SAFE SEX GUIDE - OR - 5 REASONS TO USE CONDOMS:
safesatisf...@rock.com
1. To protect against pregnancy:
Have sex with a condom and pull out before cumming, until you're sure
she's on hormonal birth control. Then, condoms and hormonal birth
control should do. If you do have sex without a condom while she's on
hormonal, pull out before cumming, or only cum in her infrequently.
If you're real big on ejaculating in the vagina without a condom,
consider hormonal birth control and a diaphragm.
Never have sex with no protection, and never rely on just the pull-out
method for protection. But always try to use at least two forms of
birth control.
2. To protect against HIV:
Wear a condom or have a tested monogamous partner.
Condoms reduce the risk of HIV by 90%, and should be worn for anal as
well as vaginal intercourse with untested partners.
Be careful of having sex if you have cuts or sores on your genitals or
in your mouth as they may increase the possibility of HIV
transmission. This includes in your mouth if you think you might get
semen in your mouth. Mouthwash makes cuts in your mouth heal quicker.
3. To protect against HPV which may cause cervical or oral cancer:
Wear a condom if you're promiscuous, or have a tested monogamous
partner. Condoms reduce the risk of HPV by 70%.
For increased protection against oral HPV, don't go down on any girls
unless she, and you both get a clean HPV test, see http://www.thehpvtest.com/
and are monogamous, or you happen to get Gardasil, the vaccine which
protects against HPV.
For this increased protection without Gardasil, it would help to never
have sex without a condom without a tested partner, because if you get
HPV on your dick you would pass it to your girlfriend.
If you're going to be promiscuous you should probably use a condom
even if you have Gardasil, to reduce the risk of passing some of the
other strains of HPV from girl to girl.
I believe the risk of oral HPV is primarily due to cunnlingus, not
felatio. See the below studies for more clarification.
To protect against genital warts wear a condom, or be monogamous and
sure your partner is clean. Ask your partner if they have genital
warts or inspect their genitals. There is still a risk even with a
condom.
4. To protect against Herpes:
Wear a condom, ask your partner if they have herpes, or inspect their
genitals.
Be careful of having sex if you have cuts or sores, as they can
increase the possibility of Herpes transmission. For the estimated
risk of Herpes with and without condoms see:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.seduction.fast/browse_thread/thread/28acf99e6d4728c1/919f1756b60299ad9?19f1756b60299ad
.
5. To protect against the 6 other common curable diseases, Gonorrhea,
Chlamydia/NGU, Trichomoniasis, Syphilis, Scabies, Molluscum
Contagiosum, Crabs:
Wear a condom, at least until you're monogamous. If promiscuous, get
tested twice a year even if you have no symptoms as Gonnorhea,
Chlamydia and Syphilis can be present without symptoms and can lead to
more serious problems in both sexes if not treated.
---------------------
Try different varieties of condoms until you find some you like, some
can actually make sex better. There are condom stores online that
offer samplers.
In general, keeping semen out of any orfices will help protect against
pregnancy and HIV.
10 most common STDs
Type of disease:
Herpes - Skin / Virus
Warts/HPV - Skin / Virus
HIV - Blood / Virus
Molluscum Contagiosum - Skin / Virus
Gonorrhea - Bacteria
Chlamydia/NGU - Bacteria
Trichomoniasis - Bacteria
Crabs - Skin / Parasite
Scabies - Skin / Parasite
Syphilis - Bacteria
You can get tested for at least four of these, Gonorrhea-urine,
Chlamydia-urine, Syphilis-blood, and HIV-blood. A Trichomoniasis test
requires a wet mount or a culture. There are blood tests for Herpes,
but they aren't normally given. There is also an HPV test, see
http://www.thehpvtest.com/. The HPV test only tells if someone has a
risky strain of HPV, it does not tell specifically which strain. They
are coming out with a more specific test in the future which will be
able to identify exactly which strain someone has. You can check your
partner's genitals for the five others; Herpes, Warts, Molluscum
Contagiosum, Crabs, and Scabies. However it's possible that these
diseases could be present even if not noticeable.
Without Gardasil there were 10,400 cases of cervical cancer resulting
in 3,900 deaths in the U.S. each year. The vaccine Gardasil protects
against 70% of cervical cancers by blocking HPV 16 and 18. Pap smears
may protect women from the remaining cases. Gardasil also protects
against 90% of genital warts, and potentially all of oral cancer
causing HPV. Your own immune system may eventually clear HPV from
your body within 2-5 years.
Of the 34,000 new cases of oral cancer each year, 1 in 4, or 8,500 may
be due to HPV16. The question is, how many people get HPV16 orally
every year, and thus what percentage of cases turn into oral cancer.
What is the risk? As cancer is probably as serious an illness for
most people as HIV, the risk of oral HPV may be greater for
heterosexuals than the risk of HIV, for HIV infects only 2,800-7,800
heterosexual males, and 9,000 heterosexual females, and of those
952-1,714 heterosexual white male, and 1,800 heterosexual white female
contract each year. HIV effects minorities and homosexuals and
intravenous drugs users more greatly. ("7,800" and "1,714" number
includes "other" unspecified methods of transmission). There are
40,000 new cases of HIV in the U.S. each year total. Though there is
news this recently increased to 60,000. An over the counter test for
HIV would really help stem the tide of HIV - which incidence seems to
be increasing.
50% of those with oral cancer die within five years.
New England Journal of Medicine - John Hopkins Oral Cancer HPV Study:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/356/19/1944
http://www.oral-cancer.info/?cat=7
http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/ocfnews/news.asp - says 1 in 4
cases of oral cancer were found due to HPV, this would correspond to
the 8,500 number.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardasil
---
Some people are so scared of the risks and dangers of sex, that they
never sex. Other people do not use precautions or have safe sex. The
idea is that everyone should take precautions, and that sex is safe if
you do so - if it actually is; it maybe is.
As long as civilization does not fall, there will always be birth
control from now on. Disease can be cured or eliminated, and new
diseases may come into existence. There could also, worse, be another
present-day connection between sex and disease that we do not know,
such as the connection they just found between cunnlingus and oral
HPV, which increases the risk of oral cancer, - Gardasil hopefully
protects against this risk, but let's hope there are no other
connections - of course if there are we'd want to find them.
Safe sex and masturbation are healthy and good for you. But
ejaculation is not really so good and if you have enough sexual energy
you can learn to have multiple orgasms without or before ejaculation.
If you do ejaculate, eat a couple apples and 15 mg of zinc to
replenish yourself immediately. If you wait three days (72 hours) to
ejaculate you'll have your energy back and be at maximum sperm count.
Unsafe sex is immoral. Safe sex is moral, healthy and good for you.
Sex with two or more forms of birth control makes the chance of
getting pregnant less than the risk of dying in a car accident. We
transport babies in cars without their informed consent, so we can
only likewise assume that the unborn baby accepts the small risk of
unplanned pregnancy in exchange for a sex life, just as the born baby
accepts the small chance of a car accident in exchange for the
convenience of travel.
The right point of all perversion, fetishes, or deviancies is sexual
fulfillment. If you lust for someone's body you probably lust for
their mind as well. If you love someone's mind you are more likely to
love their body. Love is an aphrodisiac. Lust is moral honest desire
which leads to love and social relationships however great or small.
Vulgarity is revolting in the sense of revolution, contradiction and
attack. Saying you want somebody who you don't want. But this is
likely only a reality if you are desperate or don't want to get
involved. You could even so be friends if you are nice to one
another.
---
More Safe Sex details at:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.religion.christian.catholic/browse_thread/thread/b94a937474c2fa76/0bc6f16ece00b864?
&
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.men/browse_thread/thread/97ef720ac38c69d8/b366c06819d0b471?lnk=st&q=#b366c06819d0b471
---
nyi...@bellsouth.net
> SAFE SEX GUIDE - OR - 5 REASONS TO USE CONDOMS:
The term "safe sex" is a misleading misnomer, and some people have
taken to using "safer sex" as a result, including Planned Parenthood:
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/stds-hiv-safer-sex/safer-sex-4263.htm
> 2. To protect against HIV:
>
> Wear a condom or have a tested monogamous partner.
> Condoms reduce the risk of HIV by 90%, and should be worn for anal as
> well as vaginal intercourse with untested partners.
10% risk is extremely irresponsible where a deadly disease like AIDS
is the issue.
Anal intercourse ("sodomy") is considerably more dangerous from this
point of view than vaginal intercourse. In Australia, where TV is not
so censored as here, I saw a program (IIRC in 1992) in which a pro-
Aborigine and anti-AIDS activist said that the majority of HIV-
positive cases in Australia were due to anal intercourse. He related
how there were people who paid male prostitutes extra if they would
allow them to do it without a condom, and that a very sizable number
of these prostitutes were Aborigines.
He was not contradicted by anyone on the program, but one of the hosts
told him it was unrealistic for him to tell Aborigines not to do anal
intercourse. His retort was:
"What *should* I tell them? `Do it and die'?"
> 3. To protect against HPV which may cause cervical or oral cancer:
>
> Wear a condom if you're promiscuous, or have a tested monogamous
> partner. Condoms reduce the risk of HPV by 70%.
30% risk is irresponsible. "a tested monogamous partner" is great if
you can trust the partner to tell the truth. Of course, it is
irresponsible to have intercourse with such a partner if you aren't
sure YOU haven't been infected with HPV.
> For increased protection against oral HPV, don't go down on any girls
> unless she, and you both get a clean HPV test, seehttp://www.thehpvtest.com/
> and are monogamous,
Now THAT's what *I* call safe sex! [of course, you should be tested
for all venereal diseases]
> 4. To protect against Herpes:
> Wear a condom, ask your partner if they have herpes, or inspect their
> genitals.
> Be careful of having sex if you have cuts or sores, as they can
> increase the possibility of Herpes transmission. For the estimated
> risk of Herpes with and without condoms see:http://groups.google.com/group/alt.seduction.fast/browse_thread/threa...
Here's what I saw:
"Over the course of one year, the chance of getting
genital herpes from an infected partner who has no symptoms is between
four and 10 percent."
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/pp2/portal/files/portal/medicalinfo/......
What's the risk if the person DOES have symptoms? Where an
essentially incurable disease like herpes is concerned,
even a 4% risk is IMHO irresponsible.
Your link wasn't very helpful, btw. After searching the Planned
Parenthood site for "herpes" I got the old link run-around and gave up
after finding:
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/stds-hiv-safer-sex/safer-sex-4263.htm
and even there, it only gave links to risk percentages for unprotected
sex.
Peter Nyikos
Lane
will ensue. I trimmed the groups to alt.poly to avoid (more) trolls.
nyi...@bellsouth.net wrote in
news:d45c7c14-0891-40e0...@z1g2000yqn.googlegroups.com:
> On Mar 24, 3:47 pm, safesatisfaction1...@rock.com wrote:
>> SAFE SEX GUIDE - OR - 5 REASONS TO USE CONDOMS:
>
> The term "safe sex" is a misleading misnomer, and some people have
> taken to using "safer sex" as a result, including Planned Parenthood:
> http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/stds-hiv-safer-
sex/safer
> -sex-4263.htm
>
>> 2. To protect against HIV:
>>
>> Wear a condom or have a tested monogamous partner.
>> Condoms reduce the risk of HIV by 90%, and should be worn for anal as
>> well as vaginal intercourse with untested partners.
>
> 10% risk is extremely irresponsible where a deadly disease like AIDS
> is the issue.
It is sensationalistic to describe HIV infection as AIDS. AIDS is a
syndrome widely believed to be often caused by HIV but not everyone
infected with HIV has AIDS.
That said, it is incorrect that the risk of contracting HIV from
unprotected sex is 10%. In fact, the odds of contracting HIV from
unprotected sex with an HIV positive person depends on many, many
factors but, on average may be about 10% (though I state that as an
unscientific observation). The odds that the person you are having sex
with is HIV positive also depends on lots of factors. The primary
category of people I have sex with are men who have sex with men and the
percentage of MSM who are infected is higher than the population at
large (and, depending on locale, probably significantly higher than 10%)
but your the object of your desire may be in a different population with
a different risk.
None of this is intended to endorse having unprotected sex with a
stranger. But hyperbole is equally unuseful.
(snipping bizarre discussion of anal sex amongst aboriginals)
>
>> 3. To protect against HPV which may cause cervical or oral cancer:
>>
>> Wear a condom if you're promiscuous, or have a tested monogamous
>> partner. Condoms reduce the risk of HPV by 70%.
>
> 30% risk is irresponsible. "a tested monogamous partner" is great if
> you can trust the partner to tell the truth. Of course, it is
> irresponsible to have intercourse with such a partner if you aren't
> sure YOU haven't been infected with HPV.
It does seem that condom use is insufficient to prevent HPV. This seems
to be more important where women are involved, though there is
apparently some increased risk of certain cancers in men from infection
as well.
Why vaccination (for all genders) is controversial still flabbergasts
me.
>
>> For increased protection against oral HPV, don't go down on any girls
>> unless she, and you both get a clean HPV test,
>> seehttp://www.thehpvtest.com/ and are monogamous,
>
> Now THAT's what *I* call safe sex! [of course, you should be tested
> for all venereal diseases]
I, um, have no comment.
>
>
>> 4. To protect against Herpes:
>> Wear a condom, ask your partner if they have herpes, or inspect their
>> genitals.
>> Be careful of having sex if you have cuts or sores, as they can
>> increase the possibility of Herpes transmission. For the estimated
>> risk of Herpes with and without condoms
>> see:http://groups.google.com/group/alt.seduction.fast/browse_thread/t
>
> Here's what I saw:
>
> "Over the course of one year, the chance of getting
> genital herpes from an infected partner who has no symptoms is between
> four and 10 percent."
> http://www.plannedparenthood.org/pp2/portal/files/portal/medicalinfo/.
> ....
Okay. This seems to have largely dropped off the STD radar in my world.
I wonder why.
>
> What's the risk if the person DOES have symptoms? Where an
> essentially incurable disease like herpes is concerned,
> even a 4% risk is IMHO irresponsible.
I guess. I contracted HSV 1 (cold sores) as an adult. It was a little
rough at the time and the occasional outbreaks are inconvenient. But
valtrex works beautifully and I have coped. I am sure that the genital
type is an order of magnitude more unpleasant, but, in the same context
as other STDs, it seems less important.
Lane
eilinel
OK, I'm leery of this thread in general, but I'll bite on this:
> Why (HPV) vaccination (for all genders) is controversial still flabbergasts
> me.
Around here, the argument is:
STD's are God's punishment for having sex outside of religiously-
sanctioned marriage. People don't have nonmarital sex because they're
afraid of STD's. If we eliminate that fear (and the risk of
punishment), people (including, presumbably, the pubescent and
presexual girls at whom the vaccine is currently most targeted) will
inevitably run right out and screw everything that moves.
Eilinel
Love the folks here, hate their religion
Dan Abel
<72854b00-db1c-4647...@d19g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
eilinel <eili...@earthlink.net> wrote:
Here are two credible cites that give actual facts:
http://www.cdc.gov/std/hpv/STDFact-HPV-vaccine-young-women.htm
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/355/23/2389
I would recommend that anybody interested in this issue read these two
cites. There's lots of information, but to answer one question from
above, there are no studies that show this vaccine works for males, thus
it is not even approved for use on males.
> Love the folks here, hate their religion
There are, of course, a few religious nuts who believe what you have
posted above. There are also other nuts who believe something similar,
except haven't thrown a (hopefully) unwilling God into it. Do you
honestly believe that there are ignorant assholes posting on this group
who believe that STDs are God's punishment?
The second part of your argument is, unfortunately, true. There are in
fact a number of people, some of them in power in the US, who believe in
abstinence-based sex education, and this vaccine undermines their
arguments.
--
Dan Abel
Petaluma, California USA
da...@sonic.net
Spartakus
> safesatisfaction1...@rock.com wrote:
> > Wear a condom or have a tested monogamous partner. Condoms
> > reduce the risk of HIV by 90%, and should be worn for anal as
> > well as vaginal intercourse with untested partners.
> 10% risk is extremely irresponsible where a deadly disease like AIDS
> is the issue.
Who wants to explain to the math guy that a 90% decrease in *risk*
does not mean a 10% overall risk?
> Anal intercourse ("sodomy") is considerably more dangerous from this
> point of view than vaginal intercourse. In Australia, where TV is not
> so censored as here, I saw a program (IIRC in 1992) in which a pro-
> Aborigine and anti-AIDS activist said that the majority of HIV-
> positive cases in Australia were due to anal intercourse. He related
> how there were people who paid male prostitutes extra if they would
> allow them to do it without a condom, and that a very sizable number
> of these prostitutes were Aborigines.
Why is your memory of a TV program aired in 1992 even remotely
relevant? You are really ramping up the fuckwittery here, perfesser.
Lane
news:dabel-29EA09....@c-61-68-245-199.per.connect.net.au:
> In article
> <72854b00-db1c-4647...@d19g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
> eilinel <eili...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> On Mar 24, 4:36 pm, Lane <absolutel...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> > Why (HPV) vaccination (for all genders) is controversial still
>> > flabbergasts me.
>>
>> Around here, the argument is:
>> STD's are God's punishment for having sex outside of religiously-
>> sanctioned marriage. People don't have nonmarital sex because they're
>> afraid of STD's. If we eliminate that fear (and the risk of
>> punishment), people (including, presumbably, the pubescent and
>> presexual girls at whom the vaccine is currently most targeted) will
>> inevitably run right out and screw everything that moves.
>
> Here are two credible cites that give actual facts:
>
> http://www.cdc.gov/std/hpv/STDFact-HPV-vaccine-young-women.htm
>
> http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/355/23/2389
>
> I would recommend that anybody interested in this issue read these two
> cites. There's lots of information, but to answer one question from
> above, there are no studies that show this vaccine works for males,
> thus it is not even approved for use on males.
That is useful information. In fact, I probably knew it.
I think the issue is that there is less data on the health effects of
HPV on males as well, so less urgency to find a solution to that
problem.
But like all virulent diseases, reducing the incidence generally has a
multiplying effect. If there are fewer infected males, there is less
risk to women.
>
> The second part of your argument is, unfortunately, true. There are
> in fact a number of people, some of them in power in the US, who
> believe in abstinence-based sex education, and this vaccine undermines
> their arguments.
>
Yes. If the facts don't support your worldview, ignore them.
Lane
eilinel
> In article
> <72854b00-db1c-4647-8952-6ecd9fec8...@d19g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
>
> eilinel <eiline...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > On Mar 24, 4:36 pm, Lane <absolutel...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > Why (HPV) vaccination (for all genders) is controversial still flabbergasts
> > > me.
>
> > Around here, the argument is:
> > STD's are God's punishment for having sex outside of religiously-
> > sanctioned marriage. People don't have nonmarital sex because they're
> > afraid of STD's. If we eliminate that fear (and the risk of
> > punishment), people (including, presumbably, the pubescent and
> > presexual girls at whom the vaccine is currently most targeted) will
> > inevitably run right out and screw everything that moves.
>
> Here are two credible cites that give actual facts:
>
> http://www.cdc.gov/std/hpv/STDFact-HPV-vaccine-young-women.htm
>
> http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/355/23/2389
>
> I would recommend that anybody interested in this issue read these two
> cites. There's lots of information, but to answer one question from
> above, there are no studies that show this vaccine works for males, thus
> it is not even approved for use on males.
>
>
> There are, of course, a few religious nuts who believe what you have
> posted above. There are also other nuts who believe something similar,
> except haven't thrown a (hopefully) unwilling God into it. Do you
> honestly believe that there are ignorant assholes posting on this group
> who believe that STDs are God's punishment?
>
> fact a number of people, some of them in power in the US, who believe in
> abstinence-based sex education, and this vaccine undermines their
> arguments.
>
Sorry- I meant here (where I live), not here (alt.poly). Apologies for
any confusion.
Eilinel
mc...@pitt.edu
> On Mar 24, 3:47 pm, safesatisfaction1...@rock.com wrote:
>
> > SAFE SEX GUIDE - OR - 5 REASONS TO USE CONDOMS:
>
> The term "safe sex" is a misleading misnomer, and some people have
>
> > 2. To protect against HIV:
>
> > Wear a condom or have a tested monogamous partner.
> > Condoms reduce the risk of HIV by 90%, and should be worn for anal as
> > well as vaginal intercourse with untested partners.
>
> 10% risk is extremely irresponsible where a deadly disease like AIDS
> is the issue.
Note: reducing a risk by 90% does NOT leave the risk at 10% - unless
you started out with "almost certaain" as the baseline.
>
> > Wear a condom if you're promiscuous, or have a tested monogamous
> > partner. Condoms reduce the risk of HPV by 70%.
>
> 30% risk is irresponsible.
Same as above.
For example, it is believed that seat belts reduce the risk of
fatality by about 30% (I think that is a very optimistic appraisal of
the eefts of seatbelts, but it is a common estimate.)
That does not mean you have 70% risk of dying when you get into a car.
I doubt than anyone here would be silly enough to believe this guy,
but I thought I'd do the math.
Michael.
Aahz Maruch
<mc...@pitt.edu> wrote:
>
>I doubt than anyone here would be silly enough to believe this guy,
>but I thought I'd do the math.
No personals on alt.poly
--
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6 http://rule6.info/
<*> <*> <*>
"That's right. You're a left-brain word fetishist." --_The Game_
Russ Allbery
> Note: reducing a risk by 90% does NOT leave the risk at 10% - unless
> you started out with "almost certaain" as the baseline.
This is one of the reasons why risks and changes to risk should almost
never be stated as percentages. They make for good ad copy, but (or
perhaps because) they're highly unintuitive to people and lead to bad
judgements about relative risk. If risks are instead stated as counts (34
people per 1000, for example), people make much better risk judgements.
This effect of the presentation method has even been studied and
documented in medical journals. And yet, the news media still insists on
reporting nearly all medical facts as percentages and, even worse,
percentage changes, which is deeply deceptive and unhelpful and loses
information. I believe they do this solely because it's more
dramatic-looking.
Suppose, for example, that you see a newspaper article that says that
eating cranberries reduces your risk of spontaneous combustion by 50%.
Sounds pretty good, huh? Except that if you dig into the actual numbers
(which are almost never reported in the article), you find that eating
cranberries reduces the risk of spontaneous combustion from 2 people per
100,000 to 1 person per 100,000. A lot less interesting now.
This happens *all the time* in the news articles that are devoted to
dividing all substances in the world into two categories: those that cause
cancer and those that prevent cancer. If you look at the actual numbers,
they're quite often small changes to already miniscule risks, but when you
divide one tiny number by another tiny number, you get an
impressive-looking percentage.
Ben Goldacre. _Bad Science_. Fantastic book. I highly, highly recommend
it, even for the people not in the UK who have to pay a premium to get the
imported version.
http://www.badscience.net/ is Goldacre's blog and is on my regular reading
list.
--
Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Steve Pope
>mc...@pitt.edu writes:
>> Note: reducing a risk by 90% does NOT leave the risk at 10% - unless
>> you started out with "almost certaain" as the baseline.
>This is one of the reasons why risks and changes to risk should almost
>never be stated as percentages. They make for good ad copy, but (or
>perhaps because) they're highly unintuitive to people and lead to bad
>judgements about relative risk. If risks are instead stated as counts (34
>people per 1000, for example), people make much better risk judgements.
Not to mention that a phrase like "20% less risk" is ambiguous.
If before the phrase the risk was 50%, it is unclear whether
this means the risk has been reduced to 40%, or 30%.
Steve
Lane
news:87skl0c...@windlord.stanford.edu:
> This is one of the reasons why risks and changes to risk should almost
> never be stated as percentages. They make for good ad copy, but (or
> perhaps because) they're highly unintuitive to people and lead to bad
> judgements about relative risk. If risks are instead stated as counts
> (34 people per 1000, for example), people make much better risk
> judgements.
>
I understand your point about changes to risk, but "34 people 1000" is just
another way of saying 3.4%. I don't see why it is more informative or less
confusing.
Lane
Serene Vannoy
I think the point is that if the risk then changes to 68 people in 1000,
one should say THAT, rather than "The risk increases by 100%", which
makes it sound like a MUCH worse problem than it is.
Serene
Lane
news:7323haF...@mid.individual.net:
As I said, I already got that point. I thought he was suggesting that
numbers per 1000 was less confusing than percentages per se.
I may have misunderstood.
Lane
Serene Vannoy
I didn't get that from what he said. I thought the "almost never"
covered cases in which all that's being discussed is one, non-relative
risk percentage, in which case 3.4% would be perfectly reasonable, but I
would *still* say 34 people in 1000, because I think it conveys more of
an "over a large population, this is the trend" thing, but that's a
linguistic preference on my part, obviously not a precision preference.
Serene
Steve Pope
> I didn't get that from what he said. I thought the "almost
> never" covered cases in which all that's being discussed is
> one, non-relative risk percentage, in which case 3.4% would be
> perfectly reasonable, but I would *still* say 34 people in 1000,
> because I think it conveys more of an "over a large population,
> this is the trend" thing, but that's a linguistic preference
> on my part, obviously not a precision preference.
As a datapoint, for me the "34 people in 1000" phrase does
not have any of the added connotation that you describe above.
Steve
Dan Abel
<305b6571-56e7-4639...@r34g2000vba.googlegroups.com>,
eilinel <eili...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Sorry- I meant here (where I live), not here (alt.poly). Apologies for
> any confusion.
My apologies for not reading your post carefully enough. I must have
been in a bad mood.
Russ Allbery
> Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> wrote:
>> This is one of the reasons why risks and changes to risk should almost
>> never be stated as percentages. They make for good ad copy, but (or
>> perhaps because) they're highly unintuitive to people and lead to bad
>> judgements about relative risk. If risks are instead stated as counts
>> (34 people per 1000, for example), people make much better risk
>> judgements.
> I understand your point about changes to risk, but "34 people 1000" is
> just another way of saying 3.4%. I don't see why it is more informative
> or less confusing.
Mathematically, they're the same thing. *Psychologically*, they're not.
The literature on this is very interesting, but I don't have it right at
my fingertips to point to, unfortunately. But they've done studies on the
topic that seem to indicate that we (in the statistical sense of we)
process the count more readily and more accurately than the percentage,
even if there's a trivial mathematical conversion.
(And that's even apart from the problem with expressing change as a
percentage, which adds a whole different set of problems.)
Lane
I guess it's just the difference between being a math geek and not.
If I saw someone say 3.4% of such and such population would die, I would
immediately convert in my mind: oh, that's about 1 in 30. So, I guess I
see your point but I find 1 in 30 to be a lot easier to process in terms
of its likely impact on me than 34 out of 1000.
Lane
Serene Vannoy
But one in 30 is not a percentage, and I think that's the point. Even
you, a math geek, converted the number to a ratio in order to make it
more usable to your processing, yes?
Serene
Lane
Yes. I conceded that point.
Lane
Russ Allbery
>>> I understand your point about changes to risk, but "34 people 1000" is
>>> just another way of saying 3.4%. I don't see why it is more
>>> informative or less confusing.
>> Mathematically, they're the same thing. *Psychologically*, they're
>> not. The literature on this is very interesting, but I don't have it
>> right at my fingertips to point to, unfortunately. But they've done
>> studies on the topic that seem to indicate that we (in the statistical
>> sense of we) process the count more readily and more accurately than
>> the percentage, even if there's a trivial mathematical conversion.
>> (And that's even apart from the problem with expressing change as a
>> percentage, which adds a whole different set of problems.)
> I guess it's just the difference between being a math geek and not.
> If I saw someone say 3.4% of such and such population would die, I would
> immediately convert in my mind: oh, that's about 1 in 30. So, I guess I
> see your point but I find 1 in 30 to be a lot easier to process in terms
> of its likely impact on me than 34 out of 1000.
This has apparently been shown to apply even to medical doctors, who
presumably have at least some grounding in math.
I did what I probably should have done in the first place and tracked down
the actual references. The Google search term to use to find the
discussion is "natural frequencies" (probably with a "statistics" stuck in
there to get away from all the pages about resonance). See:
Butterworth, et al. "Statistics: what seems natural?" Science (4 May
2001): 853
Hoffrage U., Gigerenzer G. "Using natural frequencies to improve
diagnostic inferences" Acad Med (1998); 73: 538-40
(references from Bad Science). Quoting from the first (via Stanford's
institutional Science subscription):
Which statistical data seem easier to understand, 10 cases in 100, or
10%? In their Policy Forum "Communicating statistical information"
(Science's Compass, 22 Dec., p. 2261), U. Hoffrage and colleagues
offer persuasive evidence that both experts and novices find it to be
the former. When prevalence, sensitivity, and false positive rates are
given as probabilities (e.g., 10%), most physicians misinterpret the
information in a way that could be potentially disastrous for the
patient, but when they are presented as "natural frequencies" (e.g.,
10 cases in 100), the physicians' performance is dramatically better.
The authors suggest ways to improve both communication of statistical
information and medical education by using frequencies rather than
probabilities.
It then goes on to discuss a possible theory for why this might be the
case. The theory is (paragraphsed a lot) that natural frequencies allow
us to use wiring in our brain which is specifically designed for counting
and comprehension of collections and subcollections. Rates expressed as
probabilities rather than subcollections don't immediately make use of the
same machinery, although one can of course mentally convert as you
describe.
Russ Allbery
> If I saw someone say 3.4% of such and such population would die, I would
> immediately convert in my mind: oh, that's about 1 in 30. So, I guess I
> see your point but I find 1 in 30 to be a lot easier to process in terms
> of its likely impact on me than 34 out of 1000.
It also occurs to me to mention here that I think we're in fundamental
agreement and this is mostly a point about the benefits of normalization,
which of course is a classic "it depends." If you're looking at one rate
in isolation, converting it to a natural reduced form like 1 in 30 is
possibly more useful. If you deal with risk numbers all day long (if you
were a doctor, for instance), it's probably more useful to noramlize them
all to N in 1000 so that you can take advantage of your automatic
subconscious comparisons between simple numbers.
Pat Kight
When I was a newspaper reporter (back in the days when reporters
actually covered the news, as opposed to fancying themselves "analysts"
- but I digress), I was urged by a wonderful old veteran editor to use
numbers of people rather than percentages because it made
whatever-the-thing-being-calculated seem more human and personal.
--
Pat Kight
kig...@peak.org
Todd Michel McComb
Pat Kight <kig...@peak.org> wrote:
>back in the days when reporters actually covered the news, as
>opposed to fancying themselves "analysts" - but I digress
I was never a reporter, but this bugs me quite a bit too....
Lane
news:s99ps4546np2v5lqt...@4ax.com:
> [1] Why is it (maths) singular in the US and plural in the UK, I
> wonder?
>
There are other cute little questions like that which I wonder about
(see, here in the US, we would have said "that that" rather than "that
which").
I suspect, in most cases the choice is arbitrary. The words math and
maths both derive from mathematics which is a plural word but I (for
one) think of it as a singular concept, so abbreviating it as a singular
word seems natural to me. Do you (Marc) think of it in a plural sense,
as if it were an array of disciplines rather than a single one?
The word change I still chuckle the most about is the dropping of the
last I from "aluminium." I also don't know why, in Commonwealth English,
"hospital" is considered a definite noun.
Lane (happy to have something light-hearted to discuss)
Pat Kight
make me sad, but doesn't. Because what we're losing is not what we would
have lost even a decade ago, and because from where I sit, it looks a
lot like suicide.
--
Pat Kight
kig...@peak.org
Steve Pope
>There are other cute little questions like that which I wonder about
>(see, here in the US, we would have said "that that" rather than "that
>which").
An algorithm for "that vs. which" that I use is the following:
Formulate the sentence two ways, one using "that" and one using "which".
If the two forms result in sentences with different meanings, use
the one with the intended meaning. Otherwise, use the one with "that".
This may not be exact, but it ends up pretty close to American
English usage in most cases.
S.
Lane
news:931qs45equrvka1no...@4ax.com:
> Heh. I used to have a physics teacher from Cleveland, Ohio[1].
> "Aluminum" was one of the jarring words, as was "heighth".
>
I have the opposite story. A British friend of mine was describing setting
of a metal detector at the airport because of the aluminium in his
antiperspirant. The story was funny enough without what I thought was
surely a simply mispronunciation on his part. I had, honestly, never heard
it that way before.
As for "heighth," that seems more of an idiomatic foible. I don't believe I
have ever seen the word written suchly. It's sort of like "a whole nother"
which is quite idiomatic, but I would never write.
Lane
Dan Abel
Chickpea <chic...@gmx.co.uk> wrote:
> problem that small percentages are less understood by people with poor
> math(s)[1] skills- "1 in 10,000" is easier for a lot of people than
> "0.01%".
>
> [1] Why is it singular in the US and plural in the UK, I wonder?
It's much more complicated than that. "Math" is an abbreviation. For
what? "Mathematical"? Makes sense. Then there's "mathematics", which
is both plural and singular. So, perhaps "math" is the US abbreviation,
and "maths" is the UK abbreviation.
Miche
Lane <absolu...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Chickpea <chic...@gmx.co.uk> wrote in
> news:s99ps4546np2v5lqt...@4ax.com:
>
> > [1] Why is it (maths) singular in the US and plural in the UK, I
> > wonder?
> >
>
> I also don't know why, in Commonwealth English,
> "hospital" is considered a definite noun.
It is?
In my experience it's USA'ians who talk about "going to the hospital".
NZ's talk about "going to hospital".
Or is that what you mean by a definite noun? My formal grammar is
awfully rusty and I'm not sure I ever learned about "definite nouns" in
the first place.
I've always been a bit mystified by people talking about "the hospital",
especially in places with more than one.
Miche
--
Electricians do it in three phases
Kai Jones
published this:
>I've always been a bit mystified by people talking about "the hospital",
>especially in places with more than one.
She's at the school.
She's at the library.
She's at the store.
She's at the park.
Why doesn't hospital take "the"? What is different about it?
--
Kai Jones sni...@panix.com
Smartass by nurture as well as nature. Oh yeah, and I'm contrary, too.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." Winston Churchill
Todd Michel McComb
Hmm, I'm more likely to say this one without the article.
Kai Jones
McComb) published this:
In what context?
"Where is your mother?"
"She's at the school on the other side of town."
"Where is your daughter playing?"
"She's at the school."
The only time I'd use school without the article is if it were a
college during term.
"Where is your daughter?"
"She's at school." (Roughly meaning "she's on campus.")
Todd Michel McComb
Kai Jones <sni...@panix.com> wrote:
>"Where is your daughter?"
>"She's at school." (Roughly meaning "she's on campus.")
I speak like this of non-colleges as well. Your exchange is a good
example.
Lane
news:587qs4516doj6evq6...@4ax.com:
> On 27 Mar 2009 11:30:31 -0700, mcc...@medieval.org (Todd Michel
> McComb) published this:
>
>>In article <fg6qs41ub46n62dc5...@4ax.com>,
>>Kai Jones <sni...@panix.com> wrote:
>>>She's at the school.
>>
>>Hmm, I'm more likely to say this one without the article.
>
> In what context?
>
> "Where is your mother?"
> "She's at the school on the other side of town."
>
> "Where is your daughter playing?"
> "She's at the school."
>
> The only time I'd use school without the article is if it were a
> college during term.
>
> "Where is your daughter?"
> "She's at school." (Roughly meaning "she's on campus.")
I agree with Todd on this one.
You go to school. You are at school. Like being at home. Or at work.
And this may be the answer to the question about "hospital." It's less a
thing or place than a state. Like being at work, or being at home. Being
at school or in hospital (except, you are "in hospital", not "at
hospital", so so much for that theory).
Lane
Guy W. Thomas
> On Sat, 28 Mar 2009 06:44:33 +1300, Miche <mich...@gee-mail.com>
> published this:
>
>> I've always been a bit mystified by people talking about "the hospital",
>> especially in places with more than one.
>
> She's at the school.
> She's at the library.
> She's at the store.
> She's at the park.
>
> Why doesn't hospital take "the"? What is different about it?
Hmmm good question, I'm not sure I hear she's at the school as much as I
hear she's at school though.
--
Guy W. Thomas
San Leandro, CA
http://www.xango.org http://stonebender.livejournal.com/
"If you can't believe what you read in comic books, what can you believe?"
-- Bullwinkle J. Moose
Kai Jones
<xang...@gmail.com> published this:
>Kai Jones wrote:
>> On Sat, 28 Mar 2009 06:44:33 +1300, Miche <mich...@gee-mail.com>
>> published this:
>>
>>> I've always been a bit mystified by people talking about "the hospital",
>>> especially in places with more than one.
>>
>> She's at the school.
>> She's at the library.
>> She's at the store.
>> She's at the park.
>>
>> Why doesn't hospital take "the"? What is different about it?
>
>Hmmm good question, I'm not sure I hear she's at the school as much as I
>hear she's at school though.
I think "she's at school" is more often used when the person is a
student or teacher, or otherwise a regular member of the school
community, while "she's at the school" might be used about someone who
isn't, such as a parent or a person giving a speech or doing volunteer
work.
Guy W. Thomas
> On Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:38:36 -0700, "Guy W. Thomas"
> <xang...@gmail.com> published this:
>
>> Kai Jones wrote:
>>> On Sat, 28 Mar 2009 06:44:33 +1300, Miche <mich...@gee-mail.com>
>>> published this:
>>>
>>>> I've always been a bit mystified by people talking about "the hospital",
>>>> especially in places with more than one.
>>> She's at the school.
>>> She's at the library.
>>> She's at the store.
>>> She's at the park.
>>>
>>> Why doesn't hospital take "the"? What is different about it?
>> Hmmm good question, I'm not sure I hear she's at the school as much as I
>> hear she's at school though.
>
> I think "she's at school" is more often used when the person is a
> student or teacher, or otherwise a regular member of the school
> community, while "she's at the school" might be used about someone who
> isn't, such as a parent or a person giving a speech or doing volunteer
> work.
>
"the" except when talking about a specific school. Like, she's at the
school up the road, but I may be an alien.
Dan Abel
> On Sat, 28 Mar 2009 06:44:33 +1300, Miche <mich...@gee-mail.com>
> published this:
>
> >I've always been a bit mystified by people talking about "the hospital",
> >especially in places with more than one.
>
> She's at the school.
> She's at the library.
> She's at the store.
> She's at the park.
>
> Why doesn't hospital take "the"? What is different about it?
Good question, but I've heard people leave off the "the" for school and
library.
School is pretty common, library less so. "Library" without the "the"
means an activity, not a location. My wife volunteers at the school
library. Each class is at library once a week.
Serene Vannoy
> In article <fg6qs41ub46n62dc5...@4ax.com>,
> Kai Jones <sni...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 28 Mar 2009 06:44:33 +1300, Miche <mich...@gee-mail.com>
>> published this:
>>
>>> I've always been a bit mystified by people talking about "the hospital",
>>> especially in places with more than one.
>> She's at the school.
>> She's at the library.
>> She's at the store.
>> She's at the park.
>>
>> Why doesn't hospital take "the"? What is different about it?
>
> Good question, but I've heard people leave off the "the" for school and
> library.
I've never heard the construction "She's at library" before.
>
> School is pretty common, library less so. "Library" without the "the"
> means an activity, not a location. My wife volunteers at the school
> library. Each class is at library once a week.
I'd say "at the library" or "doing library day" or something like that
in the latter case.
To me, "She's at school" implies she either goes to school there or
works there, and she's doing that thing. "She's at the school" implies
she went to the building, but is not necessarily in class or anything."
"I went to school" and "I went to the school" have similar implications
in my mind.
Serene
--
42 Magazine, celebrating life with meaning. Inaugural issue March '09!
http://42magazine.com
"But here's a handy hint: if your fabulous theory for ending war and
all other human conflict will not survive an online argument with
humourless feminists who are not afraid to throw rape around as an
example, your theory needs work." -- Aqua, alt.polyamory
Pat Kight
Miche
> On Sat, 28 Mar 2009 06:44:33 +1300, Miche <mich...@gee-mail.com>
> published this:
>
> >I've always been a bit mystified by people talking about "the hospital",
> >especially in places with more than one.
>
> She's at the school.
> She's at the library.
> She's at the store.
> She's at the park.
>
> Why doesn't hospital take "the"? What is different about it?
Fucked if I know.
Steve Pope
>I have the opposite story. A British friend of mine was describing setting
>of a metal detector at the airport because of the aluminium in his
>antiperspirant. The story was funny enough without what I thought was
>surely a simply mispronunciation on his part. I had, honestly, never heard
>it that way before.
This is perhaps because of the great Atlantic firewall, with which
publishers, broadcasters, and the like re-cast everything coming
over into American-style English.
Steve
David Weinshenker
I presume that the reason for this is that USA folks
are assumed to be so ignorant of the variations of
English usage beyond the borders of this nation that
said publishers (etc.) expect that their typical
readers would simply think British-style spellings
were mere "errors"...
-dave w
Steve Pope
>Steve Pope wrote:
>> This is perhaps because of the great Atlantic firewall, with which
>> publishers, broadcasters, and the like re-cast everything coming
>> over into American-style English.
>I presume that the reason for this is that USA folks
>are assumed to be so ignorant of the variations of
>English usage beyond the borders of this nation that
>said publishers (etc.) expect that their typical
>readers would simply think British-style spellings
>were mere "errors"...
Perhaps but if so then this is self-fulfilling.
I've made a point of re-reading some works of fiction (e.g.
Waugh, Greene, etc.) in their British versions so as to
help un-pollute myself of the Americanized re-editing.
Steve
Phoenix
> IHNTA, but I do love alt.poly word-geeks.
And I love that it started as a thread about safe sex and condoms
<g> Who says word-geekery isn't hot?
--
Deborah
Aqua
But then you're 'in bed'. And if you hang out with medical types, they
might be 'at hospital' when that's where they're working - 'in hospital'
would imply they were a patient instead. What's actually strange is
that both the patient and the medicos are 'in surgery' when that's where
they are.
I have 'uni' in that collection too: "I'm not at uni on Wednesdays" or
sometimes 'on campus'.
Aqua
mc...@pitt.edu
> Risks should be stated as absolute, not relative, values. So: "reduced
> from 2% to 1%" is both less impressive and more meaningful than:
> "reduced by 50%".
>
Often when you read statistics, they are trying to push a point rather
than illuminate.
When I replied to that guy, I tried to find the stats on risk
reduction and seatbelts.
I found a lot of numbers, but as far as fatalities, those numbers were
senseless crap. Since I'm a working statistician, I'm pretty sure
that wasn't due to my lack of comprehension.
(It took a long time to figure out what is really happening -
seatbelts redue your chance a dying (MAYBE) just a little bit. Not
easily measured compared with the fact that more cautious drivers tend
to wear seatbelts more. They can't really give any honest fatality
numbers.
I imagine there are lives saved, or course, just not enough to be able
get a count of them.
There *IS* something seatbelts do though.
Seatbelts dramatically, measurably reduce the chance of injury,
particularly head injury. Head injuries, with the attendent rehab,
cost your insurance company much, MUCH more than death does. Hence
all the "Seatbelts save lives!" stuff with shit-for-numbers to support
it
And, much as I dislike those particular lying thieves, I have to agree
with the insurance companies on this one. I don't want to spend my
days brain damaged - dying is less scary )
Michael
Steve Pope
>In alt.polyamory, (mc...@pitt.edu) wrote in
>>I found a lot of numbers, but as far as fatalities, those numbers were
>>senseless crap. Since I'm a working statistician, I'm pretty sure
>>that wasn't due to my lack of comprehension.
>>(It took a long time to figure out what is really happening -
>>seatbelts redue your chance a dying (MAYBE) just a little bit. Not
>>easily measured compared with the fact that more cautious drivers tend
>>to wear seatbelts more. They can't really give any honest fatality
>>numbers.
>Unfortunately, there would be ethical considerations to running a
>properly controlled test. :)
An economist of my acquaintance insists that injury rates would
be lower if air-bags were replaced by nail-guns.
Steve
Lane
news:gqjp7l$a5f$1...@aioe.org:
They may not be errors, but they are silly. What is up with all those
extra Us (as in colour). I mean really?
Lane
Lane
news:7u9ss4p7lrqqfabkh...@4ax.com:
> In alt.polyamory, (Lane) wrote in
> <Xns9BDB85AF1B4E3ab...@85.214.105.209>::
> I guess it's a personal thing: I suppose by analogy with "width" and
> "depth", "heighth" sounds almost sensible. :)
Yep. That would be my theory as well.
Lane
Lane
news:gql9i0$mg2$1...@blue.rahul.net:
That would be funny if it weren't for the nightmares I'm liable to have
now.
Lane
Pat Kight
> On Mar 27, 6:11 am, Chickpea <chick...@gmx.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> Risks should be stated as absolute, not relative, values. So: "reduced
>> from 2% to 1%" is both less impressive and more meaningful than:
>> "reduced by 50%".
>>
>
> Often when you read statistics, they are trying to push a point rather
> than illuminate.
>
> When I replied to that guy, I tried to find the stats on risk
> reduction and seatbelts.
>
> I found a lot of numbers, but as far as fatalities, those numbers were
> senseless crap. Since I'm a working statistician, I'm pretty sure
> that wasn't due to my lack of comprehension.
>
> (It took a long time to figure out what is really happening -
> seatbelts redue your chance a dying (MAYBE) just a little bit. Not
> easily measured compared with the fact that more cautious drivers tend
> to wear seatbelts more. They can't really give any honest fatality
> numbers.
>
>
> I imagine there are lives saved, or course, just not enough to be able
> get a count of them.
IANA statistician, but there's also the basic difficulty of measuring
things that don't happen. I suppose it's fairly clear-cut if someone not
wearing a seat belt crashes their car, is thrown from the vehicle and
dies. But if I crash my car and don't die, is it because I wore a seat
belt? Because I was traveling under a certain speed? Because of any one
of a dozen other variables? Who's to say what "saved my life?"
> There *IS* something seatbelts do though.
>
> Seatbelts dramatically, measurably reduce the chance of injury,
> particularly head injury. Head injuries, with the attendent rehab,
> cost your insurance company much, MUCH more than death does. Hence
> all the "Seatbelts save lives!" stuff with shit-for-numbers to support
> it
> And, much as I dislike those particular lying thieves, I have to agree
> with the insurance companies on this one. I don't want to spend my
> days brain damaged - dying is less scary )
Indeed (which I initially typed as "indead"). I've been wearing seat
belts for so long that I feel decidedly unsecured if I don't buckle up.
--
Pat Kight
kig...@peak.org
Rob Wynne
That would give me incentive to research it and find out, for sure.
--
Rob Wynne / The Autographed Cat / d...@america.net
http://www.autographedcat.com/ / http://autographedcat.livejournal.com/
Gafilk 2010: Jan 8-10, 2010 - Atlanta, GA - http://www.gafilk.org/
Aphelion - Original SF&F since 1997 - http://www.aphelion-webzine.com/
Russ Allbery
> IANA statistician, but there's also the basic difficulty of measuring
> things that don't happen. I suppose it's fairly clear-cut if someone not
> wearing a seat belt crashes their car, is thrown from the vehicle and
> dies. But if I crash my car and don't die, is it because I wore a seat
> belt? Because I was traveling under a certain speed? Because of any one
> of a dozen other variables? Who's to say what "saved my life?"
It's a standard problem in medical statistics that you can overcome with a
properly-designed study that measures relative mortality rates while
changing only a single factor, but unfortunately (as sometimes happens in
medicine as well) it would be practically impossible and probably
unethical to run such a study on seat belts. (You *can* run a
double-blind study of airbags if you get past the ethical problems.)
You can do what's called a case-control study, wherein you pick two sets
of people who you think/hope are demographically similar, one set of which
wears seat belts and one set of which doesn't, and then study their
mortality rates over time. This is clearly inferior to the traditional
double-blind study: you lose a lot of randomness of sample and reintroduce
a bunch of bias possibilities that could ruin your study. But sometimes
it's the best you can do.
Seat belt studies are used in Wikipedia as an example of the problems with
case-control studies.
A slightly better approach might be to change your case discriminator from
"wears a seat belt" to "lives in a state/country with mandatory seat belt
laws" and "doesn't wear a seat belt" to "lives in a state/country without
mandatory seat belt laws," because that's less of a choice and more of a
random factor (although still not completely random). It also has the
advantage of directly measuring the thing that you can change by policy
(mandatory seat belt laws) rather than your hoped effect (people wearing
seat belts). That sort of study is likely to be more reliable, although
still nowhere near as good as the (impossible) double-blind controlled
trial.
--
Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Miche
Chickpea <chic...@gmx.co.uk> wrote:
> In alt.polyamory, (Lane) wrote in
> <Xns9BDB9803146AEab...@85.214.105.209>::
> >You go to school. You are at school. Like being at home. Or at work.
> >
> >And this may be the answer to the question about "hospital." It's less a
> >thing or place than a state. Like being at work, or being at home. Being
> >at school or in hospital (except, you are "in hospital", not "at
> >hospital", so so much for that theory).
> >
>
> "How's your Dad?"
>
> "He's in hospital".
>
> Yes- that's how it works here.
>
> Any input from the upside-down people? I'd sort-of expect them to
> follow the British approach, but you never know.
We do it the same way as you wrong-side-up folks.
> And is math(s) singular or plural down under?
Plural.
Teal
Or even better, find a country that has *changed* the seatbelt laws from
"optional" to "mandatory" and see what differences there are in the
accident/injury/death rates before and after the change. There are some
studies done in that fashion (don't recall the references right now),
and IMO the results are a little more bulletproof than some of the other
examples offered (although still capable of being screwed up - no
methodology is completely un-stuff-up-able of course).
Teal, doing this sort of stuff for my PhD
Aqua
But they were there first.
Aqua
Aqua
> Russ Allbery wrote:
>> A slightly better approach might be to change your case discriminator
>> from
>> "wears a seat belt" to "lives in a state/country with mandatory seat belt
>> laws" and "doesn't wear a seat belt" to "lives in a state/country without
>> mandatory seat belt laws," because that's less of a choice and more of a
>> random factor (although still not completely random). It also has the
>> advantage of directly measuring the thing that you can change by policy
>> (mandatory seat belt laws) rather than your hoped effect (people wearing
>> seat belts). That sort of study is likely to be more reliable, although
>> still nowhere near as good as the (impossible) double-blind controlled
>> trial.
>
> Or even better, find a country that has *changed* the seatbelt laws from
> "optional" to "mandatory" and see what differences there are in the
> accident/injury/death rates before and after the change. There are some
> studies done in that fashion (don't recall the references right now),
> and IMO the results are a little more bulletproof than some of the other
> examples offered (although still capable of being screwed up - no
> methodology is completely un-stuff-up-able of course).
>
> Teal, doing this sort of stuff for my PhD
I love the range of subject matter covered by the expertise of alt.poly
denizens.
Aqua
Aqua
> Any input from the upside-down people? I'd sort-of expect them to
> follow the British approach, but you never know.
We use "in hospital". As far as I can tell, Oz/NZ English is mostly
British English, with just a few incursions from US vocab. There's even
a few things I thought were Britishism which are apparently from down
under originally. (Can't think of examples right now of course.)
The legal system and government organisation are also much closer to
British than US. And then there's the cricket.
Although I wonder if Australia is the only country in the world where
you have to know the differences between four different kinds of
football to keep up with fairly normal social conversation. (And none
of them is American - if that becomes popular here, that'll be five!)
> And is math(s) singular or plural down under?
It's maths around here. Caused great amusement to the math PhD student
I houseshared with when I lived in the US.
Aqua
866013149e
>The word change I still chuckle the most about is the dropping of the
>last I from "aluminium." I also don't know why, in Commonwealth English,
>"hospital" is considered a definite noun.
Yet we talk about being "in school" or "in college"; why is "in
hospital" less correct?
umar
866013149e
>As for "heighth," that seems more of an idiomatic foible. I don't believe I
>have ever seen the word written suchly. It's sort of like "a whole nother"
>which is quite idiomatic, but I would never write.
In Old English, it was (IIRC) "hieh[th]", where [th] was the Iclelandic
letter "eth". It is common for [th] to change to "t" in Germanic
languages -- hence, "height".
"-th" (originally, IIRC, "-ithu") turns "foul" into "filth", "hale"
into "health", "merry" into "mirth", and possibly -- I've never found
anyone else who agrees with me on this -- "queen" into "cunt"
(Chaucer spelled it "queynte"). "Queen" in Old English meant "woman",
and is the same word as Russian "zhena" ("wife"), Greek "gyne-",
Persian "zan" ("woman"), and Celtic "jen-"/"gwen-".
umar
866013149e
>"Where is your daughter?"
>"She's at school." (Roughly meaning "she's on campus.")
"Is she still in school? No; she's in college".
Block Islanders often say "on island" rather than "on the island"
(the opposite of "on island", by the way, is "in America").
umar
866013149e
>Lane <absolu...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Firewall?
Waterwall, more like :-)
umar
Steve Pope
>spo...@speedymail.org (Steve Pope) writes:
>>Lane <absolu...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Firewall?
>Waterwall, more like :-)
I almost wrote downcast instead of re-cast but that might be
taking things too far.
Steve
Dan Abel
Pat Kight <kig...@peak.org> wrote:
> IANA statistician, but there's also the basic difficulty of measuring
> things that don't happen. I suppose it's fairly clear-cut if someone not
> wearing a seat belt crashes their car, is thrown from the vehicle and
> dies. But if I crash my car and don't die, is it because I wore a seat
> belt? Because I was traveling under a certain speed? Because of any one
> of a dozen other variables? Who's to say what "saved my life?"
I don't know much about this, but it doesn't seem that complicated to
me, if you are willing to make some assumptions. Maybe that's proof
that I don't know!
There are plenty of people who have died. Doesn't seem too hard to
figure out how they died. Once you've done that, build some crash
dummies that measure forces and type of impact. Now, conduct some
crashes, some with seat belts, some without. Change some variables.
There are lots of videos on YouTube. I didn't see one that caught my
eye. There are some pretty graphic videos about infants and infant
seats (using dummies).
--
Dan Abel
Petaluma, California USA
da...@sonic.net
Aqua
What about the danish "kvinde"?
Aqua
Miche
Aqua <aq...@internode.on.net> wrote:
> Chickpea wrote:
>
> > Any input from the upside-down people? I'd sort-of expect them to
> > follow the British approach, but you never know.
>
> We use "in hospital". As far as I can tell, Oz/NZ English is mostly
> British English, with just a few incursions from US vocab. There's even
> a few things I thought were Britishism which are apparently from down
> under originally. (Can't think of examples right now of course.)
>
> The legal system and government organisation are also much closer to
> British than US. And then there's the cricket.
>
> Although I wonder if Australia is the only country in the world where
> you have to know the differences between four different kinds of
> football to keep up with fairly normal social conversation. (And none
> of them is American - if that becomes popular here, that'll be five!)
Might be. It's only three in New Zealand, and one of those is played
with a round ball.
Steve Pope
>I don't know much about this, but it doesn't seem that complicated to
>me, if you are willing to make some assumptions. Maybe that's proof
>that I don't know!
>There are plenty of people who have died. Doesn't seem too hard to
>figure out how they died. Once you've done that, build some crash
>dummies that measure forces and type of impact. Now, conduct some
>crashes, some with seat belts, some without. Change some variables.
>There are lots of videos on YouTube. I didn't see one that caught my
>eye. There are some pretty graphic videos about infants and infant
>seats (using dummies).
It gets even more graphic than that, when you consider that,
sadly in my opinion, those doing these tests did not limit
themselves to inanimate dummies...
Steve
Pat Kight
> In alt.polyamory, (Lane) wrote in
>> They may not be errors, but they are silly. What is up with all those
>> extra Us (as in colour). I mean really?
>
> *Extra* u's? You took 'em out, we didn't put 'em in.
>
> From the French, couleur, we somehow got colour.
*grin* By taking out a "u" and subbing an o for an e, it would appear.
You guys then decided
> that the u was superfluous.
See above.
> Still looks wrong to me; too much like
> colon, as though it should be pronounced "coe-law".
Whereas many Americans would orobably look at "colour" and thing it
ought to be pronounced "cull-OWr."
English and American really are two different languages, or at least two
linguistic branches of what once was a common stem.
--
Pat Kight
kig...@peak.org
Steve Pope
>Miche <mich...@gee-mail.com> wrote:
>> Kai Jones <sni...@panix.com> wrote:
>>> Why doesn't hospital take "the"? What is different about it?
>> Fucked if I know.
>That would give me incentive to research it and find out, for sure.
I don't know if this comes down to a general rule; I think it's
just the expected usage that differs between the two dialects.
The Wikipedia article is I think pretty good:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_differences
This aspect is discussed under "definite article", but there is
no theory presents, just examples.
In the general area of English vs. American usage, I was in an ...
interesting discussion a month or so back about nouns of multitude,
and when they might be plural.
Steve
Steve Pope
> Chickpea <chic...@gmx.co.uk> wrote:
>> And is math(s) singular or plural down under?
>
>Plural.
Does it pair with a plural verb?
i.e. "Maths tell us that all finite fields of a given order
are isomorphic."
To me that does not sound correct, even if I picture myself
in a British context.
Steve
Teal
> Pat Kight <kig...@peak.org> wrote:
>
>> IANA statistician, but there's also the basic difficulty of measuring
>> things that don't happen. I suppose it's fairly clear-cut if someone not
>> wearing a seat belt crashes their car, is thrown from the vehicle and
>> dies. But if I crash my car and don't die, is it because I wore a seat
>> belt? Because I was traveling under a certain speed? Because of any one
>> of a dozen other variables? Who's to say what "saved my life?"
>
> I don't know much about this, but it doesn't seem that complicated to
> me, if you are willing to make some assumptions. Maybe that's proof
> that I don't know!
Yeah. It's those assumptions that are the kicker in this sort of thing.
> There are plenty of people who have died. Doesn't seem too hard to
> figure out how they died.
You might be surprised. In many cases it's straightforward, sure. But
there are a lot of "edge cases" too. For example, if someone has some
sort of medical event that triggers an accident (a heart attack, say)
then the person "died in a car crash" (on one level, at least); but the
accident didn't cause their death, the heart attack did. However if you
look at the accident from the perspective of counting crashes and dead
bodies, it'd look like the death was due to the crash rather than the
other way round. It can be rather misleading at times.
Also, how do you define "died as a result of a crash"? Do they have to
be dead when the car has come to a halt to count? What if they die as a
result of the injuries a day later? A week later? A month later? What if
their injuries cause a chronic problem that they die of three years later?
These are all real questions that road safety researchers have to
consider when examining crash statistics and the like. Given the large
proportion of the population that travels in motor vehicles at some time
or another, and the large amount of time that many folk spend in
vehicles on the road, almost *any* "edge case", no matter how bizarre or
extreme it may sound on the face of it, probably comes up semi-regularly
and needs to be accounted for.
> Once you've done that, build some crash
> dummies that measure forces and type of impact. Now, conduct some
> crashes, some with seat belts, some without. Change some variables.
Sounds easy when you say it like that, doesn't it? Kinda like "well if
everyone stopped fighting we could have world peace". Yes, but. :-)
A lot of stuff that "seems obvious" or "is commonsense" actually doesn't
work the way that you'd expect when you look at it closely. That's why
we do research, and why so-called "obvious" stuff is investigated as
well as less-obvious stuff. Because the world is full of surprises, and
if we just keep guessing or assume we know what's going on without
really investigating it closely, we'll get a lot of it wrong.
Teal (sure, everyone knows that water is wet; but researching *why* it's
wet and under what circumstances that might or might not be totally true
can be surprisingly valuable)
Dan Abel
spo...@speedymail.org (Steve Pope) wrote:
Darned if I can figure that one out:
Maths tell
Math tells
I tell
You tell
They tell
She tells
I don't see the pattern here.
Ruth Lawrence
"Chickpea" <chic...@gmx.co.uk> wrote
>
> "How's your Dad?"
>
> "He's in hospital".
>
> Yes- that's how it works here.
>
> Any input from the upside-down people? I'd sort-of expect them to
> follow the British approach, but you never know.
Oz datapoint: we do.
> And is math(s) singular or plural down under?
It's maths.
Ruth
Miche
No. It would be "Maths tells us..."
Steve Pope
> spo...@speedymail.org (Steve Pope) wrote:
[maths]
>> Does it pair with a plural verb?
>> i.e. "Maths tell us that all finite fields of a given order
>> are isomorphic."
>> To me that does not sound correct, even if I picture myself
>> in a British context.
>Darned if I can figure that one out:
>Maths tell
>Math tells
>I tell
>You tell
>They tell
>She tells
>I don't see the pattern here.
Well, I think we can agree that "maths" is third person, and
we are looking for a third person present conjugation
of "to tell", and the only question is whether it's the singular
conjugation (tells) or the plural conjugation (tell).
There are some google hits on "maths tell" but they seem all
to be phrases like "can maths tell..." which is, I think,
a transitive phrase where tell does not need to match the
plurality of maths.
Steve
Steve Pope
> spo...@speedymail.org (Steve Pope) wrote:
[maths]
>> Does it pair with a plural verb?
>> i.e. "Maths tell us that all finite fields of a given order
>> are isomorphic."
>> To me that does not sound correct, even if I picture myself
>> in a British context.
>No. It would be "Maths tells us..."
Thanks....
S.
David Weinshenker
Note that "mathematics" (in full) appears to be generally used as a singular
term (despite its pluralistic appearance), so I don't have a problem with
either abbreviation.
-dave w
--
i thought that i heard you laughing
i thought that i heard you sing
i think i thought i saw you try
-r.e.m., "losing my religion"
Aqua
Yep, that's one of the four.
Aqua
Steve Pope
> Note that "mathematics" (in full) appears to be generally
> used as a singular term (despite its pluralistic appearance),
> so I don't have a problem with either abbreviation.
Certainly. I wasn't sure about whether it was plural
outside the U.S. though. It seems it is not plural, ever.
Steve
Miche
Aqua <aq...@internode.on.net> wrote:
I was highly amused when flicking through a newspaper in Melbourne a few
years back, to find a page headed "Religion".
Which had the Aussie Rules scores.
Aqua
> I was highly amused when flicking through a newspaper in Melbourne a few
> years back, to find a page headed "Religion".
>
> Which had the Aussie Rules scores.
That sounds like Melbourne, all right.
Aqua
Lane
news.jamver.id.au:
>> They may not be errors, but they are silly. What is up with all those
>> extra Us (as in colour). I mean really?
>
> But they were there first.
>
>
I know. I was being silly.
Lane
Lane
news:_8Cdncg8BLsiJVPU...@speakeasy.net:
Firewalls are not made of fire, they block it.
Lane
Lane
@blue.rahul.net:
> Miche <mich...@gee-mail.com> wrote:
>
>> Chickpea <chic...@gmx.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>> And is math(s) singular or plural down under?
>>
>>Plural.
>
> Does it pair with a plural verb?
>
> i.e. "Maths tell us that all finite fields of a given order
> are isomorphic."
You could substitute "mathematics" and have the same problem.
Some words, like mathematics, while pural, are really used as if you
were saying "the set of mathematics". Some, like pants (one of my
favorite odd examples) never are. You would say "the pants are wet" or
the pair of pants is wet" but never "the pants is wet."
Lane
geothermal
> SAFE SEX GUIDE - OR - 5 REASONS TO USE CONDOMS:
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