.... is even *IF* there were some truth to the allegation that such vaccines have a link to autism, which there isn't.... the allegation that this should be justification to *NOT* vaccinate is equivalent to saying that one would rather have their child die from a curable disease than have autism... like autism is somehow the 21st century version of what leprosy was 2000 years ago.

As someone who was diagnosed a number of years ago as autistic, I can't help but be slightly offended at the notion

Then let's all agree not to take it. As we really only care about the relative performance when compared against your peers. If all your peers did it, you'd be in the same place you are now.

Might be better is if we all worked less, got paid less and hired a few more people. I realize some people want to work 50 hours a week (or more), but I don't and it's been hard to not do that and stay in my industry.

The more accurate headline on Slashdot and the UT San Diego website would be, "Study finds immunized siblings of autistic children not at higher risk of developing autism than immunized siblings of unaffected children."

No, the correct headline is "Study finds immunized siblings of autistic children not at higher risk of developing autism than non-immunized siblings of autistic children."

Additionally, this study says the precise opposite of what you said the headline should read, finding that siblings of autistic children were almost 8x as likely to develop autism as children who did not have an autistic sibling, regardless of whether those children were vaccinated or not.

All they need to say is that there *were* drugs in the car or that wad of cash has drug residue on it.

Right... but a dog is going to know exactly where anything that it smells is really coming from. The police have no business using a dog that *EVER* gives false positives, and a handler who can't manage a dog to find a given smell that has been trained to find such smells is an incompetent handler, because a dog's sense of smell can be millions of times more sensitive than a human's, and there is NO CONCEIVABLE WAY that a dog could ever fail to identify exactly where a given smell was really coming from, even if it is just residual. If it was coming from a wad of cash in the person's wallet, the dog would be alerted to it being in the person's pocket... if it was on the clothes of the person, the dog would know that it wasn't coming from the car if they were not in it. Again, if the police officer cannot interpret the actions of the dog correctly, or ever claims that their dog alerted them to drugs where they couldn't find any, then that is going to just make the handler look stupid if the dog has been properly trained, and if the dog has not been properly trained to find such scents then the police have no business using that dog in the first place.

But it's not in the handler's best interests to claim that their dog alerted them to the presence of drugs when they don't actually find any because that just makes them look stupid.

None of this has any bearing at all on whether they would use dogs to try to find drugs where there are none.... that probably happens nearly as often as police might feel they have any reason whatsoever to instigate a search. I'm just saying that it's silly to think that they are going to claim that their dog smelled drugs in their car when there aren't any unless they intend to plant some there. Dogs are also well able to discern where a smell is actually coming from,so with a smell which may be on a person's body because they may have at some point recently handled such drugs, but where no such drugs are actually in the car, a trained dog would *easily* be able to identify the actual source of the scent... an officer who tries to claim that the dog smelled drugs in their car when there aren't any there is, again, only going to make both himself and the dog appear incompetent.

There are no statistics on how frequently dogs "alert" and the subsequent search finds no contraband.

This reasoning reminds me of how people allege that the fact that there is no real evidence that NASA tried to cover up that they "never really went to the moon" is somehow indicative of or suggests that they actually *are* covering it up. It's called circular reasoning, and it's a logical fallacy.

Have you considered that the possibilty that reason there aren't any published statistics for it is because it doesn't tend to actually happen that often in the first place?

As I said elsewhere, it is not generally going to be in the interests of even a genuinely maliciously inclined officer to allege that his dog "smelled" drugs when they hadn't actually found any, because that undermines any confidence with which anyone could reasonably claim that dogs have any reliability in this capacity in the first place... unless, as I said above, the officer were intending to plant drugs for the dog to find. A dog's sense of smell can be over a million times more sensitive than a human's, and there is no doubt whatsoever that sniffing out such things even in extremely concealed locations would be well within their sensory capability.

I do not dispute that police use dogs to attempt to find drugs on people where none are found.... that actually *does* happens a lot, and there are unfortunately plenty of published statistics to support it. But it makes almost no sense for the police to actually claim that their dog had alerted them to the presence of drugs when they don't actually find any because that just makes them look stupid, as well as like the dog needs a whole lot more training.

The normal people knew it already.

The conspiracy nuts will think it's just another layer of the whole conspiracy.

Bluntly, if it was just for them, I'd say "let Darwin win at least sometimes". The problem is that they're a threat to everyone around them, too.

too late for Randy Pausch.

It's tough to arrest someone carrying a firearm when no one else is allowed to carry one.

The advantage is usually in readability. Programming languages are, for the most part, terse enough. Most could benefit from a little verbosity. Brevity is not always beneficial.

Java is interesting as it's not the syntax and keywords that lead to it's absurd verbosity. That's a function of the language itself and the JCL.

No... but I'm betting they don't frequently claim that a dog they were using had identified that there was an actual material presence of drugs unless they actually find some. Again, what "signalling" could the poster that I responded to above have been referring to if not to signal the dog to act as though it had found some drugs?

I'm not questioning that the cops don't have dogs sniffing for drugs when there aren't any... that number could easily be quite high... the regularity and consistency to which I referred was with respect to how often the officer is liable to claim that a dog they have had sniff through a vehicle has smelled some drugs to how often such drugs are actually found after a search. Again, I'm not saying this doesn't ever happen.... but in reality, if it happened too often, then the police probably wouldn't be using dogs for the job in the first place At the very least, even a police officer with genuinely malicious intent wouldn't have much incentive to ever *claim* that their dog has smelled drugs when they could not actually find any drugs unless they intended to actually plant some drugs there themselves, because doing otherwise would certainly compromise the confidence that anyone would be able to place in using dogs for the job in the first place.

Anyways, the post above to which I responded suggested that a dog that finds drugs is somehow only reacting to signals being given by its controlling officer. I'm saying that a cop trying to so signal a dog to react as though it found drugs is not going to spontaneously make drugs appear in the car when there weren't any there before, unless it was planted by the officer. At this point, I can't say I'm sure what kind of signalling they were even talking about if that's not what they meant.

If you think that's a real problem, you should forget about computers and live in fear of the average grade-schooler.

Well, Lucas has been known to go back and futz with his films, so I guess there's always a small chance.

I would think it otherwise be a rather extraordinary coincidence that when the dog appears to react to the presence of drugs, that they also somehow, and with such consistency also happen to find such drugs.