. In religion, you start at the other end: you decide what the truth must be, then you filter out the observations that don't support your conclusion; that was how the Bible was constructed, just as one example. Of course, it is logically conceivable (if not very likely) that one might stumble on the truth simply by chance, but even if you did, the method precludes understanding and stops you from accepting new insights. The religious people, who use their brains, as you say, are the ones who are brave enough to deviate from the foundation of their religion; they are not true to their faith.

I don't think they are meant primarily for the Chinese. Personally, I can't be bothered watching most of these things, but for me it is because they are still just run-of-the-mill Hollywood stuff; they have simply run out of inspiration long ago, full stop. That is why they keep targeting the younger audiences - children have yet to numb to the emptiness of what they are watcing. That, and the ongoing trend towards manga-style storylines with sketchy characters and stylized, on/off displays of emotion.

This socalled cashback is nothing more than a discount on purchases when you buy stuff, and 2% is $2 in every $100 - when has that ever mattered to a real person? And actually, why would anybody use a credit card in an age where debit cards are available - or am I missing something? I have a debit card with my bank account, and I know from experience that it works in shops and cash machines all over Europe, in the US and in China. I would have to pay an annual or monthly fee for having a credit card at all, and in many cases there is a transaction fee as well; none of which I pay for a debit card. Credit cards are simply an expensive way of getting into debt.

I thought door sales people had been banned in most civilised countries? Don't they have to be invited (rather like vampires) for it to be legal?

A lot of money is involved in selling different brands of lifestyle, 'health' food, supplements, diets etc etc, so every time there is a new story about 'A Study' concerning what is good for you, it is advisable to be skeptical - there is boud to be a hidden agenda behind most of these reports. A couple of things I immediately note are:

I know that there is an ongoing campaign in UK to get people to eat at least 5 portions of fruit or vegetables per day, which is probably a bit less than three servings, depending on what exactly those units are. IOW, people should certainly eat more vegetables than they do at the moment.

So, we are talking about %, not absolute numbers, and although they fail to clarify, this means % of calory intake, not weight or volume. And this should be seen in relation to the recommended, daily intake, something like 2500 kcal per day if you are male and exercise moderately. 30% of that is 750 kcal, corresponding to ~84 g fat per day. So, what the article says, really, is that you should eat 3 - 4 servings of vegetables per day and about 84 g fat, to have a healthy diet. Unfortunately what most people will read is that "it is OK to eat loads of fat and never mind eating vegetables, since they are not all that healthy after all".

In other words: be skeptical - and by skeptical I don't mean "reject anything you hear, that you don't like the sound of"; it means think, double check with other sources, and think again. And when it comes to diet - do you even know how many calories you eat in a day? How? Did you actually weigh your food, each ingredient separately, etc? You can't have a qualified opinion about it unless you did. Simple science: you measure, you calculate.