One claim is that being too clean makes people unhealthy. The other is that triclosan and BPA make people unhealthy. Those are two very distinct and different claims. The latter claim is what this study seems to prove, while the former claim seems completely unsubstantiated by this study according to TFA.

If those antibacterial products could have been made with a compound other than triclosan, would cleanliness still have a negative impact on health?

Further, the closing comment on the article makes another good point:

"It is possible, for example, that individuals who have an allergy are more hygienic because of their condition, and that the relationship we observed is, therefore, not causal or is an example of reverse causation," Aiello said.

So really, there seems to be NOTHING in support of the claim that being too clean makes people unhealthy.

This is either another case of journalistic ignorance or journalistic sensationalism. But seeing as the journal is called Medical Daily, you'd expect them to have at least a minimum amount of knowledge and insight.

Yeah! Those pirates are going down! They better look for legal protection and make sure their defence doesn't have any holes. Simply arguing that someone took advantage and had backdoor access to your wifi won't cut it. Braun is acting as a missionary for the rest of the porn industry to spread the seeds of change and finally rid it of piracy.

Mark Kingwell was one of my philosophy professors at the University of Toronto. I admire his work and think that he is an amazing lecturer. He's published a lot of books on happiness and better living through a philosophical perspective.

He's in his late-40s I think, and he's pretty in touch with current issues. The article doesn't do him and his views enough justice. If you want to learn more about his views, there's a list of his books on his entry on Wikipedia.

For what it's worth, I think what he's trying to get at here is that we all try to assign some normative value to our actions and goals. But at some deeper level, we might believe that there really is no objective normative value to our actions, and that is reflected by our constant need to procrastinate. Of course, his view is much more nuanced than that and it's more ideal to read his books for the full story.

That's a little disingenuous I think. Sure, a free market is an ideal that is not manifest in real-life practice, but that doesn't take away from its usefulness. We use such ideal constructs in our everyday lives, but we learn to correct for their impracticality through various means. In this case, we recognize that the practice of book scanning is a practical obstacle to the information-symmetric free market of book trading. So we correct for that by applying specific limits on that particular market.

It's kind of like, I presume, engineering a processor. On an ideal level, things behave in a certain way and the processor would never deviate from that behaviour. However, in real-life situations, leakage and other physical obstacles get in the way of how the processor should ideally behave. So we have to correct for that by adding into the processor design some element that corrects for such deviations. But to say that it's useless to think about how the processor should ideally behave is, to be blunt, kind of stupid. We have to know what the ideal is in order to come up with appropriate solutions. Same goes with the free market.

A completely free market works best when there is no information asymmetry between the parties involved in a transaction. If the buyer knows exactly what the seller knows and vice versa. Scanning books like this creates information asymmetry by giving information to the buyer that is unavailable* to the seller. The seller corrects this by placing limits on the marketplace in order to maintain as good an information balance as possible.

This is exactly how textbook capitalism is supposed to work. Of course, it's ideal if the party placing limits on the marketplace is not a party involved in the transaction in order to avoid bias towards one side or another. That's how governments become involved in regulating the market. Of course, in practice, there are a lot more variables that have an effect on information symmetry and party bias. But something as simple as this is easily explained by basic free market principles.

* Of course, the information is available to the seller, but it's just that the seller is unwilling to procure that information for one reason or another. The seller finds that correcting the information balance by limiting information access to the buyer is easier than correcting it by having to access that information themselves.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. That kind of stupidity will get you eaten alive. Aren't you glad they didn't choose me?

I personally think a man like him is the perfect one for the job. Maybe he'll be able to amuse the aliens with our meager understanding of rudimentary physics, prompting them to keep us alive as their cute pets or even just live historical specimens instead of just eating us all or something.

heh, only a slashdotter would consider iPhone/iPod to be home entertainment, I suppose.

The legal concern isn't just that they're making a similar competing product, or that there will be confusion that Teachbook IS Facebook. The concern is that there will be confusion that Teachbook is a product of the Facebook team or that it is endorsed by Facebook or that it is affiliated with Facebook in any way. There are many families of products that share a particular element in their names, so it's not a far-fetched concern.

We've gone over this time and time again, for many different companies and products. Facebook is obliged by law to actively defend their trademark when the name of a competing product is similar and is in the same line of business. This is not a case where we can attribute any motivation to Facebook other than the fact that they're trying to carry out their legal obligations to retain their trademark. They risk losing the legal status of their trademark if they don't sue. Whether their claims are valid are for the courts to decide.

Other posts have said "what about this? What about that?" There are a few considerations to take. Did, e.g., Fuckbook file a trademark application for its name? Are cookbooks social networking sites? Some of the suggestions are simply absurd.

I mean, I hate trying to defend Facebook (indeed, I may even find Teachbook useful in a couple months' time), but you guys don't really have a problem with Facebook here. What you guys have a problem with is the law that requires Facebook to do stuff like this. But instead of recognizing this and having a meaningful conversation about whether or not trademark law is reasonable in its obligations, the editors allow flamebait articles like this on the site and get people all riled up not against the cause of the issue, but against only one of the many symptoms of the issue. Absolutely ridiculous. Quit feeding the trolls, guys.

Not quite sure whether the prosecutor was using the laymen definition or legal definition of criminal intent, the article is sparse and the prosecutor was smart enough to use an ambiguous term. The laymen definition of criminal intent is something like wanting to do something evil, or wanting to commit some sort of crime. The legal definition (in Canada, but should be similar in US) of criminal intent (or mens rea) is simply that you intended to do (or should have known that your actions would lead to you doing) whatever it is that is prohibited by law. Notice that you don't need to know that you are doing something against the law, you just need to know (or should know) you are doing that thing, which as an objective fact happens to be against the law. In this case, the question shouldn't be whether or not they had some evil ends in mind when they spied on the children, but it should rather be whether or not they intended to spy on or knew that their actions would lead to spying on the children.

In your example, the question is not whether you are intending to break the law by going 55mph in a 35mph zone, the question is simply whether you intended to go 55mph (while you were in a 35mph zone, but you don't need to know that fact to have mens rea). This excuses cases like accelerator malfunctions where you're going 55mph as a result partially because of your actions (you stepped on the accelerator) but didn't know or couldn't have known that your action would result in going 55mph (since you couldn't have known about your car's malfunction).

Ridiculous. Saying that exposing someone to a naked tit is dangerous is a questionable practice. Saying that running into someone with a god damn car is dangerous is stating fact.

You misunderstand the point of the rules of the road. They're not to punish drivers after they've driven dangerously. They're an attempt to prevent drivers from ever driving dangerously. So when you get to the point where a situation may turn dangerous, the law should have the power to stop you. Driving is not some game. Lives are at stake. Nobody gives a shit if YOU bruise your knee, or if YOU fall off and die because of a stupid decision you make. That's why there are tracks that let you drive faster than normal road conditions allow - go sign a waiver and use those tracks if you want to go fast. What we care about is even the remote possibility that you may end a human life - or, perhaps worse, not quite end a human life.

Speed limits generally take into consideration road conditions and population density. They're not simply arbitrary. If you go significantly over the speed limit, you are driving too dangerously for us. Take your bike off the road and go to a track if you want to go fast.

Huh? Not quite sure why you directed that at me. I don't disagree. In fact, it's right there in my post:

Young people seem to be viewing computers and the internet as tools they wield for doing whatever it is they want to do, be it contacting friends, maintaining social networks, communicating with other services, doing homework, etc.

The important difference between deduction on the one hand and induction and abduction on the other hand is that deductive reasoning holds necessarily, whereas inductive and abductive reasoning do not. This is because with deductive reasoning, so long as the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. With inductive and abductive reasoning, even though the premises are true, the conclusion may be still be false. A classic example of induction is that (p1) All swans that I've observed are white; (c1) All swans are white. Let's imagine that there are 1000 swans in the world, and I've observed 999 of them. Let's say that (p1) is true. (c1) may still be false. That one remaining swan could be some other colour than white. (Aside: Even if you said (c1') At least xx% of swans are white, it still does not hold necessarily since the total amount of swans is a contingent fact that you have no access to.) This is what is meant when we say that induction does not hold necessarily. On the other hand, if we say (p1) All swans that I've observed are white; (c2) This particular swan that I've observed is white. Now if (p1) is true, (c2) is necessarily true. The conclusion cannot be false. If this is unsatisfying, there's a much better explanation up on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

The sibling post pointed out that many fields within science and math try to solve this issue, but I don't think any of them actually try to justify induction. Most of the solutions that I know of creates techniques that if used will increase the reliability of induction. But you can never justify induction deductively, and any attempt to use deduction to justify induction must include induction in its premises (resulting in circular reasoning). Furthermore, deductive reasoning that includes results from inductive reasoning is logically invalid. This may be a bit abstract, so let me try to illustrate with an example.

There's a difference between the decimal number 2, the string "2", and the binary number |10|. Now, there's also the real abstract idea of [2] that we all have. Necessarily, the decimal number 2 and the binary number |10| both refer to this abstract [2]. However, when we write down the string "2", that does not necessarily refer to the abstract [2]. It just so happens to refer to the abstract [2] because we have thus defined it.

So let's say we have 3 formulas. (1) 2 + 2; (2) |10| + |10|; and (3) "2" + "2". Even though all 3 formulas represent [2] + [2], only formulas (1) and (2) represent [2] + [2] necessarily. What happens if you mix and match? So let's say you have (1a) 2 + |10|; (2a) 2 + "2"; and (3a) |10| + "2". In this case, only (1a) is necessarily equal to [2] + [2].

In this example with numbers, the decimal number 2 and the binary number |10| represent conclusions derived from deductive reasoning. They hold necessarily. The string "2" represents results from inductive and abductive reasoning, where the conclusion may so happen to hold, but it does not hold necessarily. Each time you introduce a result from inductive reasoning to a deductive formula, you are adding another element that does not hold necessarily. The problem is that necessity does not have degrees. Something is either necessary or not. Once you use inductive or abductive reasoning, your conclusion does not hold necessarily and is thus logically invalid (all logically valid moves must preserve truth necessarily).

Now as I said in my previous post, this is not a major concern for scientists or most other people. While induction is not a logically valid move (since it does not necessarily preserve truth), it is a move that is reliable enough for practical (and even theoretical) purposes. For science, as previously mentioned (and as you've mentioned), there are many techniques to increase the reliability of induction. Everyone uses induction a lot in their every day lives. We use it all the time. It's impossible to function without induction. For example, I'm relying on induction when I type on my keyboard. Every time I've previously pressed the "k" key, the letter k pops up on the screen, so I expect the next time I press it, the same thing will happen.

It is a concern for logicians because they want to find a logical move that functions like induction, but is necessarily truth-preserving. This is a meaningful goal for logicians. On the other hand, scientists need not be as concerned with whether or not a certain move is logically valid or invalid. Induction is reliable enough, especially with many of the more sophisticated techniques to ensure higher reliability, for the scientist in order for them to accomplish their goals.

In your case, conclusions that arise out of your clinical trials will not hold necessarily (unless you're just interested in what happened within your trial and not with the broader implications, but I presume that's not the intent). But that's okay. It seems to work out well enough. So you can keep using that tool with confidence.

I'm a philosophy student, and I often get a lot of flak for it. People think that philosophy doesn't matter, and that you need to be a productive member of society and contribute to technology or science or the economy or whatsoever. I think that's what you're trying to get at when you asked "Anything serious?". It seems like to you, you feel that there's some purpose in exploring how things in the world around you work, and to contribute to human knowledge or technology by creating new tools or discovering new principles. Of course, what you do, and what many people in the science and technology sectors do, are very important. I could not practice philosophy as comfortably as I do now without many of the conveniences afforded to me by our current level of science and technology. I recognize that science, technology, and business play a big role in our lives, and that the people who are in those industries are contributing greatly to society.

I don't think many people just exist, as you say. The vast majority of people work. Of those people who do work, a significant minority don't have the resources to do anything but work, eat, socialize a little, play a little, sleep, rinse, repeat. But even those people contribute to society. If we didn't have janitors or retail sales clerks or whatever the case may be, our society would look a lot different. Our society requires some people be at those positions. And while you may still believe in the American Dream, the reality is that most of those people just can't afford to have any drive beyond going to work 10 hours a day to make ends meet.

I suspect, however, that your question is directed more towards those who can afford to develop some sort of drive. And that's why I brought up that I'm a philosophy student. I philosophize. What does that mean? Philosophy means something very different to those who actually study it than to those outside of its sphere. Philosophy is more a way of life than anything. I've studied many subjects in philosophy, ranging from logic to ethics to metaphysics. Philosophy is what I enjoy, and that's my drive. I want to try to reconcile the disconnect between subjective experience and objective occurrences (neural activity). I want to examine why people hold certain systems of ethics and not others, and whether or not there exists some objective measure of morality. So I live my daily life using tools, while using the time I save not worrying about those tools to pursue my interests, and my drives.

Other philosophers are logicians. They examine how systems of logic work, and what types of logical moves are valid or invalid. Now logic is important because there's one problem that the scientific method faces, but most scientists are unaware of such a problem. Scientists wield logic as a tool to perform their work, but they don't examine it on a deeper level. The problem that the scientific method faces is that it centres around the logical move that we call inductive reasoning. I won't dive into the specifics of the problem here, but suffice it to say that I don't think it's a major concern that scientists rely on inductive reasoning even though they don't know exactly how it works, and why it is problematic. Scientists have a certain goal and they need to use certain tools. Their job is not to ensure that their tools work. It is the logician's job to make sure that scientists have good tools with which to perform their jobs.

Now all of this is a manner of saying that some people can't afford to have any drive, while others have different drives than you do. We're all doing something. It seems like you don't realize that there are other things that people can be interested in that are worthwhile. The problem of induction is an important problem in philosophy, as well as the concept of causality. In other disciplines, there are other problems that are interesting that people want to tackle. Some people want to find the best chess strategies. Others want to find the best basketball strategies. By trying to assign more objective moral worth to some things than to others, I think you may be doing those people who want to pursue those interests a disservice. For some people, basketball IS their life, and it gives their life hope and meaning and it adds to their spiritual awareness. And that's okay.

So we've come full circle. Different people are interested in different things. You may assign more or less moral value to some things than others, but other people may assign more or less moral value to different things. There's not much more to it than that.

Aside: Since I think I come across as a hardcore relativist in this post, I wanted to clarify something. I'm not really a moral relativist. I'm a moral absolutist. I just think that we currently don't have the appropriate insight to figure out what that absolute standard of morality is. So it may in fact be the case that, for example, civil engineering is a more morally worthy endeavour than football coaching, but we don't know that to be the case. Hence, we can say that there are many cases of unclear moral value and keep civil engineering and football coaching on similar levels of moral value. But we can, at the same time, say that rape is absolutely morally wrong, whereas the moral relativist will be committed to the position that rape is right if committed in a society that believes that rape is right.