Air Pollution Causes 'Huge' Reduction in Intelligence, Study Reveals (theguardian.com) 269
Air pollution causes a "huge" reduction in intelligence, according to new research, indicating that the damage to society of toxic air is far deeper than the well-known impacts on physical health. From a report: The research was conducted in China but is relevant across the world, with 95% of the global population breathing unsafe air. It found that high pollution levels led to significant drops in test scores in language and arithmetic, with the average impact equivalent to having lost a year of the person's education. "Polluted air can cause everyone to reduce their level of education by one year, which is huge," said Xi Chen at Yale School of Public Health in the US, a member of the research team. "But we know the effect is worse for the elderly, especially those over 64, and for men, and for those with low education. If we calculate [the loss] for those, it may be a few years of education."
The damage in intelligence was worst for those over 64 years old, with serious consequences, said Chen: "We usually make the most critical financial decisions in old age." Rebecca Daniels, from the UK public health charity Medact, said: "This report's findings are extremely worrying." [...] The new work, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analysed language and arithmetic tests conducted as part of the China Family Panel Studies on 20,000 people across the nation between 2010 and 2014. The scientists compared the test results with records of nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide pollution.
The damage in intelligence was worst for those over 64 years old, with serious consequences, said Chen: "We usually make the most critical financial decisions in old age." Rebecca Daniels, from the UK public health charity Medact, said: "This report's findings are extremely worrying." [...] The new work, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analysed language and arithmetic tests conducted as part of the China Family Panel Studies on 20,000 people across the nation between 2010 and 2014. The scientists compared the test results with records of nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide pollution.
This resonates with me.. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's totally anecdotal, but I lived in Vancouver, BC for 3yrs, and I felt like I had a fog in my head there. The air there isn't terrible, but living in the middle of this bustling city definitely had lower air quality. Moved back to Victoria, BC a year ago (where I came from, and a quiet, less-populated area by the ocean), and felt that go away pretty quick, and haven't felt like that since.
Again, may just be my imagination, but seems plausible.
Re:This resonates with me.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Carbon monoxide substitutes for oxygen in your biologic system, substitutes chemically but not functionally and takes considerable time to remove from your blood stream, it has to diffuse out. The more you have the quicker it leaves and the less it becomes the slower the removal, numbers between it and excess oxygen (so snort a bunch of oxy before bed time). Carbon monoxide make brain not work good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. Stop burning shit, especially that really old fossilised shit (heh heh).
Now for shits and giggles, add in lead (you need it for the real cra cra, that gun nut cra cra) as well as a range of endocrine disrupting chemicals, radioactive elements breaking down into Radon, 'ohh my', nation wide fracking and things get real interesting. No wonder corruption is running rife in the USA at every level but hey, if you say anything the New York Times will paint you as an agent of the KGB (now thats typical cra cra, so out of New York, I get it now).
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90-10 Bismuth-tin bullets are a good lead replacement for hunters who don't like poisoning themselves. They fragment rather than deform because they are brittle, but this means no lead dropped in forests and no lead in your venison. It seems a fair trade.
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Most people hunt with full metal jacket. To minimize the spoiled meat. You don't want a fragmenting bullet.
Re:This resonates with me.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Unfortunately for many of this this is not an option: the extra pollen due to AGW [vox.com] is just as bad for those of us with allergies... even after the 2-year course of weekly shots.
(And FWIW it may not be as toxic, but pollen accounts for some PM10 particulate matter, so it would be interesting to see this study enhanced to differentiate between pollen and more directly man-made pollution.)
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I don't live in the city. I have experienced the worsening pollen seasons first hand, and the connection is not non-obvious, if you use your brain.
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Re:This resonates with me.. (Score:5, Interesting)
My experience doesn't line up. I've lived in large Australian and Asian cities, and in small Australian towns. One town in particular was full of ignorant people and the average intelligence was definitely lower than in the cities. People in country towns are less welcoming, worse gossips, more likely to hold grudges. People in cities are exposed to more variety of people and ideas, and more open-minded and educated on the whole.
Re:This resonates with me.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it possible they just didn't like you?
Re: This resonates with me.. (Score:2)
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People in cities are exposed to more variety of people and ideas, and more open-minded and educated on the whole.
Try telling your friendly city dweller you didn't vote for Hillary or support the latest complaint from the LGBTQXYZ crowd and watch the Hr. Hyde transformation happen before your very eyes.
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I bet this AC thinks he's smart. Fucking moron.
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I made that change almost 2 decades ago. While I have no quarrel with concrete, crowds or "unfriendly" people, I've noticed that stress is lower in small cities. Getting to work is fast and drama-free, housing costs are lower and are thus covered by a low-stress job. Being able to see the stars at night is also a plus. There's still enough population that you don't get "small town gossip" or feel isolated. I can still go to big cities on weekends to enjoy what they offer and remind myself why I don't l
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I used to get fog head from sitting on the top deck of a double-decker bus when one set of wheels went over a speed bump and the other set didn't. That led to the bus shaking sideways three or four times until the suspension damped things down. I had to immobilize my head by hunching my shoulders up until the bus passed the speed bumps in order to avoid this.
In my last job, trying to walk down a main surface road was like trying to walk while breathing in dental anaesthetic gas. My stomach would feel gassy,
Re: This resonates with me.. (Score:2)
That bus brings up the other aspect, NoX and associated gases. I find diesel engines less bad than gas, but when you are around them a lot there's a huge effect on the mind. Respiratory irritation also decreases brain oxygen.
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Another reason to support nuclear (Score:2, Insightful)
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The presence of one thing (nuclear power plant) can mean the absence of another (coal power plant).
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hahaha, except you could well have a nuke plant near a coal plant... or other fossil fuel powered thing... around Chicago we do
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hahaha, except you could well have a nuke plant near a coal plant... or other fossil fuel powered thing... around Chicago we do
And look what happened to Chicago, definitely the worst of all worlds.
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best part is they're putting out more radiation and pollution than the nuke plants!
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Of course they're smarter: they all have 2 heads. Duh.
But the men only think with one of them sooooo... it evens out?
wildly inaccurate findings (Score:2)
does no one check these things
it would be almost impossible to draw any inference of overall IQ from the air quality its just statistically hard to do
(the population in a city do wildly different jobs and diet compared to farm workers) and IQ/intelligence is frankly a terrible to test...
what you could do is draw an conclusion on lung capacity using a CT or MRI scanner to measure it but that would be scientific...
Xi Chen at Yale School frankly should be ashamed and discredited
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You could do a geographic survey to see where the kids that had asthma lived, compared to those that did not. There would be a correlation between distance to a freeway/motorway/main road in the city vs. a suburban/rural home
Could just be that (Score:2, Interesting)
stupid people choose to live in polluted places. Or can't afford to live anyplace else...
It makes sense (Score:2)
Follow up field research (Score:5, Funny)
The article doesn't mention the follow-up research. After doing the calculations from government data in their office (the study in tfa), researchers spent 6 months in several of the stupidest cities. They studied conditions on the ground in those cities.
After 24 months in four the lowest-IQ cities, they discovered some things. As the lead researcher said at the conclusion of his time in the stupid cities:
Mmm donuts.
A co-author explained:
Weed isn't even a drug, man. It's like natural, dude.
don't even get the basics right (Score:2, Informative)
Fortunately, this isn't much of a concern for the US [forbes.com]:
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Central Europe fares worst, with the UK, France, and Germany not far behind.
I wonder where Germany is. Apparently, it's not in Central Europe.
Re:don't even get the basics right (Score:5, Informative)
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I've noticed that Forbes puts out a lot of bullshit articles like this. Not just biased or whatever, they actively go out of their way to mislead.
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Nice observation. However, the article's statement is consistent with what we know about air pollution in general.
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Most of the kind of pollution studied here (particulates) no longer comes out of the power plants in Western world, and hasn't been coming from power plants across Europe and US for something around two decades.
Primary sources of it around here is automotive. Specifically combination of exhaust on mainly older diesel vehicles combined with street dust being pulled out of road surface by act of driving over it over and over again. Notably, not even Scandinavia is safe from this, in that we get our worst part
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Correct. And air pollution is fairly low both in the US and Europe, in particular outside city centers.
Yes, big cities are dirty, unpleasant places. So
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Fortunately, this isn't much of a concern for the US:
It will be, if Trump has his way. He'd like to turn back the clock on environmental protections, and eliminate California's legal right to maintain its own emissions standards. Air pollution was a huge concern for California until we formed the CARB and set meaningful standards. And given the prevailing winds, guess where most of California's pollution winds up? Yeah, in the rest of the country. And Canada, of course. They've been sucking our smoke for weeks now.
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No, he likes to turn back the clock on environmental regulations. That's something different.
It's not actually a "legal right" but an exemption from federal regulations that needs to be specifically granted. If it were a "legal right", the president couldn't take it away.
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It will be, if Trump has his way. He'd like to turn back the clock on environmental protections
No, he likes to turn back the clock on environmental regulations. That's something different.
That's something different out in the wastelands to the East, but here in California we actually care about such things and will enforce them, albeit belatedly in many cases. The wheels of justice, etc. I'm not thrilled about all of the particulars of the CARB, but one cannot reasonably argue that it has not been effective in dramatically improving California's air quality — which was threatened primarily by industry.
and eliminate California's legal right to maintain its own emissions standards.
It's not actually a "legal right" but an exemption from federal regulations that needs to be specifically granted. If it were a "legal right", the president couldn't take it away.
It was a right granted by a legal action. It's unsurprising that it can be taken away
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I assume California is perfectly free to accomplish those objectives via other, local regulations. For example, cities like LA could limit the city center to low emissions vehicles or sell special city access stickers. But setting state-wide limits on what cars can be sold in California because LA has bad air quality is irrational.
Be that
Correlation or causation? (Score:2)
The fact is that many people that live in the city >65 (and thus generally retired) are those that live there because they need some sort of assistance (such as housing). People that can afford to live outside the city, generally do and that carries on from the time before retirement as well - if you had a better job when you were younger, more likely your retirement will allow you to live in a quiet suburb. Intelligence is highly correlated with income and income is highly correlated with the places you
or the demographics in big cities are different? (Score:3, Interesting)
yes I know, in 2018 it's not nice to point a certain thing out, but there are a couple groups that don't do so well on those whitey boy IQ tests, cause, you know, they ain't white. And they mostly live in the city...
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Which of these Chinese researched are you accusing of being white boys?
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there is similar mindset in China with various ethnic groups and social castes. they even have a word that you could translate as "n*gger" meaning "garbage person" that in the USA is used for black people but over there is for certain other groups
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I like shemgu (holy momma), for the self-righteous feminist SJW type myself.
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IQ tests in this case were administered by chinese. Pretty sure they aren't caucasian but han.
Notably most people tend to forget that as far as evolutionary pressures go, IQ appears to not only have been of a limited value for overwhelming amount of human history, but a net negative in terms of its value beyond certain minimum. Is ability to grasp complex abstract patterns beneficial or detrimental to a serf who's very life is at risk should he appear to be a threat to his local leadership?
Add to this the f
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china has many ethnic groups and castes too. some are looked down upon by their society.
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I'm not trying to say all Trump supporters are morons, the data says that. Indictments too.
Citation please? You said there was "data", which implies a study - possibly even a peer-reviewed one - that supports this claim of yours.
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After decades of complaints on the possibility of cultural bias in IQ testing the people that write these exams are acutely aware of this and go to great lengths to remove such bias. How do they do this? I'll go through one example.
First thing to do to test for cultural bias is to gather data on how the testers identify their culture. Have them take the test. Look at the answers on the tests and look for correlations on culture to answers. If people in a certain group consistently answer incorrectly th
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Nope, totally false. The tests are constructed in a way that they test nothing of knowledge. They test only intelligence. Any knowledge required for the test is provided as part of the test. There is, of course, some prior knowledge required that is age appropriate, such as the ability to read and speak English for adult IQ tests in America.
Even then the people that created these test have fine tuned IQ testing to the point that only the instructions must translated to the language of the person tested.
Lead was a problem (Score:2, Troll)
Sad thing is the current administration is trying to roll back air quality rules (especially in CA, where they're held to a higher standard and often define the rest of the nation). Funny thing is the car companies hate it, since it takes 8-10 years to design & build cars and they've got no idea if this administration will last long en
Obvious solution: (Score:2)
burn more coal!
Wind, hydro, and nuclear with a little natural gas (Score:5, Informative)
It should not be difficult to fathom that much of the pollution in most every part of the world is from burning coal and liquid petroleum fuels. This is primarily from generating electricity and transportation. People don't burn these fuels because they want pollution, they burn them because they are cheap and convenient. To get cleaner air we need energy that is not just clean but also cheap and convenient. How shall we do this?
To get an engineering plan start with the cheapest electricity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Geothermal comes out on top. Natural gas is second. What's the next three, tossing out dirty coal? Hydro, nuclear, and wind.
While not a pollutant I'll take a short diversion and look at CO2 output of the different energy sources for electricity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The best three on that list is hydro, nuclear, and wind. Geothermal and solar make a good show as well. Natural gas isn't great but it is far better than coal.
Let's look at the energy sources with the best energy return on investment, because long term this will reflect on the cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If we toss out dirty oil and coal we again get the same top three, hydro, nuclear, and wind. Geothermal and natural gas make a good show as well.
Let's look at the safest energy sources, because even if we clean the air for health reasons it doesn't help if people are dead.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... [forbes.com]
Hydro, nuclear, and wind top the list, solar certainly does well, and there's a wide margin to the rest. Geothermal is not on the list for some reason. Natural gas isn't great but better than coal and biomass fuel.
By my estimation we need to use hydro, nuclear, and wind for electricity. Until I can see more about geothermal I can't recommend it. Solar simply costs too much, is not very convenient/reliable, and isn't all that great on safety, so I can't recommend it unless all others are unavailable. Wind and nuclear need a little help to load follow and hydro works well for this. If there isn't enough hydro around then the obvious choice is natural gas.
When it comes to transportation we should electrify as much land transport as we can, cars and trains mostly. What do we do about vehicles where electricity is not practical? Mr. Pickens has a plan, natural gas.
http://pickensplan.com/the-pla... [pickensplan.com]
Pickens admits that that natural gas is a bridge fuel. A bridge to what? Maybe synthesized fuel from hydro, nuclear, and wind, that's my guess. Natural gas burns far cleaner than gasoline, diesel, and marine fuel oil. Natural gas is a proven technology, cheap, plentiful, and can be adopted fairly quickly. At least adopted quickly for most transportation on land and sea. For air transportation we'll need to continue with kerosene until we find something better.
Natural gas is as convenient as electricity and gasoline combined for personal cars. People can fill up at a filling station in minutes like gasoline, and at home if you have natural gas service for heating and cooking. Maybe the best could be from a natural gas/electric hybrid.
At sea we can adopt more nuclear, beyond just warships. Perhaps even resurrect the windjammers, sailing ships built in the last days of sail using steel hulls and other modern materials.
I keep seeing articles on the problems of dirty, CO2 emitting, dangerous, and expensive energy. Let's talk solutions. Here's my solution... Wind, hydro, and nuclear with a little natural gas.
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There are a lot things we can do but we need to be careful system thinkers about all of it not knee-jerk react to one thing. Solar is the darling of green weenies (note I consider myself an environmentalist but I want to be smart about it that is the difference).
Although the environmental impact of manufacturing photo-voltaic cells has been less than feared its still a huge land impact. It takes currently about 3K acres to put in 1k acreage of actually solar panels. This is on the small end of an industr
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Although the environmental impact of manufacturing photo-voltaic cells has been less than feared its still a huge land impact. It takes currently about 3K acres to put in 1k acreage of actually solar panels.
It depends very much on where you build them. The best place to site solar panels is still over the top of parking lots, or on commercial roofs where access is easy (unlike residential rooftops). Either way you gain an additional benefit from the shade they cast.
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It depends very much on where you build them.
Sure.
The best place to site solar panels is still over the top of parking lots, or on commercial roofs where access is easy (unlike residential rooftops).
No, that's not the best place. The best place is close to the ground, at least as far as costs are concerned.
Either way you gain an additional benefit from the shade they cast.
That may be but I have a document on my desk from the International Energy Agency that shows commercial PV is on average more expensive than utility (ground mounted) PV. The error bars on both are large enough that it may be possible to keep the price difference minimal but it's quite clear that commercial PV is not "best". If you want to preserve land for crops and forest, get low CO2 energy
No wonder. (Score:2)
I live in smoggy L.A and am missing my brain. :(
yeah (Score:2)
So people get dumber just by breathing?
/me looks around
Yeah, sounds about right.
Indoor vs outdoor air quality (Score:2)
Since then I bought a dust sensor and airfilter, and it helped me a lot during hayfever season. You can build a filter on the cheap by adding a filter to a normal fan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Another tip is to get a CO2 sensor. Most bedrooms have surprisingly high CO2 levels at night, which severely impacts how well you sleep. I always sleep with the bedroom door op
There goes the last hope for clean air in the US (Score:2)
If killing off the EPA and pumping the atmosphere full of crap will dumb the people down, both the republicans and the democrats will thrive.
Heaven forbid someone with a brain figured out that the elections are about visibility. Candidates sell their souls (if theyâ€(TM)re smart enough to have one to be
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Someone like Bezos, Nadella, Zuckerburg or a few others could easily overpower either of the two parties and simply provide crowd sourcing platforms for alternative candidates with no party ties.
Uh, last I checked, both parties rely on countless millions of "small" donations - in effect, they already crowd source their campaign funding, how would a "Bezos, Nadella, Zuckerburg" alternative be any different? Because you believe them to be apolitical?
The internet democratized the funding of elections already, the problem is you need to herd supporters into a situation where they choose to donate - Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein (as well as every other presidential candidate in 2016) had websites that m
Intelligence = Education? (Score:2)
The research was conducted in China but is relevant across the world, with 95% of the global population breathing unsafe air.
Define "unsafe", the vast majority of the people breathing in this "unsafe air" living into their 70s and beyond...
It found that high pollution levels led to significant drops in test scores in language and arithmetic, with the average impact equivalent to having lost a year of the person's education. "Polluted air can cause everyone to reduce their level of education by one year, which is huge," said Xi Chen at Yale School of Public Health in the US, a member of the research team. "But we know the effect is worse for the elderly, especially those over 64, and for men, and for those with low education. If we calculate [the loss] for those, it may be a few years of education."
Losing years(s) of "education" is not the same as losing "intelligence". Ever since I learned of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Quotient test I understood the difference between "intelligence" and "education".
It's true! (Score:2)
... every conversation I've ever heard about air pollution was COMPLETELY full of idiots...
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Re: Correlation vs causality (Score:2, Insightful)
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Outsiders migrate to Califirnia to participate in the tech industries.
Because there are no native Californians taking part in it #rollseyes
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Damn few graduates of CA public schools in CA tech. Single digit % in my experience.
Re:Correlation vs causality (Score:5, Interesting)
It explained crime in many cities and how it was reduced after lead was removed from fuel. Criminals with a reduced IQ due to pollution couldn't see the future consequences of their actions.
Re:Correlation vs causality (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually it's worse than that - lead is a particularly insidious poison: it not only reduces intelligence, it also reduces impulse control while increasing aggression. It's practically tailor-made to create criminals.
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Actually it's worse than that - lead is a particularly insidious poison: it not only reduces intelligence, it also reduces impulse control while increasing aggression.
Maybe that's why I still think Slashdot matters. I moved out of one flight path (in Lake county) into another one (in Mendocino county). Airplanes still burn leaded and have no emissions controls...
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I was thinking the same thing from your summary. Another theory: pollution tends to be in industrial centers. Generalizing but factory work generally doesn't need the brightest bulbs nor attract very many of them. Even more so in China where from what I understand the rural uneducated people's best way out of poverty is to work for a big factory so they get permission to live in the city, kind of the same as it has always been just happened in the west 180 years ago or so. Concentration of capital increases productivity and rewards for everyone. Who knew?
This is a severe misconception (for it is the brightest in rural China who tend to try their luck at the factories in China's industrial belts.) I guess it is inevitable that we still see China through a 25-year old looking glass.
I suggest reading "Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China" by Leslie T. Chang. It was an eye opener on this subject.
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It explained crime in many cities and how it was reduced after lead was removed from fuel.
Don't forget the lead-based paint chips inner-city kids used to eat, lord that was such a big thing in the 70s and 80s...
Crappy cities are crappy (Score:5, Insightful)
Leaving the Hillary jokes aside, yeah crappy cities are crappy. There are lot of crappy things about the biggest industrial cities in China. It seems to me you'd have to adjust for so many variables that in the end one couldn't be sure if the correlation was real in just an effect of all the corrections. Especially so if the people running the study wanted to find a particular conclusion.
Circling back around to politics without just making a joke, it does make sense that people who think their life is crappy, perhaps because they live in Detroit, would want "hope and change" without any idea what kind of "change" is being proposed. "Door number two" sounds good compared to Chicago or Detroit. Similarly, with jobs and the economy going so well in Dallas, it makes sense that people would want the government to let us alone and let us enjoy it. No thanks, keep the change. You would expect misery to correlate with progressivist policies, whether socialist democrats cause misery or the other way around.
Re:R A Y M O R R I S I S A L Y I N G F A G G O T (Score:4, Insightful)
I S U C K C O C K S
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OMG I was hacked!
Re: Correlation vs causality (Score:2)
On Slashdot, we rarely read the summary, you insensitive clod.
Re:Living in cities (Score:5, Funny)
It also increases exposure to socialism that results in public elementary to highschool education that is three years behind what was tough several decades ago.
Right. Which is why you want to educate your kids in a rural paradise like Mississippi, not an urban state like Massachusetts, which also according to Business Insider is the most liberal state in the country. Honestly, Massachusetts is a hell-hole. You definitely don't want to move here.
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I heard the big tertiary education provider in MA is terrible too.
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And so hard to get into.
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Hah, just be a minority, get into Harvard. You are living in a fantasy world, my friend.
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In fact, if you live there already you should seriously consider moving. Don't even worry about getting a good price for your house... anything you get will be enough because houses other places are cheaper.
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I know I certainly don't want to drive there. Traffic on Rt 290 and Rt 495 is hell, and the drivers are terrible.
Re:Living in cities (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Living in cities (Score:4, Interesting)
You get an awful lot more people using that road, so the cost per person is far less. Estimates are that it costs an average of ~$1-3million per mile to build a rural paved 2-lane road ($3-5million in the city). Are you and your rural neighbors really paying for all that? I know mine aren't. In Denver you've got 4,000 people per square mile, with an average of 16 blocks per mile, or 32 miles of road per square mile (16 1-mile segments in each direction) - that's only 0.008 miles (14 yards) of road per person. And Denver isn't exactly a pinnacle of population density - New York averages 27,000 people per square mile.
In comparison though, the average population density of metrpopolitan areas in general (heavily biased by more spacious small towns and suburbs) is supposedly only ~280 people per square mile, so over 14 times lower than Denver, and the density of streets probably isn't dramatically larger - you still have blocks about the same size, the yards are just bigger and you have a lot fewer apartment buildings.
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You get an awful lot more people using that road, so the cost per person is far less. Estimates are that it costs an average of ~$1-3million per mile to build a rural paved 2-lane road ($3-5million in the city).
Interesting numbers but my observation is that when discussing roads in urban areas the costs are an order of magnitude higher. And heaven help you if you want to add a lane like these guys https://www.nytimes.com/2016/1... [nytimes.com]
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Your numbers seem a bit bogus. Are you referring to the cost of buying the land and building the foundation, for a road from scratch? The cost of paving a 2-lane rural road is about $100K-$200K per mile.
https://clermontcountyohio.gov... [clermontcountyohio.gov]
Rural roads are almost never created from scratch, unless it's a state or federally funded new highway or bypass (which is for the benefit of the state or nation, so doesn't fit your complaint). They usually started out as a dirt track, got upgraded to gravel, and finally
Re:Living in cities (Score:5, Insightful)
They also never eat food transported on roads from the areas where the food is produced.
Re:Living in cities (Score:5, Interesting)
Really? Deprive them of imported fuel, fertilizers, and pesticides, vehicles and other machinery, etc. and I bet you most would have a very rude awakening as to just how self-sufficient they really are. Better off than city dwellers no doubt, but it'd still be mighty bleak and a lot of folks wouldn't make it.
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Deprive them of the stuff only needed for mass-farming?
Oh no, how can we survive without all this food we never needed in the first place?
Farming is trivial for your family. It only gets complex when you want to feed cities of people.
Sure, your modern conveniences will be gone, but they can still depend on man-power alone to feed their own mouths.
No, they won't need horses, horses were only used for feeding pre-modern towns of populations, not families.
I can grow food to feed a family of 3 in a 30'x30' spa
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pharmacies couldn't restock, imaging scanners would run out of noble gasses, we'd lose access to specialist doctors etc. Still, there are plenty who would jump at the prospect of being removed from global society and living more simply, even if it meant dying sooner.
The average age of farmers is in the USA is 58.3 years. They would drop like flies in this scenario.
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Isnt' it time for you to go pick some tractor parts from the machine tree, wouldn't want them to fall off and rust.
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Results in exposure to polluted air from factories and vehicles. It also increases exposure to socialism that results in public elementary to highschool education that is three years behind what was tough several decades ago.
Who knew?
This is the kind of stupid, self-defeating things people do to themselves that J.D Vance documented in his autobiography "Hillbilly Effigy".
Keep thinking like that buddy, I see a bright future for ya.
Re: (Score:2)
Retarded plebs commit more crime, as discovered when crime rates lowered when lead was removed from gasoline.
Re:This is not science (Score:5, Informative)
Sometimes you need an answer to a question and population statistics and correlation are all that you can use.
"I propose to raise 200 kids identically except with 100 kids getting to live in polluted air and 100 control kids in clean air, and then we'll give them IQ tests and stuff when they are 20."
Research funder: "It would take 20 years to get an answer? No funds for you. We have decisions we need to make NOW."
Then, should it somehow get that far:
Ethics committee: "Hell, no."
So instead you make a list of every confounding factor you can think of (maybe being poor causes lower intelligence, and poor people often have no choice but to live in polluted areas, so you measure household income during childhood for your cohort), do a big multi-dimensional regression, and see what factors influence the result.
This isn't perfect - in particular, there might be an important factor that you didn't think of, or is too hard to measure, which correlates with pollution level. In the end, you have decisions to make (how much should we spend to mitigate air pollution?) and it is daft to refuse to do population statistics studies because you could only be 98% confident in their results rather than 100% confident.
Also, such studies are usually just part of the answer. There are also studies looking for plausibility of mechanisms. One group shows that certain pollutants can get from the air into blood. Another group shows that these chemicals can cross the blood-brain barrier. Another group shows that these chemical interact with neurotransmitters. The population study shows pollution having an adverse effect on intelligence. Put all this together and you have a plausible causal story.
We also don't have randomized controlled doubly blinded trials of the health effects of smoking, or of having a parachute when jumping out of an airplane.
Re: (Score:2)
Two of the things it explains are why the GOP wants to roll back anti pollution regulations and laws, and why so many people vote for the GOP.
Yeah, I mean obviously this explains those dumb rural voters, with all that smog ... oh wait.
Re: (Score:2)
Your hypothesis runs against your conclusions. City centre air is overwhelmingly much worse across the West compared to rural areas. Voting among the red/blue lines is that cities vote blue and rural areas vote red.
Re: (Score:2)
Wasnâ(TM)t it ironic watching Trump surrounded by 5 year olds more intelligent than him, he canâ(TM)t even fill in a colouring book correctly.
Yeah, it was awfully reminiscent of Bush holding a book upside down. Ever get the feeling that TPTB figured out with Reagan that a mentally incompetent president was easier to control?