My relative approached this study with the assumption that teeth whitening is very dangerous.  From that perspective, the news that the damage of orange juice is greater than the damage of whiteners is very scary. (What have we been doing to our children at the breakfast table all these years?!) And to be sure, there’s been lots of concern about whiteners weakening tooth enamel and causing other long-term harm.

However, my research into the topic leads me to believe that these concerns are overblown. If you’re careful about the whitening agent that you use (being sensitive to the context of your own health and life), and if you use it correctly or have a professional apply it for you, the risks are extremely minor and mostly reversible. At the same time, orange juice is an extremely common beverage, and we don’t hear about people who drink it dropping dead or anything like that. In fact, it’s often recommended as a good way to get some necessary vitamins in your diet (balancing this benefit against the calories in juice, of course). Yes, orange juice contains citric acid, and that isn’t super great for your teeth, but it’s not super awful either.

Imagine if the headline was flipped: Whitening Agents Safer For Teeth Than Orange Juice, Study Finds. The response would be, “Hooray! Now we can go get our teeth whitened without fear!” Orange juice is obviously safe, there’s a whole refrigerator section at the grocery store devoted to it — and you’re saying teeth whitening is safer than that. Strangely, this headline has the same essential meaning as the original one. Saying

Danger(Orange Juice) > Danger(Teeth Whitening)

is logically equivalent to saying

Danger(Teeth Whitening) < Danger(Orange Juice).

When I pointed this out to my alarmed relative, she immediately calmed down. After all, she had a half-empty carton of orange juice in her refrigerator at that very moment, and her teeth are in great shape and have been for decades. The bottom line is, how we frame the news has a huge effect on how we understand it. We need to remain conscious of this if we value objectivity and accuracy in our beliefs. (You can decide for yourself if you value that, but I know I certainly do!)

I see why this feels like a double-taxation. But conservatives have to put forward more of an argument than “But it’s already been taxed!” if they want to make a convincing argument for eliminating it. After all, hasn’t all money been taxed before? When I buy a hot dog from a street vendor, that’s my income that I already had to pay income tax on. My employer is paying me out of their revenues, which they had to pay corporate income taxes on. The people who gave them that money earned it through their jobs, which means that they and their employers also had to pay income taxes. And on and on and on.

Does this mean I should be exempted from sales tax on my hot dog? Does this mean the hot dog vendor shouldn’t have to pay income taxes? For that matter, why do I have to pay income tax on my salary when my employer already paid taxes on that money? And why does my employer have to pay those taxes when the people who gave them their money already paid their taxes?

The fact is, you can’t have money that’s only taxed once unless (a) it’s just been printed or (b) the first person to receive the money never spends it on anything ever again. Either of those scenarios would be way worse for the economy than whatever harms we might be incurring via the capital gains tax. And seriously, this is wildly missing the point. The existence of a dollar that has fallen into a taxed category on multiple occasions is not actually bad in any way. It’s just what happens when a currency circulates.

Look, I get it. Economics is complicated and most people don’t understand it. But repeating empty slogans doesn’t actually help anything. Let’s hear some actual reasons why these particular taxes are bad in this particular circumstance. That’s the sort of thing that might actually be the case! It would be nice if we could at least attempt to have a real policy discussion like adults, rather than sulking over a completely irrelevant observation.

On the flip side, the notion that military service is honorable comes from the idea that serving is in a meaningful sense equivalent “protecting our freedoms” or otherwise standing up for all that’s good and right in the world. And, well … that isn’t always the case in the wars that the US gets itself into. But I do think that that’s something we should hold our elected officials responsible for. The vast majority of military personnel aren’t in any position to influence the decision of where they go and against whom they fight.

But there’s still this idea that “protecting our freedoms” is something one can do, that “freedom isn’t free” and so on. I want to take a closer look at that idea. Separating ourselves from the specific military context, does this sentiment make sense?

If you have to pay for your freedom, are you actually free at all? Suppose we were to require everyone to pay $100 to the government in order to be allowed to join the religious organization of their choosing. Would that be “freedom of religion”? What if in order to vote in elections, you had to first have at least one child, and then send your eldest child to be tortured? Would these be “free and fair elections”? I think it’s pretty clear that if you only gain abilities after some mandatory amount of suffering occurs, those abilities shouldn’t be considered part of your “freedoms.” You’re actually being manipulated and exploited.

When someone says that “freedom isn’t free,” they mean that our military men and women have to fight and possibly die in order to make sure that we are allowed to enjoy our rights as Americans. The implication is that if they didn’t do this, we would immediately be overtaken by some other country’s totalitarian regime and our rights would be stripped from us. Now, maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t. Supposing for the time being that it is true — and that the wars America fights in are all actually necessary to stop infringements on our freedoms at home — I think an aphorism like this one is missing the point. If this really is the case, we should realize that we’re not free. That threatening, oppressive governments are forcing us to sacrifice our daughters and sons in order to exercise rights we should be granted simply by virtue of being humans. That’s sick! And I think we’d be better off acknowledging that than continuing to live in denial.

First, theWAREHOUSE has a promising idea for success as a performer:

Second, here’s a surprising twist from Rob and Elliot:

While we’re on a skeptical humor kick, here’s a “little moment of win” that will make you smile, from the site It Made My Day (IMMD):

The other day I was on a plane, and Mr. Aisle started trying to sell me an insane, “oil is abiotic” conspiracy theory. Then, Ms. Window chimed in; she was a geologist. Her polite, yet definitive empircal smackdown of his nonsense MMD.

[Update: The video has been pulled from YouTube. On their Facebook page, WisconsinEye says that they don't want clips like that being made from their coverage, because as a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization they want "to ensure that the public can view these events in their entirety and in their original context rather than an edited version that could potentially serve partisan political purposes." That's totally reasonable.

For your convenience, here is the Assembly Special Floor Session from February 18. The part that the YouTube video excerpted begins at 18:16.]

Gordon Hintz, you give me hope for America.

GEICO commercials chant, “Fifteen minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance.” The Allstate home page asks, “How much could you save? People who switched to Allstate saved an average of $348 per year.” State Farm’s website promises (with one small asterisk) “SAVE $489 when you switch to State Farm.” Progressive counters: “Get a FREE auto quote to see if you could save over $500!” And on and on.

I’m not going to link to these sites, because my point in mentioning this advertising tactic is to discredit it. It’s so frustratingly misleading, I think steam is actually going to pour out of my ears the next time I see a commercial using it.

I understand that any business wants to advertise the idea that it has low prices. But at some point, it becomes unrealistic. Some of the offers I hear imply that if I switched my car insurance to a particular insurance company, the company would be paying me — that’s the only way I could be said to “save” that much money in a year. And what if I switched again after that? If every insurance company saves you hundreds of dollars over every other insurance company, it never ends! We might have just discovered a flawless get-rich-quick scheme!

Of course, that’s not the claim they’re making per se. They’ve carefully phrased the ads to suggest it, but they’re squeaking by false advertising laws with their fine print, asterisks, and minced words. The simple fact is, people who switch from one insurance company to another are most likely going to do it because it saves them money. People who would not save money generally don’t switch. These averages are skewed because the sample is biased. Allstate policies aren’t $348 cheaper than all other policies on average; they’re just cheaper for the people who found that Allstate offered them cheaper policies and decided that switching car insurance was worth the hassle for that savings level. When GEICO says that “New GEICO customers report annual average savings over $500,” they haven’t actually promised that you’d have those savings. And presumably, if you didn’t save by switching, you wouldn’t become a new GEICO customer.

My guess at what’s actually happening? Perhaps different companies have different rates for different groups of people. Single people in their twenties and thirties might be seen as risky by most companies, but safe by one. Older married couples might find much cheaper policies with one or two companies than the rest. Adding a teen driver on your policy might be a much better deal with certain providers. When people in the right category find “their” insurance company, they switch and get big savings. I have no data about whether this is true — just speculating. (Feel free to add your better ideas in the comments.) Naturally, if this is the case, being forthright about it wouldn’t be a good business plan. You need to diversify risk in order to run a functional insurance company. If one or two firms end up with all the teen drivers, you can bet their rates for teen drivers would start to change.

The car insurance companies are trying to get you to associate their average new customer savings rates with their overall affordability level. Don’t let them. Sure, take the basic suggestion and shop around when you’re buying car insurance; look for who’s actually giving you the policy you want at the most affordable price. But as with any advertisement, don’t take all the implications too seriously.

This reader wrote:

I take small (no more than a pinch or two) quantities of psilocybin every day. Not to get high, not to unwind, but to try to heal my body. For 5+ years I’ve had an autoimmune problem that’s demyelinating my peripheral nerves – it’s called neuropathy. I do take a monthly treatment of gamma globulin to try to stabilize it, but the prognosis is for a long slow decline. Since “western medicine” doesn’t really have a clue and basically has the equivalent of sledgehammers to treat this thing, I’ve tried a host of non-Western modalities, including acupuncture and Chinese herbs, homeopathy, bio-energy balancing and strict diet. Not entirely no dice, but my condition is still declining. I suppose my fail-safe maneuver is to visit Lourdes or John of God in Brazil.

Anyway, fortunately I’ve also got contacts in the spiritual community of “medicine”, who have given me the idea of using what folks in Mexico call “the little healers”. I have a scientist friend who used it in small quantities daily to recover from bad asthma. It is reputed to help with the immune system (as well as anxiety and depression).

I am as yet too scared to undertake a full trip, which evidently can be like 6 months or a year’s worth of therapy in a few hours, but someday I will work up to it. I am befriending it right now, and I feel the mushrooms are helping my condition. You could call it merely a result of magic thinking, but what harm can it possibly cause? It’s natural, and I am determined to use whatever I can to heal.

Did you catch it? “Since ‘western medicine’ doesn’t really have a clue … I’ve tried a host of non-Western modalities.” “My fail-safe maneuver.” “The spiritual community of ‘medicine.’” “It is reputed to help.” Medicine wasn’t working out for this person, so they figured they might as well try alternative medicine as a backup. This is an attitude I’ve grown accustomed to hearing, but the frequency with which it’s repeated doesn’t make it any easier to comprehend or any more pleasant.

I think it was Tim Minchin who said it best: “Do you know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proved to work? Medicine.” These “non-Western modalities,” so appealing to our (misguided) sense of reverence toward any and all ancient wisdom, are all things that haven’t been proved to work, or have been proved not to work. Let’s take a look, shall we?

• Acupuncture: Sticking little needles all over the body at particular points, believed to heal a wide variety of ailments by manipulating “qi” or “energy flow” in some vague, magical way. It turns out that merely pretending to give someone acupuncture has equal, if not greater, healing power. Hmm.
• Chinese herbs: This is pretty nonspecific. Suffice it to say that there are plenty of herbs that do have curative effects, and many of the ones we know about have been used in actual medicines, but the simple fact that something is an herb doesn’t make it healthy by definition. The fetishization of eastern/Chinese wisdom doesn’t make an herb curative, either.
• Homeopathy: I, too, used to think that “homeopathy” was a synonym for “natural remedy.” But it turns out that it’s based such blatant magical thinking, it’s shocking that any generally sane person could buy into this scam. Homeopaths believe that the more dilute something is, the more powerful it is, so they dilute their “medicines” far beyond the point where a single molecule of the “active ingredient” would even be present in the solution. And about that active ingredient — they believe that “like cures like,” so to treat a symptom you should take something which would cause that symptom. Luckily (I guess), they dilute it into nonexistence first.
• Bio-energy balancing: What does this even mean? What is “bio-energy,” and how might an “imbalance” of it relate to peripheral neuropathy? This is just a nonsense phrase, an attempt to sound scientific and convince gullible people to open their wallets.
• Lourdes: I can only hope these last two were offered tongue-in-cheek. The shrine at Lourdes is about as credible a source of miracles as a burnt grilled cheese sandwich.
• John of God: This guy is a con artist. Perhaps he’s fooled himself too, but when you get right down to it he performs carnival tricks and scams people out of their money. Not a very good “fail-safe maneuver,” if your definition of “fail” is anything like mine.

Interestingly, the anonymous email-writer acknowledged the effectiveness of these alternative treatments: “Not entirely no dice, but my condition is still declining.” I’d chalk “not entirely no dice” up to the placebo effect, given the list that was offered and what we know about those “modalities” from scientific investigations.

I understand that people with long-lasting, painful medical conditions want some way to make themselves better. However, wanting something doesn’t make it so. The popular notion that “alternative medicine” is worth a try when you’re in dire straits can definitely be harmful. It distracts people from, and sometimes interferes with, proven science-based medical treatments. It wastes people’s time and money. In the rare cases where “alternative medicine” is not just a modern-day version of dancing around a bonfire or sacrificing a goat, where it has some actual direct physical effect, it can be very dangerous — because it isn’t regulated, hasn’t been adequately tested, and is not well-understood.

What about psilocybin? I admit I don’t have the scientific background to have an educated opinion. Perhaps it could be used for some valid treatments; our current legal framework might be constraining adequate research into these possibilities. What I can say with more certainty is that the attitude so perfectly encapsulated here — in which treatments which are “non-Western,” “spiritual,” or endorsed by “folks” in developing countries are given privileged status over evidence-based medicine — is what motivated this writer to try it. And that attitude is dangerous.

I miss writing here. I wonder if any of my old subscribers will notice this update, or if my entire readership has dwindled to those people searching Google for the meaning of the expression “it’s the thought that counts.” In any case, I’m going to try to bring this blog back in the new year, and spend some time between now and then stocking up the queue.

I think it’ll be easier to keep blogging consistently if I have a clearer framework to start from. So, in the future, I plan to post critical examinations of particular ideas and concepts we encounter in our daily lives — whether in politics, advertising, pop culture, science, or any other aspect of the Zeitgeist in general. (That’s critical examinations in the sense of applying critical thinking, not implying that I’ll necessarily be criticizing or debunking every idea I discuss.) I’m sure that, occasionally, I’ll write a post that’s just about some recent event or other news item, but I think this framework is true to our original vision of what this blog would be for and will prompt me to write more often.

I’m going to aim for three posts a week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday), beginning in January. See you then!

Pronouns are a big deal for transgendered people. Calling a trans man (female to Male) ‘she’ is at best misinformed and at worst purposefully hurtful and can be a very painful thing. Calling a non-binary ‘he’ or ‘she’ is just as inaccurate, which brings up another problem- the English language isn’t equipped for gender neutrality.

They go on to discuss several options for more appropriate pronouns, and the pros and cons of each. It’s a very insightful and thorough post, while still being concise and understandable. The post title sums it up well in that it is both “an explanation and a request” (for respectful behavior), which is why I think it’s so important to pass this on to my readers — especially those of you who don’t usually encounter, and so probably don’t spend much time thinking about, gender identity issues. It’s definitely worth your time. What are you waiting for — read it!