I have to wonder what meta-analyses you have been reading. Aside from the fact that meta-analysis is highly susceptible to agenda biases, there is also this meta-analysis. It concluded that SSRI's like Prozac, at least in the case of severe depression, were not only statistically significant, but reached the more stringent standard of clinical significance.

Hmm, I just wanted to say I found your point and the GP's point to be particularly interesting. I consider myself to be on the upper end of the intellectual bell curve, though far from a genius or savant. I read the point about books and thought, "Wow, I grew up in a home full of technical books. Computers, programming, science, mathematics, engineering, I found them all to be utterly fascinating, even when I was too young to understand 90% of their contents. That really did help me develop an appreciation for learning and knowledge."

I then read your post, and I realized that my father is extremely intelligent, I was breast fed, and I was a huge, fat 9 lb baby carried to full term (Sorry, Mom). I wonder if you still get the full benefits of "good pedigree," even if the culture of learning isn't facilitated or cultivated.

You've got your technologies confused. The back-scatter-type body scanners utilize x-ray back scatter, and I think we can all agree that x-rays are ionizing radiation with known biological effects. Sure, they levels may be very low, but repeated low-level exposure to ionizing radiation can be dangerous, and it's not so simple as just dismissing it as non-ionizing radiation.

The other type of scanner are terahertz millimeter-wave scanners. While not technically ionizing, terahertz radiation is much more energetic than UHF microwaves, and the jury is still out on their exact biological effects.

Note that I said AT LEAST once a year. Obviously there is a wide range of service intervals, as there is a wide range of types of race engines. On one end, midget cars may go multiple seasons without requiring a rebuild. At the other extreme, top fuel dragster engines are rebuilt literally every single time they are run. They could end up being rebuilt several times in a single day.

This is the case for ANY motor not specifically designed to run on high-ethanol-content fuels. Ethanol is a strong solvent and strips oil films, breaks down hoses and seals, oxidizes ferrous metals, and generally tears apart gasoline motors. E85 "flex-fuel" motors are designed with ethanol's nastiness in mind, using different materials and lubricants, but even then, running E85 is harder on the engine and usually calls for more frequent service intervals.

Running E85 in ANY engine that does not explicitly state that it is designed to run on E85 will cause permanent and rapid damage. It'll probably completely destroy the engine before your next oil change.

Ethanol is complete crap as an engine fuel, with the lone exception being purpose built race engines that can utilize the higher detonation resistance for more horsepower per unit displacement. And those race motors tend to get rebuilt at least once a year, mitigating the wear factors.

I know, right? I mean it's not like thousands of Iranian-American immigrants and their US-Born children enter Iran every year to visit their extended family members. That's almost as absurd as those people returning safely to American soil and making the trip multiple times! I mean, if my 80 year old grandmother doesn't want to emigrate to the US, well then, fuck her terrorist ass, right? Next thing you know, people will be claiming that Iranian law allows the US-born children of Iranian citizens to freely enter the country! LOL!

Dad? Is that you?

It's the complete reverse in the rest of America, too. Everyone else is pushing for online payment and electronic billing because it saves on paper and postage costs.

Verizon is the first company I've seen try to pull an asshat move like this. I think why Verizon is trying it now involves a couple things. For one, large telecoms like Verizon and AT&T have for years felt entitled to licenses to print money hand over fist, and whenever revenue drops due to market changes or technological development, their biggest priority is to find somewhere else to recoup that lost revenue. My guess here is that Verizon noticed that a majority of their customers were already paying their bills online, so they decided to start charging a fee to do it, knowing that their customer base already appreciates the convenience of online bill payment and inertia would prevent them from paying by mail. Other service providers, public utilities for example, likely have much older, entrenched, and less 'tech-savvy' customers so they need to provide incentives to move towards online billing and its associated cost savings.

Doesn't make much business sense, but at least the community can actually benefit from HP's blunders this time.

I wasn't looking for pity, I was just trying to provide a dose of perspective. Supporting or taking part of the OWS protests does not automatically make you a whining leftist, nor even significantly increase the probability that you ARE a whining leftist. There are plenty of productive, hard-working people that are pissed off too.

Sorry, that was a typo. It should read "6 months of them"

I relocated when I received a job offer, which happened to be only a few hours away. My job search was nationwide, and relocation was pretty much inevitable as I attended a rural and remote campus.
And I used the term "DC Metro area" which would imply, yes, I did mean "Arlington, etc." The DC-MD-VA Metropolitan Statistical Area has an unemployment rate of 6.1, well below the national average.

My whole point was the fact that the economy is totally different, I'm not interested in pity. I'm thankful to have a job that affords me a comfortable standard of living. But that doesn't diminish the fact that over the last 5 years, wages have shrunk while inflation has barely slowed. Look back further, and real wages have been dropping for decades.

It's not about "protesting Wall Street." Protesting on Wall Street is a symbolic gesture, but the anger is directed at politicians more concerned about campaign donations and lobbyist bribes from the financial sector than the interest of the American middle class. The wolves were able to eat the sheep because the shepherd was more interested in the stripper that the wolves hired than watching his flock.

For the entire population. But even for those with college degrees, the unemployment rate for those 18-35 (i.e. recent graduates) is in excess of 20%

I recently graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering, easily one of the most "Useful and Marketable" undergraduate degrees you can have. I am also a veteran who spent 2 years serving his country, 6 of them getting shot at in Kandahar. I have relocated to the DC-Metro area, one of the areas of lowest unemployment in the country. I BARELY found a job, and at a significantly lower salary than what my peers were being offered in 2007. My tuition costs more than doubled while I was in school. All the while, we've been dumping trillions of dollars to cover the asses of bankers and insurers underwriting ridiculous risks in order to make a quick buck.

But sure, OWS is a bunch of whining leftist hippies. Seriously dude, get fucked.

I really resent this pervasive attitude that anyone who complains about being saddled with student loans is some kind of jobless hippie with a philosophy degree and a total lack of judgement.

I studied Electrical Engineering at an in-state public university. For 3.5 years of my student career I was on a "full" ROTC scholarship. I worked full-time every summer, and spent the last several semesters of school working 25 hours a week. When I wasn't able to complete the ROTC program and commission as an officer, I was called up for 2 years in my enlisted grade, 6 months of which I spent getting shot at in Kandahar, and upon my return to school to finish my degree, I had 80% eligibility for the GI Bill. I shouldn't have any student loans, right? Except I managed to rack up about $45k in student debt after all the interest capitalization.

How, you ask? Well for one, the "full" ROTC scholarship only covers tuition and fees, but not room and board. Which was actually more than half of the cost of college for the 3 years or so. I was required to be part of a full-time, on campus senior military college, and thus on-campus room and board was not an optional cost. I got jack-diddly squat from my parents, since my father had managed to bury himself under ill-advised consumer debt. I also got nothing in Federal aid beyond minimal, unsubsidized stafford loans since my father, despite being debt-poor, had a high income on paper. Tuition and fees alone, during my time as a student increased from about $2200/semester as a freshman in 2003 to about $4000/semester in Spring 2011. And let's not forget the costs of books, software, computers, equipment for labs, etc.

Thankfully, I was able to relatively quickly find a decent paying job, which in this economic climate is difficult even with a BS in Electrical Engineering. However, my finances still feel the drag of tens of thousands of dollars in student debt. This is money I could be spending, that my home state could be collecting sales tax on.

But I guess it's a waste of tax payer dollars to make higher education affordable. After all, anyone with $50k in student loan debt is obviously a lazy, liberal hippie wasting their time pursuing a worthless degree and will never contribute anything to economic growth.

Huh? Is malaria infection a big problem with European cattle? Is there some other disease ravaging European cattle herds that could easily be prevented with a vaccine that isn't used?

I don't quite understand what point you are trying to get across. Could you clarify?