Is it time to rethink recycling? - <AUTHOR> http://ensia.com/features/is-it-time-to-rethink-recycling/ <comment><USER3> Recycling sucks. You have to dismantle products and packaging, cut cardboard into little squares no more than 20cm X 20cm, sort glass bottles by colour, remove the labels, or else it won't be (expensively) collected. You can also go drop it off yourself, but you have to pay for the pleasure, and own or rent a vehicle.

Even after all of that, a majority of what is supposed to be recycled ends up being "recycled" into electricity, by an incinerator. That's the case in this neck of the woods, at any rate.

Recycling treats a symptom, not a disease. We allow the production of wasteful packaging, we accept planned obsolescence, and we dispose of things that could be yet used for a long time to come.

A better solution would be to impose the cost of disposal on manufacturers - this already happens to a degree with WEEE, but try actually getting a manufacturer to collect - it's made deliberately difficult as they'd rather you just fly-tip and save them the expense - even though you paid for that service as part of your purchase.

Another better solution would be to pass goods on whole for re-use rather than recycling wherever possible, which has gained some traction through things like freecycle and eBay, but is still a minority case. This behaviour could be encouraged by governments, but is instead actively discouraged, as it hurts sales of new goods, and therefore tax revenues.

As per usual, we'll only change when forced to - by which point it'll be too late. People will use 300 year old toasters in the future, and weep for our wastefulnes.

I do what I can, buy very little new (all of my furniture is pre 1960), dumpster dive, pass things I no longer want or need on, but it's still not enough.

<comment><USER4> Why not impose the full cost of disposal on people that throw things away? If the prices covered the real costs, and they were reasonably known and understandable, people buying stuff could make their own decisions about the best tradeoffs to make between all the various things you mention.

Recycling and reusing are great, but there are real costs to both. I've got a bunch of CDs that I don't really want anymore. I'm certainly not ever likely to use them, given Spotify and the like. But I feel bad enough about just throwing them away that I've just held on to them. I fantasize about giving them away to someone but realistically that would be such a pain in the ass that I almost certainly will never bother. [Now I'm motivated to throw them away!] Just the cost of someone driving to where I live and, maybe, take them from me – for free – has both non-zero environmental and economic costs!

Throwing things away is fine. Not accounting for _all_ the costs, to everyone, is the real problem.

<comment><USER5> > Why not impose the full cost of disposal on people that throw things away?

Because if the cost is great many people will just dump their trash illegally.

<comment><USER4> That's part of the cost too! In fact, that's probably one of the most important, and potentially largest, components of the cost to consider.

People already dump their trash illegally. Are you arguing that whatever laws they're breaking should be repealed?

<comment><USER5> No, I am in favor of anti-litter laws. I had interpretted your argument to imply imposing the cost at the time of disposal, but I realize this is not the only way the cost can be imposed. I see your additional comment, but I'm not sure a straight up tax is the best solution either. If the taxes are levied indirectly then there is very little incentive for any parties to change their behavior. Any effect of behavior on the actual tax rate would be slow and dilute. If you levy the tax at the point of sale it is better, because now consumers are incentivized by price to select eco-friendlier goods and manufacturers are incentivized by the same mechanism to produce them. This solution is still lacking however, because should the consumer ultimately decide to dispose of an item, they've already paid the environmental fee, so why go through the effort of disposing it properly? It seems to me a workable approach might be to impose a materials based "environmental tax" at the point of sale but credit it back when the item is brought to an appropriate recycling center, just like a milk bottle deposit.

<comment><USER4> I think maybe we seem to be disagreeing because I see it as a feature that

> If the taxes are levied indirectly then there is very little incentive for > any parties to change their behavior.

I don't care about any particular behavior per se [in the context of this discussion!]. If the costs of cleaning up people throwing plastic away are being met by a tax, why would one care whether plastic continues to be used for new items and people continue to throw it away?

It's possible that the most efficient behavior – in terms of physics – is to make things out of certain materials and then throw them away after some point. It's not obvious that reuse or recycling are _always_ more efficient than simply 'wasting-and-remaking', given all of the other elements of our environments (like bacteria, fungi, ambient energy, etc.).

<comment><USER5> > If the costs of cleaning up people throwing plastic away are being met by a > tax, why would one care whether plastic continues to be used for new items > and people continue to throw it away?

Because it's possible that the costs are not entirely monetary. I agree that there is more nuance to this debate, though. In my opinion one-time use objects made of plastic are appropriate in some contexts (medical care, for instance) and less appropriate in others (plastic silverware).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a reason that "recycle" comes last in the "reduce, reuse, recycle" catchphrase. There's a frightening amount of food, for example, that could simply not be wasted at all.

<comment><USER7> There needs to be another word in that mantra: "repair".

<comment><USER8> repair falls into reuse in my mental model

<comment><USER7> I always felt that reuse was finding another distinct purpose for an item after its original purpose had been fulfilled.

For instance, cutting up old milk jugs as scoops or as root-watering funnels would be a re-use, whereas washing out the plastic jug to hold water instead of milk would be a repair.

Scuttling an old naval ship as an artificial reef would be a re-use. Permanently mooring it and opening it for museum tours would be re-use. Stripping it of war materiel and refitting for use as a passenger ship would be re-use. Replacing the obsolete artillery guns with modernized radars and air/missile defense systems and replacing all worn or corroded parts would be a repair.

As such, I would put "repair" before "reduce". If you spend 120% on resources at construction time to also build repair parts, that item might last 50 years under repair instead of being reduced to 90% of normal resources and then reused after only 20 years. I have to assume that when something is reused, that it is simultaneously being _replaced_ in its original purpose, which implies additional use of resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I honestly feel recycling is wasted effort. It's largely a way of buying off our existential terror with publicly visible pious busywork. Rubbish which actually makes it to landfill, as a problem, is not the big one or even in the big few. Rubbish that does not, which ends up as polluting litter or in the sea, is a larger problem but one recycling completely doesn't address.

So far as I'm concerned, what a landfill is, is a resource mine we don't yet have the technology or desire to exploit. A bit of futuristic technology, and we could be disassembling it for gold, iron, rare earths, hydrocarbons, etc. It's not gone, but it's put aside. And putting things aside can be fine if you come back for them.

</comment><comment><USER10> The part about plastics being useless to recycle actually makes a lot of sense, if you live in a place where trash is incinerated for electricity or heat, and you have oil-powered electricity. Making virgin plastic from the oil you saved by burning plastic trash in its stead is better/cheaper/more energy fficient than recycling the plastic trash.

Aluminium is always extremely cost-effective to recycle, because making aluminium from bauxite requires enormous amounts of electricity, but re- smelting aluminium containers is cheap.

I'm surprised that glass was not cost-effective to recycle according to the article. I thought that since it's generally easy to sort and re-smelt, it's be all good. But maybe the raw materials are so cheap that it outweighs the cost of recycling?

<comment><USER11> Yeah. The energy cost to just melt sand into glass isn't likely to be significantly different than remelting it for recycled products. And I'm willing to bet that there are plenty of natural silica sources at a higher purity than whatever you get out of the mixed glass recycling tub.

<comment><USER12> You seem to be guessing, when you could look this up very easily.

"Every metric ton (1,000 kg) of waste glass recycled into new items saves 315 kilograms (694 lb) of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere during the creation of new glass."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_recycling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_recycling)

<comment><USER11> How much is that as a percentage overhead, though? I'm guessing not much. It takes a lot of fuel to get something that hot. The point was why recycling glass is less economically favorable, not that the carbon advantage specifically was zero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Container deposit schemes are getting some discussion in the comments, so it seems an apt time to mention their history in Australia [1]. SA has had the scheme since '77, and the NT managed to introduce it - then reintroduce it - just in 2013. No other state presently has such a scheme.

The most disturbing part is what happened in NT. The proposed scheme - <USER2> had massive community support - was challenged by beverage manufacturers - Coca Cola, Schweppes and Lion - based on some very dubious claims about it being an expensive and ineffective way to recycle.

In other states it has been a political football: parties support the idea when campaigning, then promptly forget about it once in government. The paranoid part of my brain wonders about behind-the-scenes influence of donors on this pattern.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_deposit_legislation_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_deposit_legislation_in_Australia)

As a side point, in Asia I'm used to experiencing that a beverage bought in a platic bottle must be consumed on premises, so the bottle can be immediately put in a container for collection. That's a lot more satisfying than having to look for a bin because I got thirsty.

<comment><USER14> _beverage bought in a plastic bottle must be consumed on premises_

Interesting.

Beverage waste is huge. My locale recycles aggressively. Including a separate waste stream for compost (for better or worse).

Seeking to further reduce their waste stream, my local university assessed what's what. Something like 50% of the waste by weight is fluids. From sodas, lattes, etc.

Since attending that talk, I was trying to imagine a trashbin that would puncture beverage containers, letting the fluid drain out the bottom.

I like your (Asian on premises) solution better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I did a thorough economic analysis of littering and discovered that just dropping my crap on the street, at the beach or in the park was far less effort and time than carrying it to the nearest trash can.

A libertarian friend pointed out that if there was economic value to not littering then someone would already be paying to take my trash from my hand as I drop it.

So now I can litter with a clear conscience, as I've proved its better to do so.

</comment><comment><USER16> I do not disagree with the final conclusion or at least statement of this article, "The ultimate solution, … is better design of products and packaging further upstream to plan better for end of life and avoid the waste issue altogether."

<comment><USER17> Packaging is the problem. We should only use goods that can be recharged or refilled. Otherwise, the problem goes on and on.

</comment></comment><comment> cat-dev-null FWIW, Stanford both does recycling (usually 4 or 5 cans in Tresidder [0]) _and_ post-consumer separates trash into recyclable materials.

Judging from the typical Tragedy of the Commons recyclable contamination disaster at places like Costco, perhaps relying on consumers to put things in the right place is a fool's errand... robotic with human automation at refuse processing points probably is a more efficient way to centralize and drive down the net cost of recycling with scale.

0: [http://bgm.stanford.edu/pssi_flyers](http://bgm.stanford.edu/pssi_flyers)

</comment><comment><USER18> This piece recycles (sorry) the prophetic arguments from this classic 1996 article by John Tierney, which generated more reader response than the NY Times had then ever received: [http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/30/magazine/recycling-is- garb...](http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/30/magazine/recycling-is- garbage.html?pagewanted=all)

<comment><USER19> Business idea: A weekly newspaper or website that just republishes decade-long articles that were prophetic at the time and are still valid today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Recycling imposes a cost on me. I would like to know which parts of it are really worth doing and which are not.

<comment><USER21> I really only worry about recycling metal. Soda, canned goods, that sort of thing. I've been a bit skeptical of recycling paper since I started recycling, the trees used for paper are plentiful, and are grown as a crop. Plus, as far as I can understand all the same processes that it takes to make paper from tree pulp are also used when recycling paper, so that seems like a neutral process at best.

Plastic I try to reuse whenever possible.

<comment><USER22> One other benefit to recycling other than reducing new material usage is keeping stuff out of landfills. Landfills are anaerobic, which means most bacteria that breaks stuff down can't live in them, so things break down extremely slowly[1]. That slow breakdown means we need more space for landfills, which are toxic environments. So even if the recycling process is neutral, or even somewhat more costly than producing new material, keeping stuff out of landfills is another benefit that you might not have considered in your calculation.

In addition, cities with recycling programs can actually sell the material they gather back to companies, literally turning garbage into money and creating a revenue source for the city[2,3]. One important component in this is that the cities can get a higher price for higher quality recycling streams, where the output is all composed of one type of material. This is why, even though St Paul is now single-sort, I still separate my paper from the other recycling. It helps keep the paper higher quality by avoiding getting it dirty and wet, and costs me no real effort.

[1] [http://environment.about.com/od/recycling/a/biodegradable.ht...](http://environment.about.com/od/recycling/a/biodegradable.htm)

[2] [http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/03/recycling-in-the- us-a...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/03/recycling-in-the-us-an-off- again-on-again-love-affair/)

[3] [http://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2015/12/recycling- matching-...](http://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2015/12/recycling-matching- high-tech-materials-science-with-economics-that-work/)

<comment><USER10> I'm from a place where less than one percent of all household waste ends up in a landfill, so moving to the US and learning that most of my trash actually just goes on a dump somewhere was quite a shock to me. So why doesn't the US have more trash incinerators? It seems like such a no-brainer to me if you care about the environment?

<comment><USER22> Is burning trash better* than a landfill? Honestly asking, I don't know and this is something I'd love to be better educated about. Seems like you'd have lots of toxic fumes from burning, which may make it less of a no-brainer.

* I don't know how to define "better".

<comment><USER23> You can burn it cleanly, at sufficiently high temperatures. In the nordic countries, this heat is then going into city-wide central heating networks, meaning it substitutes natural gas or electricity for domestic heating.

<comment><USER24> > sufficiently high temperatures

Can you fuel such a fire with only the trash? Or do we need to supplement with other fossil fuels?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does anyone know about the relative trade-offs of composting and recycling? Many of the trendier environmentally-aware people I see around me seem to prefer composting, including compostable disposable cups, etc.

But it's not clear to me that composting would be better. What is the chemical composition of this compost of somewhat random materials? Is it safe? Is there waste? Is it usable as quality compost? Does it get used? How much demand is there? etc.

<comment><USER26> You also need to look at fuel costs of transportation. I compost all my food waste, and use the compost to grow vegetables. The council could also take my food waste, but the nearest municipal composter is apparently about 20 miles away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why is recycling almost a religious issue for some people? How has reduce, reuse, recycle been turned into just recycle? Some people even talk about reuse and incorrectly call it recycling. It seems as if many people have been brainwashed via propaganda about recycling. How did that happen?

<comment><USER14> Speaking for myself: Waste is immoral.

I blame my Presbyterian upbringing, W. Edwards Deming, my 4th grade teacher, and Peter Drucker for the washing of my brain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I would really like to see a longterm container pipeline. In true recycling, we wouldn't have any plastic containers, period. Everything should be served with, on or in durable, lasting materials, or easily recycled post compost paper.

We just don't have an accommodating container infrastructure to manage that, but what if I could take a cup from Starbucks and when I'm finished with it, put it in a recycling bin, it goes to a center for sanitization, then is redistributed to McDonald's? It would be like how a hotel works, but on the scale of a city.

</comment><comment><USER29> Interesting article. It focused on economics, but didn't really factor in the environmental effects of landfilling or recycling. I wonder how that impacts the economic assessment. Still, generating less waste in the first place is always a good goal. I like the thought of shifting responsibility of recycling to the manufacturer. It would encourage less use of wasteful materials that have little recycling value.

<comment><USER30> I am skeptical of pretty much all analyses of recycling and environmentalism that start from a primarily economic angle. The main problem being is that (obviously!) economic forces have driven us into the situation in the first place. The market supports overproduction, overpackaging and oversupply. All of those are economic activity that is marked in the "good" column by governments and societies.

Ultimately, lowering the production of a good used by people is a reduction in economic activity. Reduce, reuse, and recycle means less economic activity, but not less wealth. Until we realize this, we are destined to pursue policies that are bad for the environment and waste resources.

<comment><USER31> It really depends on how long or short sighted the economic rational wants to be. If you include the cost of pollution, including people's desire to live without pollution and the cost to reduce it to acceptable levels for people, then economics encompasses everything needed to correctly assess a scenario (but whether _we_ can correctly create and interpret the model is a much more dicey).

Edit:

> The main problem being is that (obviously!) economic forces have driven us > into the situation in the first place.

Yes, costs of pollution were (are?) not being correctly applied to those creating the pollution. That's not a failure of economics, it's a failure of people to correctly account all the economic factors that exists.

<comment><USER30> I don't disagree with you(1), but time and again people have shown that their economic calculations have a time horizon well short of a single human lifespan.

(1) by a technicality; since complete environmental collapse and subsequent starvation could be "calculated" as a total loss for humanity. But no one does calculations in these terms; they do it in money.

<comment><USER31> > time and again people have shown that their economic calculations have a > time horizon well short of a single human lifespan.

I don't disagree with that either, but I think that has historically been largely due to our erroneous belief that we had a negligible effect on the world at most, which is thinking that is thankfully coming to and end. I don't doubt there was a time in the past where we believed we couldn't affect the ocean, and prior to that a river or the soil in an area. That isn't a good track record to hoping we understand it earlier next time (if our species is lucky, in some number of decades or centuries the discussion will be about our effects on the solar system, not our planet), but it does point towards eventually getting the idea and taking steps to fix the problem behavior, even if it's not always adhered to or a perfect solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why not consume less?

<comment><USER33> Because of the debt spiral induced imperative of growth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> So this guy criticises recycling by creating an economic model that fails to take into consideration externalities of product consumption and discard. Not a very useful model and we would do well to not pay it much heed</comment>


Full-text search for your Twitter archive (Go + AngularJS + PostgreSQL) - <AUTHOR> http://paulsmith.github.com/tweetarchive/ <comment><USER2> Not that this isn't a cool project, but the Twitter archive download comes with search-by-regular-expression built in, no server or database required. Just open up the provided index.html.

<comment><USER3> You're must be one of _those_ people that likes to apply common sense and do what is easy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This... is just strange...

Oh well, it seems like a simple example of a Go server, can anyone speak to the code quality?

I'll say the angularJS isn't so great. No tests are implemented, and only rudimentary behavior is used.

Op you should use ng-change rather than a watch. those watch's are irritatingly undependable.

<comment><USER5> Wait is ng-change doing something und the hood other than using $watch?

<comment><USER4> Yah. $watch ties into angularJS's model checking scheme. If anything at all happens in angularJS. It runs through all of the defined watches check functions to see if they return a different result.

ng-change is an event triggering when the input element changes.

watches can fire multiple times (I think up to 10), if the result of one watch changes the model, then angular will run all the checks again.

watches have their place on custom directives, but they're otherwise a pain in the butt.

I _THINK_ this is how it works. I can tell you this with certainty: ng-change and $watch behave very differently.

<comment><USER6> Actually ng-change is very much same as a $watch.. Here is the relevant source from Angular..

      var ngChangeDirective = valueFn({
        require: 'ngModel',
        link: function(scope, element, attr, ctrl) {
          ctrl.$viewChangeListeners.push(function() {
            scope.$eval(attr.ngChange);
          });
        }
      });

<comment><USER4> While you're there, check out line 1033. Where it describes the behavior of $viewChangeListeners

It triggers on the $setViewValue event. Not on detecting a model change event, like $watch. They are not the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you have your own web hosting, Tweet Nest is a great way to archive your Twitter feed with your own database. It does regular updates (via a cron job) and has a great display format.</comment>


Tectonics of the M7 earthquake near Christchurch, New Zealand - <AUTHOR> http://all-geo.org/highlyallochthonous/2010/09/tectonics-of-the-m7-earthquake-near-christchurch-new-zealand/

<comment><USER2> My GeoNet RSS feed has been going nuts with all the aftershocks.</comment>


Developers Security Report - <AUTHOR> http://whitesourc.com/developers-security-report <comment><USER2> Reusing the same colors on different charts to refer to different groups of people was confusing.

<comment><USER3> 95% of teams agree, but you don't know which 95%

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's the meaning of this? 'Security' means nothing. I expect the lead developer to pick the right framework and to make sure our stack is always up to date. But I also expect the developer to avoid any SQL injection while performing SQL queries. Meanwhile, the devops team needs to set a safe environment.

<comment><USER5> One of the best and laconic HN replies I've seen in a while. I do security engineering as part of work and I retort with "anyone who justs says they do security or this is a security thing" is doomed to failure or someone worth avoiding.</comment></comment>


Will Crazy Market Moves Kill IPOs and Slash VC Investment? - <AUTHOR> http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/220305?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+entrepreneur%2Flatest+%28Entrepreneur+Update%29 <comment><USER2> Nope. Money will be made in all kinds of markets.</comment>


Why The Fremium Model Is A Lot Like Dating - <AUTHOR> http://www.flowtown.com/blog/why-the-fremium-model-is-a-lot-like-dating <comment><USER2> I nominate this page for today's Most Superfluous Use of Stock Photography award.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. Usually I scroll straight past stock photos so they don't appear on my screen for very long, but in this article they're spaced about three hundred pixels apart so you can't possibly avoid having at least two of 'em onscreen at once.

If I were reading this at work, everybody would think I was planning a wedding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Jesus, it seems like everything in a startup is like dating.

Finding a co-founder is like dating. Finding an investor is like dating. Being an entrepreneur is like dating.

Now, Freemium Models?

I'm kinda sick of the dating analogy personally.

<comment><USER5> Don't worry, soon the stylistic tides will turn and the analogy will be war/raising kids/making the perfect turkey sandwich instead of dating, and the articles will flow just as freely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Flawed analogy. I don't often pay for premium features then stop visiting a site!

<comment><USER7> Where do you see that?

> _"At the end of the day, a paid member of a freemium service is often more > involved than the free account holders. He or she might log in much more > often and begin to make full use of the new features..."_

Martell _is_ saying that if you _are_ paying for the premium, you _will_ visit the site.

<comment><USER8> Right. Which is why the analogy is flawed.

If you are paying for the premium, you will visit the site. If you have sex with someone you have been dating, you may choose to move on to date other people.

Get it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, Dan's linkbait shows up here on HN. Never thought I'd see the day. Well played, Martell, wherever you are.

</comment><comment><USER10> So what would be the startup equivalent of meeting someone on craigslist?</comment>


Linux World Map - <AUTHOR> http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linux-world-map.html <comment> chao- It would have been more interesting if the sizes had been based on some approximation of downloads/users/market share. The xkcd map, although a guess in some places, attempted to be grounded in something empirical.

<comment><USER2> > approximation of downloads/users/market share

do such metrics exist?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Neat, but not nearly as cool as the original XKCD map since that one actually had real size correspondence.

</comment><comment><USER4> Most of this is quite clever, but "The Great Communist Empire of Ubuntu" seems a bit over the top.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks like I spend most of my time navigating (or should that be 'grinding'?) in the northern hemisphere.

</comment><comment><USER6> Be honest -- how long did you stare at the map, trying to figure out where your country was, before you realized it was not based on real world geography?

I spent a good fifteen seconds, minimum. :)

<comment><USER7> I didn't, but then I'm familiar with the social network map the OP referenced so I kinda had a head start on knowing it wasn't real world based - <http://xkcd.com/802/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It could have been a funny map but every time someone tries to relate Linux with communism or other totalitarianism $deity kills a $pet.

Once and for all: Linux is about Freedom!

</comment><comment><USER9> Wonder where android would fit in this picture ?

<comment><USER4> It would be much too large for this picture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How did they leave off "Upstream vendor"?</comment>


NY Post calls Apple TV and Boxee "the future of television" - <AUTHOR> http://www.nypost.com/seven/02082009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_future_of_television_154045.htm

<comment><USER2> Wasn't the Post's vision of the future John McCain? Are their predictions here any better here? It's a low word count review of Apple TV and Boxee. All I came away with is that Boxee is not ready for prime time. I can't tell if Apple TV is any better that the poor reviews it got when it came out.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just thought it was an interesting idea to think about. My friend has Boxee on his MacBook Pro and uses it instead of his TV already. No need for DVR or TiVo when you can just watch whatever you want on demand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Boxee has nothing without Hulu/iPlayer/Last.FM</comment>


Ask HN: Did anyone read The Four Steps to the Epiphany? - <AUTHOR>

I am curious if someone had a chance to read this book: The Four Steps to the Epiphany http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0976470705 and the real question if for those that did: do u think that book is worth reading today? Do u think, the messages/lessons from this book have a real, useful application in today's tech/startup world?
I am interested in purchasing and reading the book... I'm just not sure if the content (as great as it was 5-6 years) still relevant/applicable today.
Thanks in advance to all. <comment><USER2> Yes- it's poorly written and edited, but has a decent amount of good content that is still relevant if you can slog through it. Honestly, though, it can be summarized in a couple of blog posts. Read Steve Blank's blog (<http://steveblank.com/>), and you'll get the good parts in a much more digestible form.

<comment><AUTHOR> I discovered his blog recently, and I love it.. Thanks !

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's definitely worth reading. Customer development is an excellent methodology.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it is a necessary one, my only hesitation was whether the book that was published in 2005 about the subject, hence probably written in 2004, was still worth reading today :)</comment></comment>


The Battlefield is dead - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-bloody-field-of-battle-made-way-for-precision-drones <comment><USER2> War is evolving in a weird way.

In the last few decades, the US population stopped tolerating human casualties, so now every mission must have overwhelming force to minimize the chance of losing a single soldier. This has caused the cost of missions to skyrocket. (Forget about the opportunity cost of using that money to feed people or provide health care.)

Drones have "fixed" this problem by removing humans from the offensive entirely. As a side effect, there is no longer a "front" to the war. (The point of this article.)

You would think that the front is now everywhere. But that's not the case.

You'd think that the front is now targeted at specific strategic targets. That's _kind of_ the case, but not really.

In actuality, the front is now determined by whatever can maximize media coverage to sway popular opinion. Planet Money did an interesting episode on this recently: [http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/08/25/546127444/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/08/25/546127444/episode-790-rough- translations-in-ukraine)

> When NPR reporter Gregory Warner arrives in a town on the Ukrainian front > lines, residents try to keep their distance. 'Don't come here,' they say. > 'When journalists come, the bombs fall."</comment>


Peter Naur has died - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Naur <comment><USER2> Peter Naur's paper 'Programming as theory building' is perhaps the most lucid, thought provoking and practically usefull single thing I have ever read on the sociological aspects of software engineering. Right there with the Brook's "Mythical man month" ( but the value density of the former is much higher, since it's a paper and the latter is a book).

<comment><USER3> Link to the paper: [http://www.dc.uba.ar/materias/plp/cursos/material/programmin...](http://www.dc.uba.ar/materias/plp/cursos/material/programmingAsTheoryBuilding)

<comment><USER4> Briefly looking at the paper, it seems what he calls the "theory of the program" is akin to what Fred Brooks called "conceptual integrity". Am I wrong?

<comment><USER5> I think that's right. The terms 'design' and 'model' are often used for this nowadays. Naur's point is that a program is a shared mental construct that lives in the minds of the people who build it. The source code is not the program. It's the canonical written representation, but a lossy one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's interesting how many programming languages were made by Danes.

Nauer of course contributed to algol60, but did you know PHP was written by Rasmus Lerdorrf, Anders Hejlsberg developed delphi, turbo pascal and C#, Bjarne Stroustrup developed C++, Ruby on Rails was developed by DHH. All Danes.

Given a nation of 5 million people I think this is quite unusual.

<comment><USER7> Ruby on Rails is not a unique programming language. Matz created Ruby.

<comment><USER8> > Ruby on Rails is not a unique programming language. Matz created Ruby.

What does "not a unique programming language" mean? Perhaps 'discrete' or 'distinct' in place of 'unique'? As not an RoR developer, I'm hardly in a position to say, but surely at a certain point a DSL deserves to be called a language in its own right. (Extreme case (that, I realise, is far past what anyone would call a DSL): Perl, as with many other languages, is written in C, but certainly counts as a separate programming language.)

EDIT, in response to two downvotes: surely it's a legitimate question? I genuinely don't know what it means to say that something isn't unique (except mathematically, that it means that there's more than one of it). Assuming that it means what it seems to mean, how _does_ one draw the line that I mentioned?

<comment><USER9> Rails is not a porgramming language, for various pedantic reasons. That doesn't make your idea bad. Rails is a defined pattern of expressing a program, conceptually similar to a language. You could call it a dialect.

<comment><USER10> Rail[1] is a programming language, but that is orthogonal to your point.

[1] - [http://esolangs.org/wiki/Rail](http://esolangs.org/wiki/Rail)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Its a bit weird being a small part of computer science. The big early movers and shakers were still around for most of our lives. The whole field is within living memory. Now they are starting to pass away. Engelbart, McArthy etc. Think how far physics got from Newton to the Manhattan project. Where will CS be in 100 years? We have so much work to do.

<comment><USER12> > _Think how far physics got from Newton to the Manhattan project. Where will > CS be in 100 years? We have so much work to do._

Might not be so. You're applying the same progress curve to both, but remember that Newton developed his theories at the start (or close) of the scientific era, without so many institutions, collaborations, communications, infrastructure, experimental apparatus, computer simulations, the necessary math etc.

Computing was developed in the middle (or close) of the 20th century, and had all that. It also saw much faster development cycles, so the speedup curve we saw with physics since Newton won't really apply to it (I mean not in the same timescale: it could still apply "compressed" in the last 5 decades).

I'd say we're already in the Manhattan project era of computing. And with Moore's law expiring and other limits reached in those areas, we wont be moving that faster in the future -- mostly like Physics did since 50s.

<comment><USER13> _I 'd say we're already in the Manhattan project era of computing._

There's no possible way.

We were born at the beginning of civilization. There were the ancients, then us. A hundred thousand years from now, what we write today has a chance of still being around. The language that people speak will be completely alien. But what we write -- our programs -- will still be runnable. There will be emulators for our architectures, and random work from random people in 2015 AD will happen to persist to 102,283 AD.

We're going to be the oldest ancients that they consider real. They'll be able to look at and interact with our work. And even modify it and remix it. And we'll be thought of as just barely more advanced than cavedwellers.

Now, with that sort of context, there seems no possible chance that we can know how far away we are from the Manhattan project era of computing. Very far, suffice to say.

To a certain extent, it's not possible to compare the progress in physics with computing. On one hand, we've unravelled nature to the point where there are no mysteries left except in high-energy physics. There's also no way to know how profoundly the remaining mysteries might impact the world.

Whereas the depth and the mysteries within computing are eternal. If there are still humans in 102,283 AD, there will still be computing, and they'll still be coming up with ever-more complex ways of computing. All of the institutional effort between now and then will push the field way, way beyond the limited horizons that we can currently imagine.

<comment><USER12> > _Now, with that sort of context, there seems no possible chance that we can > know how far, far away we are from the Manhattan project era of computing._

Just piling up years doesn't mean much. Yeah, civilization might go on for 100,000 years. Or 1,000,000 years. Or 20,000,0000. That doesn't mean it will progress the same as it did the first x years.

Just think of how we had homo sapiens for 200,000 years but progress was almost flat until around 4-5 thousands years ago. The mere availability of time doesn't ensure incremental progress at scale, or even monotonically increasing progress.

There are things such as low hanging fruit, diminishing returns, etc.

One can already see in physics that the most earth-shattering progress was made until around 1930-1950, and from then on it's mostly small pickings. When you start fresh, there are lots of low hanging fruits to get. At some point, you've reached several limits (including physical limits in measuring and experimental equipment without which you can't go further, and which you can't overcome because they're, well, physical limits).

And that's even without taking into account a regression (e.g. because of a huge famine, a world war, nuclear war, environmental catastrophe, a deadly new "plague" like think, etc.).

<comment><USER13> _One can already see in physics that the most earth-shattering progress was made until around 1930-1950, and from then on it 's mostly small pickings. When you start fresh, there are lots of low hanging fruits to get. At some point, you've reached several limits (including physical limits in measuring and experimental equipment without which you can't go further, and which you can't overcome because they're, well, physical limits)._

Certainly. And you've hit on the core reason why computing is so eternal: there aren't physical limits.

When a computer becomes ten times faster, we don't affect the world ten times more profoundly. So the physical limits that hold back clock speeds don't matter too much. But when we suddenly no longer need to own cars because we can hail one on demand, our lives become completely different.

The limitations are social, rather than physical. Our own minds, and our lack of ability to manage complexity, is the primary bottleneck standing between us affecting the world, right now. Tonight. Imagine a hypothetical superhuman programmer who can write hundreds of thousands of applications per day. Think of how that'd reshape the world with time.

It seems true to say the amount that'd affect the world is linear w.r.t. time. The longer that superhuman programmer churns out permutations of apps in as many fields as possible, the more the world will change.

But that's exactly what's happening: hundreds of thousands of applications are being written per day, by humanity as a whole. Project that process forward to 102,283 AD. Are you sure the rate of change will be a sigmoidal falloff like physics?

<comment><USER12> > _Certainly. And you 've hit on the core reason why computing is so eternal: > there aren't physical limits._

On the contrary, there are several. The speed of light. The plank constant. Heat issues. Interference issues. Issues with printing ever smaller CPU transistors. Plasma damage to low-k materials (whatever that means).

And all kinds of diminishing returns situations in Computer Science (e.g. adding more RAM stops having that much of a speed impact over some threshold, or you can make a supercluster of tens of thousands of nodes, but you're limited by communication speed between them, unless the job is totally parallelizable, etc).

> _When a computer becomes ten times faster, we don 't affect the world ten > times more profoundly. So the physical limits that hold back clock speeds > don't matter too much. _

Huh? What does that mean? If we can't make faster CPUs, then we're not getting much further. Increasing cooling etc only helps up to a point.

> _Imagine a hypothetical superhuman programmer who can write hundreds of > thousands of applications per day. Think of how that 'd reshape the world > with time._

We already have hundreds of thousands of applications. It's not exactly what we're lacking. We're talking about qualitative advances, not just churning out apps.

<comment><USER13> _If we can 't make faster CPUs, then we're not getting much further._

On the contrary. In our day to day lives, we can do far more today than we could a decade ago.

In 2006, Intel released Pentium 4 chips clocked at 3.6 GHz. In 2016 we use quadcore chips where each core is about as fast as that. Yet we're way more powerful today than a mere 4x multiplier, if you measure what we can _do_. Think of how limited our tools were just a decade ago.

Clock speed isn't a great measurement, but the point is that making CPUs faster doesn't make the field more powerful.

It seems like we're talking past each other. I was referring to effects that computers have on the world and our daily life, but it sounds like you're referring to total worldwide computation speed, and how it will change over time. If you're saying the rate will slow sigmoidally, similar to the progress in physics, I agree.

But the thesis is that the rate at which the world changes w.r.t the field of computing is unrelated to the total available computation power. Our minds are the bottleneck.

Compare this situation to the field of physics. The rate that the world changes w.r.t physics was related to how important the discoveries were.

The contrast is pretty stark, and it might have some interesting long-term consequences.

<comment><USER14> > _It seems like we 're talking past each other. I was referring to effects > that computers have on the world and our daily life, but it sounds like > you're referring to total worldwide computation speed, and how it will > change over time._

Interesting, because you seem to be arguing for each other's side. If you look at what we have then yes - for scientific purposes, total computational power has increased enormously and continues to do so. But if you ask what effects computers have on daily life of you and me, then not much has changed in the last two decades. Software bloat, piling up abstraction layers, turning everything into webapps - it all eats up the gains in hardware. Yes, the screens have better resolution and we now have magic shiny rectangles as another interface, but it seems like software only gets slower and less functional with time.

> _Yet we 're way more powerful today than a mere 4x multiplier, if you > measure what we can do._

Scientists? Maybe. SpaceX can run moar CFD for their rockets on a bunch of graphics cards than the entire world could a decade or two ago. Rest of us? Not much, it really feels our tools are getting _less_ powerful with time, and I don't feel like I can do _that_ much more (and if anything, the primary benefits come from faster access to information - Googling for stuff instead being stuck with just the spec and the source code speeds things up considerably).

<comment><USER13> It's pretty clear at this point that I've failed to communicate. I'll bow out now.

I have a magical device in my pocket that can summon a car on demand.

Two effective hackers can set up a complete product within a few weeks, and then host it without having to think too much about what we now call devops. And when their servers start to melt, they can spin up however many they need.

We no longer get lost. Remember what it was like to get lost? Like, "I have no idea where I am. Hey, you there. Do you know how to get over to X street?"

These things were not possible ten years ago. Maybe people here simply don't remember, or choose to forget. Or maybe I just suck at writing. But every one of these incredible advances were thanks to advances in the field of computing. Both theoretical and practical. For an instance of the former, see the recent neural net advancements; for the latter, rails, homebrew, the pervasiveness of VMs, and everything else that our forerunners could only dream of but we take for granted.

Have a good evening, and thanks for the enjoyable conversations. You and coldtea both do really cool work.

<comment><USER12> > _I have a magical device in my pocket that can summon a car on demand._

As a gadget lover, it seems magical to me too, especially since I was once lusting over things like a ZX Spectrum. But in the big picture, is it really life changing technology? You could do sort of the same thing already in 1970 with a stationary phone and a cab service (and in 1995 with a mobile phone). Not sure in the US, but where I live I used a cab service all the time ever since the eighties -- it took around 10 mins after the phone to get to you, so not totally unlike calling it with an iPhone.

Same for not getting lost. GPS is nice and all, but was getting lost much of an everyday problem in the first place (for regular people of course, not trekkers etc). Maybe for tourists, but I remember the first 3-4 times I visited the states, where I did two huge roadtrips with McNally road maps, and I didn't have much of an issue (compared to later times, when I used an iPhone + Navigon). I got lost a few times, but that was it, I could always ask at a gas station, or try to find where I was on the map and get on the exit towards the right direction.

I'd go as far as to say that even the 2 biggest changes resulting from the internet age, fast worldwide communications and e-commerce haven't really changed the world either.

Some industries died and some thrived -- as it happens --, and we got more gadgets, but nothing as life-changing as when typography or toilets or electricity or cars or even TV was developed (things that brought mass changes in how people lived, consumed, how states functioned, in urbanization and in societal norms, in mores, etc., heck even in nation-building --e.g. see Benedict Anderson on the role of typography on the emergence of nation states).

What I want to say (and this is a different discussion than the original about limits to computing power over time, etc.) is that technology also has some kind of marginal returns. Having a PC in our office/home was important and enabled lots of things. Having a PC in our pocket a few more things (almost all because of the addition of mobility). Having a PC in our watch? Even less (we already had PC+mobility solution).

> _Have a good evening, and thanks for the enjoyable conversations. You and > coldtea both do really cool work._

Thanks, but don't let our counter comments turn you off! They way I see it is we're painting different pictures of the same thing (based on our individual experiences and observations), and those reading it can decide or compose them into a fuller picture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Via Poul-Henning Kamp: [https://twitter.com/bsdphk/status/683750072841072640](https://twitter.com/bsdphk/status/683750072841072640)

I haven't seen any "official" announcement, so I figured Peter Naur's wikipedia page was the best link to use.

<comment><USER15> There's an article in Danish at [http://www.version2.dk/artikel/datalogi- pioneren-peter-naur-...](http://www.version2.dk/artikel/datalogi-pioneren- peter-naur-er-doed-538017)

DIKU (University of Copenhagen Department of Computer Science) linked to that one. Naur was the first professor at DIKU and one of the founders of the institute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I first became aware of computers as a thing with the launch of 8-bit home computers in the early 80s. As a result, I seem to have a hard time imagining the computing scene before then, as in the 80s it seemed so nascent - so the fact that computers were a big enough of a thing in 1959 for there to be a Danish Institute of Computing blows my mind. Everything before the 80s seems so abstract. Any recommended reading / viewing to try to rebate by historical perspective?

<comment><USER17> The Psychology of Computer Programming. Gerald M. Weinberg 1971

and:

The Soul of a New Machine Tracy Kidder 1981

ought to be required reading for anybody in tech.

<comment><USER18> I'll easily second this recommendation. 30 years ago I was struck by Tom West's quote from Kidder's book: "Not everything worth doing is worth doing well".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting that ALGOL 60 inspired other languages such as Pascal and C as well as Ada, etc.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALGOL_60](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALGOL_60)

<comment><USER20> Also Naur did have a good deal of the responsibility for getting support for recursion into Algol 60: [https://vanemden.wordpress.com/2014/06/18/how- recursion-got-...](https://vanemden.wordpress.com/2014/06/18/how-recursion- got-into-programming-a-comedy-of-errors-3/)

Just think how the programming language landscape might look today if recursion had never gotten into mainstream languages, or maybe only had begun to become the norm recently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I guess I should be grateful that our profession gets to live in the same time as the masters. RIP

</comment><comment><USER22> Literally spent last night reading up on the work he did on BNF. He sounded like a very capable and rather rarely, a modest man.

</comment><comment><USER23> link to a retyped version of the revised "Report on the algorithmic language: algol 60" [http://datamuseum.dk/site_dk/rc/algol/algol60retyped.pdf](http://datamuseum.dk/site_dk/rc/algol/algol60retyped.pdf)

a very famous paper

</comment><comment><USER24> Anyone that has taken a compiler class has written something in BNF. RIP.

</comment><comment><USER25> Can anyone recommend (a) good resource(s) for learning about BNF?

<comment><USER26> The Wikipedia page does a good enough job. It shouldn't take more than 1-3 pages, it's a fairly simple concept.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus%E2%80%93Naur_Form#Examp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus%E2%80%93Naur_Form#Example)

I stumbled into compilers by accidentally buying the _Dragon book_ as a teen. BNF part I got through fairly quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Never heard of him, but I think I need to know about him. I find this book he wrote to be very enticing:

> Computing: A Human Activity

Sounds like a forerunner to Agile programming.

<comment><USER28> Isn't he the N in BNF?

<comment><USER29> Yes.

<comment><USER30> Speaking of prominent Danish programmers... :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think he deserves a black bar? Anyone else think so? He has some serious contributions in that lifetime to the world of Comp Sci and general hackery. How do we vote to initiate a black bar?

<comment><USER32> Sometimes I think introducing the black bar was a mistake. Now every death has to be judged as to whether the person is "worthy" or not of a black bar. This caused a lot of tension in the threads about Ian Murdock's death, for example.

<comment><USER33> Agreed, but what angered me a bit about Murdock's death is how fast it fell off front despite iirc over 1300 upvotes.

<comment> shawn-butler The editorializing choices regarding Ian on HN made by staff were poor at best. Not surprised they locked discussion down.

But, this is a different topic. Any Turing award winner deserves recognition and reflection on their passing imho.

<comment><USER34> I'm not sure I'm following this comment. What editorializing did the HN staff do? I didn't see any.

If anything, I may have inadvertently got it caught up in some sort of flame filter because of a comment I wrote about asking for help if you feel suicidal, then (seemingly, but not actually) contradicting myself later by saying that medical help may not be the best solution.

Flame filters, AFAIK, kick in automatically. Mental health is a hot button issue, and flame fests and controversial discussions are really not good or appropriate for HN. I should know, I've been part of a few and have to remember when to take a step back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> :(

</comment><comment><USER36> Will HN have a black banner to remember him?</comment>


We analyzed 16,625 papers to figure out where AI is headed next - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612768/we-analyzed-16625-papers-to-figure-out-where-ai-is-headed-next/ <comment><USER2> TLDR: this analysis revealed that 14,873 of the 16,625 papers in the study contained the letter "r", allowing the study authors to conclude that many future papers will very likely also contain this same letter.</comment>


A creative presentation: Two Czech students looking for a summer job in SV - <AUTHOR> http://jobinsiliconvalley.com/ <comment><USER2> You might consider looking for companies that really interest you, and you can directly email their recruiters. As a student who has had my fair share of internship hunting, I find it more reliable to go hunting for what interests me rather than hoping something interesting happens to show up. Opportunities do just show up(linkedin recruiters sort of thing), but it's just a far lower chance that those turn out to be as interesting as companies that I scouted out on my own.

Some places to start: <http://news.ycombinator.com/jobs> Or these: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3783657>

And if you wait two days from now, it'll be May, and you'll find a fat list of companies who might want to hire you two as interns in the 'Who is Hiring, May 2012' posting.

</comment><comment><USER3> > [this was coded using HTML5]

Nope. It doesn't use any feature from HTML5, no new APIs or CSS3 that are usually bundled with the buzzword, no semantic tags, not even a doctype.

Besides, it's kind of obvious that you're looking at a website ;)

</comment><comment><USER4> I can help you get visas, and I work with lots of founders on that sort of thing.

Check out these folks as an option for getting your sponsor: <http://www.internationalexchangecenter.org/>

However, most startups won't be certified as a J-1 sponsor, so I can help there through working with USCIS, make sure the process works out.

Have you checked to make sure that J-1 won't require you to spend two years physically in the Czech Republic before applying for another visa? <http://j1visa.state.gov/participants/common-questions/> (check tax and immigration requirements)

I have an email in my profile if you want to talk more.

</comment><comment><USER5> As a student in a similar situation, but from Canada, I'd add the suggestion of looking for teams you would genuinely love to be apart of, and targeting them.

Why? Say you find five or six places that are tackling a problem that really excites you - and a team of individuals at each of these places, that as a student you can feel welcome to work your butt off while gaining a tonne in knowledge and wisdom.

Build something for each of these places - and personalize. Show that you give a shit about the problem they are solving.

<comment><USER6> As a recent graduate with a few internships under my belt, I have seen plenty students come from abroad for internships. Although this was an awesome idea, I think it might only target smaller companies that do their own recruiting. Even for the smaller companies, this might not be the "best" approach. I agree with doing something more custom based for them to show that you are passionate, although it would be a much more time consuming process. On the other hand, the bigger companies will want you to apply more directly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What a great way to advertise yourself, I'd be bought if I was a recruiter.

</comment><comment><USER8> Your XML, it's broken.

Also, what is "edit"? Didn't you mean to use "$EDITOR"?

tail with an uppercase "-F" is more useful with rotating logs.

I also saw some JavaScript in this HTML5-only page.

Hope that helps you with your endeavour.

<comment><USER9> thx

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Guys, just out of curiosity, what school are you studying? I'm Petr, I did my Bachelor degree at CTU FEE (CVUT FEL) and I'm doing my Master's in US.

<comment><USER11> David is from CVUT/Open Informatics - <http://oi.fel.cvut.cz/en/home>. I'm not sure about Tomas. I met him some time ago when they were working on a web app with David. These guys are really passionate about building things on the web, that's for sure :)

Would you mind getting in touch? My mail should be in my profile. It's always nice to meet people from HN in Prague :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Are you both wild and crazy by any chance?

</comment><comment><USER13> BTW, that's a good domain name (jobinsiliconvalley.com) & which itself is a start-up idea.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow! Good job! #jobinsiliconvalley TT?

</comment><comment><USER15> how is the J-1 working out?

<comment><USER16> There are more types of J-1 visas, version I know about is to get a job offer fist, signed by US employer from some restaurant or other seasonal work. Its summer work and travel program. This is the easiest way to come and work for summer legally if you are regular student.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, there are three types of J-1 visas. Internship, Trainee, Summer Work Travel. They're all pretty much tied to your student status.

I'm curious how the OP is finding the process, whether he's managed to secure one, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> #jobinsiliconvalley</comment>


Grand Canyon Museum Had Buckets of Uranium Sitting Around for 18 Years - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2019/02/19/696001017/grand-canyon-museum-reportedly-had-buckets-of-uranium-sitting-around-for-18-year <comment><USER3> Jeezus Cripes, way over reaction. I have Fiestaware plates that put out over 30uSv/h / 3mR/h / 9200cpm. Unrefined uranium ore puts out waaaay less that. As long as you're not sleeping with the junk under your bed or working with it next to your desk all day long you're fine. Even then, it's still less exposure than air crews that fly every day receive. No one was harmed by this.

<comment><USER4> It's entirely plausible that in practice nobody received a dangerous amount of radiation in this case, but...

> _The report indicated radiation levels at "13.9 mR/hr" where the buckets > were stored, and "800 mR/hr" on contact with the ore._

> [...] _The commission lists a maximum safe dosage for the public, beyond > natural radiation, is no more than 2 millirems per hour, or 100 per year._

[https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/1...](https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/18/grand- canyon-tourists-exposed-radiation-safety-manager-says/2876435002/)

<comment><USER5> Actually: [https://www.nde- ed.org/EducationResources/CommunityCollege/R...](https://www.nde- ed.org/EducationResources/CommunityCollege/RadiationSafety/safe_use/exposure.htm)

Regulatory Limits for Occupational Exposure

Many of the recommendations from the ICRP and other groups have been incorporated into the regulatory requirements of countries around the world. In the United States, annual radiation exposure limits are found in Title 10, part 20 of the Code of Federal Regulations, and in equivalent state regulations. For industrial radiographers who generally are not concerned with an intake of radioactive material, the Code sets the annual limit of exposure at the following:

1) the more limiting of:

A total effective dose equivalent of 5 rems (0.05 Sv)

or

The sum of the deep-dose equivalent to any individual organ or tissue other than the lens of the eye being equal to 50 rems (0.5 Sv).

2) The annual limits to the lens of the eye, to the skin, and to the extremities, which are:

A lens dose equivalent of 15 rems (0.15 Sv)

A shallow-dose equivalent of 50 rems (0.50 Sv) to the skin or to any extremity.

The shallow-dose equivalent is the external dose to the skin of the whole-body or extremities from an external source of ionizing radiation. This value is the dose equivalent at a tissue depth of 0.007 cm averaged over and area of 10 cm2.

The lens dose equivalent is the dose equivalent to the lens of the eye from an external source of ionizing radiation.

This value is the dose equivalent at a tissue depth of 0.3 cm.

The deep-dose equivalent is the whole-body dose from an external source of ionizing radiation. This value is the dose equivalent at a tissue depth of 1 cm.

The total effective dose equivalent is the dose equivalent to the whole-body.

Declared Pregnant Workers and Minors

Because of the increased health risks to the rapidly developing embryo and fetus, pregnant women can receive no more than 0.5 rem during the entire gestation period. This is 10% of the dose limit that normally applies to radiation workers. Persons under the age of 18 years are also limited to 0.5rem/year.

Non-radiation Workers and the Public

The dose limit to non-radiation workers and members of the public are two percent of the annual occupational dose limit. Therefore, a non-radiation worker can receive a whole body dose of no more that 0.1 rem/year from industrial ionizing radiation. This exposure would be in addition to the 0.3 rem/year from natural background radiation and the 0.05 rem/year from man-made sources such as medical x-rays.

<comment><USER6> > A total effective dose equivalent of 5 rems (0.05 Sv)

Most places moved to 20mSv now and use 50mSv for short term (100mSv is detectable chance of cancer developing). Average US worker exposure is ~2mSv/yr.[0]

[0] [https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety- and...](https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and- security/radiation-and-health/nuclear-radiation-and-health-effects.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pretty lacking on specifics. What was the actual radiation level measured? I would assume these were not buckets of pure uranium, but of uranium ore that is naturally all over the place in the West, and not terribly radioactive in its natural state.

<comment><USER8> From a screenshot at [1]

* 800 mR/hr if you touched the ore

* 280 mR/hr on the surface of the bucket (sealed)

* "0 above background" if you were 5 ft away from the bucket

* 2.5 mR/hr if you were touching the cabinet it was in

[1] - [https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/1...](https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/18/grand- canyon-tourists-exposed-radiation-safety-manager-says/2876435002/)

<comment><USER9> Basically unless you were having a very prolonged and loving relationship with the bucket, you were exposed to nothing of consequence. That doesn't excuse the morons who kept this stuff, and if a kid took a souvenir home or there had been a fire it could have been a lot worse. They may have also had unacceptable levels of radon. If I worked there I'd want to know more, but just as a visitor I'd shrug and get on with life.

I'm wondering why they used R instead of Sv though. It's a single source with a single quality factor, and were only concerned with the impact on humans.

<comment><USER10> Roentgens are historical units of exposure, it's simply what a lot of older meters read.

Roentgens can be assumed to safely equal RADs (although they don't, conversion is less than 1 for kV), the historical unit for "Radiation Absorbed Dose." For photons this would be equal to REM "Radiation Equivalent Man."

All old units; conversion to S.I., 100 rad = 1 Gray (J/Kg), 100 rem = 1 Sievert.

Essentially, who ever wrote the report was old and conservative.

The occupational risk is also essentially nil. This is much ado about nada.

<comment> your-nanny assuming inhalation if dust was not an issue..

<comment><USER11> 5gal buckets are designed to be handled by all manner of people who don't have enough time to give a crap and still get to their destination without leaking.

A properly sealed 5gal bucket will remain air tight even if it's bouncing around inside a tote in the bed of a truck on rural gravel roads for ~10mo (the tote flooded at some point but the bucket wound up dry).

Sitting in a cabinet the risk of dust making it out of the bucket would have been nonexistent so long as the lid was on it.

<comment> your-nanny I assumed it was open so people can look at the ore

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If they had just let them sit there for 4 and a half billion years they would be half gone :-).

If you hike around the Grand Canyon you are going to be exposed to Uranium. There are a lot of mines in and around the place (see here: [https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/grand-canyon- uranium](https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/grand-canyon-uranium)). It really isn't something to worry about unless you want to live their and/or eat food that has been contaminated.

</comment><comment><USER13> The f*ed up part is the impact on the fetus. The dosage level before harm or death for kids is 10x smaller than for adults. For babies in the womb it is way smaller than that.

These folks may have covered up something that resulted in the miscarriage, or birth defects of the child of any pregnant woman who stood near that closet for just a few minutes.

I think the folks who covered it up for 8 months, or the morons who (threw the rocks in a hole and brought the nuclear-contaminated buckets back) should lose all their power and position. That is an amazingly bad decision.

Lucky thing some kid walked around with a geiger counter. He recorded the levels, so the numbers that officials are hiding, he knows them. His counter can be tested and certified by a decent national lab, and the exact and calibrated level of the radiation determined. And those contaminated buckets tell something about the material that was in them.

Ore shmore. It is a radioactive substance that gives off dangerous levels of alpha, beta, and gamma radiation, as well as nuclear byproducts like radon and other gaseous nuclear isotopes.

Get more than the "top paragraph summary" that NPR did on the original AZ Central article by reading it in its entirety.

[https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/2...](https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/02/20/grand- canyon-museum-uranium-radiation-safety-manager-warning-elston-swede- stephenson/2923344002/)

<comment><USER14> > Lucky thing some kid walked around with a geiger counter. He recorded the > levels, so the numbers that officials are hiding, he knows them. His counter > can be tested

Neither the linked article nor your's said anything about what kind of "geiger counter" this kid had; whether it was something picked up off ebay, an old civil defence unit, or some kit or custom made thing from Electronic Goldmine (a native AZ electronics surplus and education kit supplier - [https://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/](https://www.goldmine-elec- products.com/))...

It's very well possible that the kid has no real numbers; that is completely unknown.

I'd be willing to bet you could walk into an old mining bar in Flagstaff and have more exposure to natural radiation used in the building materials than you'd experience from these buckets of old ore. Natural radiation sources like these are all over the place in Arizona.

The only real danger I could see and understand, though, is whether these buckets were covered or open; could someone or a kid have "dug through them" with their hands, or been in closer proximity to the material inside - <USER2> the dust or whatnot could be left on their hands to be ingested or inhaled in some manner.

That would be a much different situation than merely being near it for a small amount of time.

<comment><USER6> > where the dust or whatnot could be left on their hands to be ingested or > inhaled in some manner.

This _by far_ would be my number one concern. Proximity doesn't seem to be much to worry about (238-Uranium has an alpha decay and doesn't travel far in air). But inhaling or ingesting radioactive material completely changes the danger level.

> Natural radiation sources like these are all over the place in Arizona.

Or... Grand Central Station. But... you have to consider context, which a lot of reporters don't. Consider this quote.

"It's worth noting that if Grand Central Station were a nuclear power plant, it would be shut down for exceeding the maximum allowable annual dose of radiation for employees."[0]

Yikes! We can trace down the dosage level to 120mrem/yr[1] (1.2mSv), which we can indeed see is on the order of average dosages for radiation workers [2] or 1/20th of the allowable dosage! BUT we can look at [2] more and see that 100mSv is "Lowest annual level at which increase in cancer risk is evident (UNSCEAR)" (threshold model).

So when I see articles like this I'm always a tad hesitant to even read them. They frequently focus on the first part of the last paragraph and give no indication to what these things mean. Or even worse, are misleading like that gizmodo article (I would in fact call this dangerous reporting). Radiation quotas are purposefully (and I agree with this) put to be far below what one might also call "safe" (I'd _upper bound_ "safe" as <100mSv/yr but think most would agree 20mSv is "safe"). Yeah, we should pay attention and not expose ourselves to radiation unnecessarily, but let's also be realistic about the danger (especially when we're in such dire need if we're going to solve our climate problem).

[0] [https://io9.gizmodo.com/grand-central-station-is- radioactive...](https://io9.gizmodo.com/grand-central-station-is- radioactive-1689028425)

[1] [https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/inte...](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interact/facts.html)

[2] [https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety- and...](https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and- security/radiation-and-health/nuclear-radiation-and-health-effects.aspx)

[3] [https://jciv.iidj.net/map/](https://jciv.iidj.net/map/) (just for fun, now that we have some understanding of what these numbers mean).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Years ago, I was working in a biochem lab, and helping a state senator's staff draft legislation. The state capitol building was classic granite and marble. So one day, I brought in a Geiger counter. Everyone freaked ;)

<comment><USER16> did you test your kitchen counter?

<comment><USER15> Well, at that point, my kitchen counter was Formica over plywood, so not much of a radiation source. But I did test my wife's Mexican pottery, and some pretty enamelwork and art glass. Freaked her too ;)

But yes, much granite does contain substantial K-40 (as do we) and some (probably less than 10%) is a substantial source of radon. Also thoron, but it's too short-lived to accumulate. You can buy test kits designed to measure radon production rate from surfaces. The radon gets captured on activated charcoal. You return the kit(s) to the provider, and they send you results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Discussed yesterday:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19195087](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19195087)

Not nearly as interesting as the radioactive boyscout story:

[https://harpers.org/archive/1998/11/the-radioactive-boy- scou...](https://harpers.org/archive/1998/11/the-radioactive-boy-scout/)

David Hahn sadly passed away at 39:

[https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/this-fall-the- radioa...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/this-fall-the-radioactive- boy-scout-died-at-age-39/)

<comment><USER18> The boysout and the smoke detector nuclear experiment is one of those really amazing and interesting stories.

Geeze, I wanted to look up him, thinking he'd have gotten an engineering scholarship or something. Looks like he served in the military, but afterwards he got addicted to drugs and died in his late 30s. ... .. Geeze that's fucking tragic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Which takes me back to a shower thought I had a long time ago: How do you know you don't need a geiger counter unless you have one?

<comment><USER20> I had the same thought, and wanted to check some strange ore from the desert. Eventually I soldered my own Geiger counter, thanks to the fabulous Safecast project. This is it: [https://blog.safecast.org/bgeigie- nano/](https://blog.safecast.org/bgeigie-nano/)

It cost ~$650, but that's because it uses a very high-end geiger tube, and can detect alpha and beta in addition to gamma radiation. Comparable commercial devices do apparently cost a couple thousand.

Low and behold, the desert rocks weren't radioactive. However, taking the counter on an airplane was quite shocking, and gave the cabin crew real concern.

<comment><USER21> > ...taking the counter on an airplane was quite shocking, and gave the cabin > crew real concern.

Concern about radiation exposure or concern about the mysterious-looking device you whipped out mid flight? ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> They've issued a correction clarifying that it is Uranium ore, not straight Uranium.

This paragraph didn't make sense to me: "Photos provided to the newspaper by Stephenson show technicians arriving in June 2018 to take away the buckets of uranium ore. The technicians reportedly dumped the buckets at an old uranium mine 2 miles away, then for some reason brought the buckets back to the building."

I'm guessing they mean "dumped" _the contents of_ "the buckets"

</comment><comment><USER23> [https://n.pr/2XfmoZh](https://n.pr/2XfmoZh) NPR correction

</comment><comment><USER24> My mother still has old uranium glassware in her home. Not really sure if it's dangerous or not but it's pretty cool to see in person.

<comment><USER25> Radiologically, Uranium glass is virtually harmless. However I believe Uranium glass often contains a lot of lead as well, similar to the lead crystal glassware a lot of people own. Lead crystal glass is mostly harmless but not totally harmless, if you leave anything alcoholic or acidic in it long enough, it will leach a significant amount of lead. Used briefly on occasion it's not really a big deal.

<comment><USER26> It's important to down the drink fast to reduce the risk of poisoning?

<comment><USER25> It's not quite that serious. It's fine to serve yourself with a lead crystal but you shouldn't be storing wine in a lead crystal decanter or something like that.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_glass#Safety](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_glass#Safety)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Uranium ore is mostly alpha particle radiation. Clothing and aluminum foil are generally sufficient to block alpha particle radiation. Uranium metal can be up 28% beta particle, which can be blocked by sandbags or a thick brick wall. Depleted uranium contains almost no beta particle radiation. Uranium ore lacks the purity of uranium metal and usually more beta particles than depleted unranium but not much more though it's purity and composition are naturally variant.

Because of that uranium is radioactive and that radioactivity is harmful, but is not the primary harm, unless you are allergic to uranium at which point the radiation is the primary harm. Also, sensitivity to radiation varies wildly by person. Uranium is a high density metal that has some dissolution capability into water, like lead, which means heavy metal poisoning. Uranium is more dense than lead and thus more poisonous but less poisonous than osmium. Under certain conditions uranium can be (or become) very brittle and break apart into a fine dust that can be respirated.

<comment><USER28> > Uranium is more dense than lead and thus more poisonous

I think there's a little more to heavy metal toxicity than that...

<comment><USER27> How so?

<comment><USER29> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_toxicity](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_toxicity) It appears as there if is little correlation between metal density and toxicity

<comment><USER27> Weird, your source says the opposite.

> Toxic metals sometimes imitate the action of an essential element in the > body, interfering with the metabolic process resulting in illness. Many > metals, particularly heavy metals are toxic

Metal toxicity is the correlation between density and reactivity.

Iron and manganese are limited exceptions where iron is about 84% of hemoglobin, which is about 80% of red blood cells, but its toxic (though in larger doses) matches almost exactly the implications of other metal toxicity.

<comment><USER30> Gold is nearly twice as dense as Lead, but it's completely safe.

<comment><USER27> Gold is toxic if consumed regularly. The symptoms of gold poisoning are no different than other forms of metal poisoning. The primary difference between gold and uranium is that gold isn't very reactive and so it has virtually no contact toxicity. Also, some people are allergic to gold, which does manifest contact toxicity.

<comment><USER31> Metallic gold is completely safe to consume. You'd have to be taking deliberately prepared compounds to suffer from toxicity.

<comment><USER27> * [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold#Toxicity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold#Toxicity)

> Although the gold ion is toxic, the acceptance of metallic gold as a food > additive is due to its relative chemical inertness, and resistance to being > corroded or transformed into soluble salts (gold compounds) by any known > chemical process which would be encountered in the human body.

This is true of known natural metabolic processes, but not true with connection to certain drug interactions. Gold is not chemically inert and can be converted into an ion or gold salt, even within the body, when mixed with other reactive non-toxic chemicals. Gold metal is popularly consumed in trace amounts of certain alcoholic beverages and there are many medications that should not be taken in connection with alcohol for many different metabolic altering processes. I am not sure if it has been thoroughly tested, but a combination of gold and nangarin could also result in potentially toxic consequences, which is why certain fruits are forbidden with consumption of certain other chemicals/drugs.

This is exceedingly rare though, since platinum group metals are so expensive, but the same conditions are observed with other platinum group metals. Silver is more toxic than gold because it is more reactive, but the behaviors are similar. A major symptom of advanced toxicity from platinum group metals is a changing of skin color towards the metallic color of the metal toxin.

<comment><USER31> For the purposes of human consumption, metallic gold is inert. I've probably eaten on the order of a gram in the last decade. It ends up in the toilet.

<comment><USER27> * [https://www.nuclear-power.net/gold-affinity-electronegativit...](https://www.nuclear-power.net/gold-affinity-electronegativity-ionization/)

Gold has a far lower ionization energy than you are giving it credit for, which means it is capable of becoming toxic with relatively minor interactions. The safe for consumption statement implies interactions natural to human physiology are not likely to make gold toxic, but that doesn't account for other things humans consume that do trigger reactions not normal to human physiology.

Like gold we generally believe fruit juice is safe for consumption. Fruit juice is even classified as safe for consumption, like gold, by the FDA. This was proven to be not completely true when the price of grapefruit production fell in the 1980s. Certain chemical interactions with fruit juice will make you sick and in extreme cases will kill you. This phenomenon was only discovered because of numerous associated deaths.

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapefruit%E2%80%93drug_intera...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapefruit%E2%80%93drug_interactions)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I remember visiting the Toronto science centre in the 1970s and just pickingup a block of uranium for comparison with a block of aluminium and perhaps other ones. They wanted to teach kids about density.

Glad they didn't use plutonium, which is toxic!

<comment><USER33> Uranium is toxic too, but I bet that was depleted uranium, which isn't all that radioactive and the bigger danger is its regular toxicity:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium)

<comment><USER26> Can any of the down voters add a comment? Is this inaccurate?

<comment><USER34> I didn't downvote, but I was surprised to read in that link that "DU used in US munitions has 60% of the radioactivity of natural uranium". I knew already that the US fired a lot of it at Iraqis not long ago and it's still killing them. That wiki page links to this 2013 story:

"Official Iraqi government statistics show that, prior to the outbreak of the First Gulf War in 1991, the rate of cancer cases in Iraq was 40 out of 100,000 people. By 1995, it had increased to 800 out of 100,000 people, and, by 2005, it had doubled to at least 1,600 out of 100,000 people. ..."My colleagues and I have all noticed an increase in Fallujah of congenital malformations, sterility, and infertility," he said. ... the Fallujah health crisis represented "the highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied". ... Doctors in Fallujah are continuing to witness the aforementioned steep rise in severe congenital birth defects, including children being born with two heads, children born with only one eye, multiple tumours, disfiguring facial and body deformities, and complex nervous system problems. Today in Fallujah,...many families are too scared to have children..."

[https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/03/201331517...](https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/03/2013315171951838638.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> We were nowhere near the Grand Canyon.

</comment><comment><USER10> As correctly pointed out by other readers, this is a non-issue and complete overreaction. All feeding into misconceptions and irrational fear of radiation.

The "safety professional" was out of his depth and clearly undereducated about the risks of radiation and uranium ore in particular.

Hence, the true risk of a "dirty bomb" \-- is psychological, i.e. it would be a weapon of mass disruption (not destruction), triaging a "worried well" would be expensive and time consuming.

<comment><USER36> On a purely radiation focused scale, sure. But this is a big deal, as it's an indicator of the lack of effective management and controls surrounding it.

Where did it come from?

Why was it stored where it was stored?

Why did employees just dump the material?

<comment><USER10> They're rocks that someone undoubtedly collected from the surrounding area. Radioactive rocks, emitting low levels of mostly self-shielded radiation. Not great, but not a disaster deserving of national news.

<comment><USER14> I got the impression that they might be some old dirt ore from the 1950s - back then, there were a ton of articles in magazines like Popular Science and Popular Mechanics (check 'em out on Google Books and the like) about the "new gold rush - for uranium ore".

Lots of people from all over drove out to the southwest with bucket and shovels, and tried to find this stuff in a (probably misguided) attempt to "strike it rich".

I'm sure more than a few just left their buckets of dirt sitting around Flagstaff and GCNP area - and they were found and moved around - and...

...here we are.

May or may not be true in this case - but I'm sure it has happened (and I am certain more buckets wait to be found).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Depending on the radiation level the public may have benefited via radiation hormesis. With only the given data it's hard to know if this was a net health menace or boon.

<comment><USER38> The radiation hormesis theory[1] isn't widely accepted and shouldn't be used as a policy mechanism until there is much more known about its legitimacy and limitations.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis)

<comment><USER39> Also, if one abandons the idea that dose response is linear, there is the possibility that the slope is even larger in the low dose regime than LNT would predict. The conservative approach would then be to adopt stricter limits, not looser ones.

<comment><USER10> Airline workers are exposed to more radiation than "radiation workers."

No regulations, and no alarmist theories of risk.

\-- Not saying it shouldn't be regulated, just that the regulations are inordinately strict and out of line with the evidence.

<comment><USER39> It's weird you think you're making an argument there.

The problem is that radiation effects at low doses are very difficulty to detect. They could be very bad per unit of radiation and we could not now rule that out.

<comment><USER10> You're assuming that an unknown risk is _worth_ spending money on to regulate. Don't know if there are boogey men, better protect against them. Costs be damned.

<comment><USER39> Your mindset is that the risk has to proven, as in a court of law, before it can be regulated.

This is Lawyer Science, not actual science.

<comment><USER10> Science is not the regulation of the unknown. So, I dont understand your position at all.

And not court of law, by evidence and observation, i.e. science.

<comment><USER10> LNT is lawyer science, low dose radiation risk (cancer induction) is stochastic. There is already a high prevalence of cancer in society. To protect against possible litigation we eliminate sources as a possible induction points.

However, iff you developed a radiation induced cancer there's very little way to determine if your (mulitple) DNA errors were induced by cosmic rays or that time you walked past a bucket of naturally occurring radiation or due to those flights you took from Colorado to Brazil.

The dose makes the poison, we protect (and waste inordinate amounts of time and money) against low levels -- because we're ignorant to the precise pathways of cancer induction.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Movies Synchronize the Brains of an Audience - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/08/cinema-science-mind-meld/

<comment><USER2> Fascinating! I watch World War Documentaries a lot, and I noticed that Adolf Hitler was 1 of the 1st people to latch on to this theory and cause worldwide destruction of property and loss of human life.

The Nazi Party understood the enormous power of film / cinema and appealed to the instincts and emotions of the german people by carefully crafting slogans and short film clips that would be played in movie theaters and at all their public gatherings. They even took care of their self-created "Jewish Problem" by creating fake movies that appeared to show the German people that the Jews were being take to a "better place" that had picket fence homes, fancy train stations and public buildings, plenty of food and clothing and an all round "Paradise".

They did this because German neighbors were, at first, very opposed to their Jewish neighbors being driven out of the country and almost caught on to the evil intentions of Hitler and his Nazi thugs.

<comment><USER3> A valid comment indeed, but I can't help thinking that was one of the fastest Godwin's Law comments ever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4>
        "Soon they'll do test screenings with people in MRIs."

They already do that with trailers. They talked about it in The Greatest Movie Ever Sold: [http://www.blisstree.com/2011/04/26/mental-health-well- being...](http://www.blisstree.com/2011/04/26/mental-health-well-being/pom- the-greatest-movie-ever-sold-this-is-your-brain-on-ads/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I bet this is true of most public performances. Ever been to a big sports match? The crowd reacts as one. Concerts too. It's pretty spooky, the bigger the event the more the crowd seems to be a hivemind.</comment>