Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

The wealthy also used lead pipes to deliver water to their homes. Kinda helps explain why there was so much violent crazy in the upper classes ;p

I recall reading an article that hypothesized that the spike in crime during the 60/70/80s was primarily due to lead concentrations that demographic had received earlier in life (40s/50s/etc) and the real reason crime has decreased since then is because of the banning of leaded gasoline/paints/etc, which reduced lead in the environment, which in turn has reduced the level of violence/derpiness caused by prolonged lead exposure.

please forgive the crappy MS paint, I think it contains lead.

And as a followup:

Still love this series, but man, the lead episode was the most boring one so far. Damn near fell asleep during it.

Cybsled_sl said:

The wealthy also used lead pipes to deliver water to their homes. Kinda helps explain why there was so much violent crazy in the upper classes ;p

I recall reading an article that hypothesized that the spike in crime during the 60/70/80s was primarily due to lead concentrations that demographic had received earlier in life (40s/50s/etc) and the real reason crime has decreased since then is because of the banning of leaded gasoline/paints/etc, which reduced lead in the environment, which in turn has reduced the level of violence/derpiness caused by prolonged lead exposure.

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Remember reading somewhere there was a turning point around the roe vs wade time. Less unwanted babies = less criminals was the apparent connection. But I cannot vouch for the credibility or research behind the claims

Freakonomics. It said that places that had legal abortion would consistently have drop in crime around 15 years later. Never did any research on if it was true or not, but also haven't heard it refuted either.

Ambiturner_sl said:

Freakonomics. It said that places that had legal abortion would consistently have drop in crime around 15 years later. Never did any research on if it was true or not, but also haven't heard it refuted either.

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Legalized abortion and crime effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This theory has been widely debunked. Notably by Steven Pinker in his "Better Angels of Our Nature" book on page 119 where he points out that the number of children born to women in vulnerable categories (poor, single, etc) actually greatly increased after the 1973 abortion decision so the figures do not stack up

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I'm not familiar with Pinker's debunking, or the others for that matter. But it seems like it isn't generally accepted. I would imagine that crime is too complicated of a social issue for it to boil down to any one single thing, whether lead or abortions.

I really liked Freakanomics. Then 6 months later I realized basically everything I read in it is probably made up

Everything I read everywhere now I think is just made up unless it's in a peer reviewed journal. There are just too many good reasons to overstate everything and pitch ideas that are loosely based on data as if they're well supported because it sells books and it sells you.

My saddest moment for media as conveying science was watching a researcher at my university go through the planning process for a Ted talk. Suddenly the lab feedback of "I'm not sure you can really say that based on this data" that occurs all the time, when people give practice talks or discuss manuscripts they're preparing for journal submissions, it's all gone. It's no longer about conveying truth, but about entertaining.

Ted talks were forever ruined. And kinda good riddance too. I saw one where a woman, a god damn researcher, was talking about "grit" as distinguishing those who emerge from poverty to lead good lives vs those who go to jail or stay in poverty. Sorry, you can't just make up your own word to make your research unique. We already have a word for that. It's called resilience, and we already know much of what makes someone resilient, and it's not stuff pulled from a Coen brothers movie.

Sorry for weird super tangential rant. But I already typed it so fuck you

"NDT is about to Crack an egg of knowledge on your ass" is NDTs favorite tweet.

Edit: it took me a few to get the GoT reference.

Dabamf_sl said:

Everything I read everywhere now I think is just made up unless it's in a peer reviewed journal.

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A shocking percentage of stuff in "peer reviewed" journals is no better than sinus friction.

Cybsled_sl said:

The wealthy also used lead pipes to deliver water to their homes. Kinda helps explain why there was so much violent crazy in the upper classes ;p

I recall reading an article that hypothesized that the spike in crime during the 60/70/80s was primarily due to lead concentrations that demographic had received earlier in life (40s/50s/etc) and the real reason crime has decreased since then is because of the banning of leaded gasoline/paints/etc, which reduced lead in the environment, which in turn has reduced the level of violence/derpiness caused by prolonged lead exposure.

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There is some really powerful correlative evidence linking the two. In regional locations which tracked PPM of lead in the atmosphere, even in different locations it came out to have a correlative effect with crime rates..As far as I know the regional studies were published (But I've only read about it second hand in various articles). It explains a lot of things; like why crime spiked in the cities more than rural communities, for example. We've always assumed cities have just been more dangerous, but the reality might just be that there was just a much high concentration of automobile lead pollution within cities.

Here is anarticlethat references a few studies. Supposedly quite a few more are being done. Kind of unsettling to think society itself can be so rattled by a single element; but I guess you need something radical to explain the fucking 70's and 80's.

Dabamf_sl said:

And kinda good riddance too. I saw one where a woman, a god damn researcher, was talking about "grit" as distinguishing those who emerge from poverty to lead good lives vs those who go to jail or stay in poverty. Sorry, you can't just make up your own word to make your research unique. We already have a word for that. It's called resilience, and we already know much of what makes someone resilient, and it's not stuff pulled from a Coen brothers movie.

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Erm, you think "grit" is a made-up word?...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grit_(personality_trait)

And assuming you're talking about Angela Lee Duckworth, she uses the word grit as defined in the wiki. Resilience is frequently a characteristic of grit, but is not the whole of it. Resilience merely means bouncing back from setbacks mostly. Grit is long-term commitment to goals, and does not imply or require any setbacks at all.

I was assuming he just meant it isn't something that can be quantified.

Lithose_sl said:

There is some really powerful correlative evidence linking the two. In regional locations which tracked PPM of lead in the atmosphere, even in different locations it came out to have a correlative effect with crime rates..As far as I know the regional studies were published (But I've only read about it second hand in various articles). It explains a lot of things; like why crime spiked in the cities more than rural communities, for example. We've always assumed cities have just been more dangerous, but the reality might just be that there was just a much high concentration of automobile lead pollution within cities.

Here is anarticlethat references a few studies. Supposedly quite a few more are being done. Kind of unsettling to think society itself can be so rattled by a single element; but I guess you need something radical to explain the fucking 70's and 80's.

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When you get right down to it we are just animals governed by animal law. To escape from that trap without biting off our own legs -- that is the great hope and promise of SCIENCE BITCHES.

Good episode of Cosmos tonight. Geology stuff.

This episode was awesome. That was a very clear and concise history of Earth.

I liked the episode up until the end. Got just a tad over the top.

great episode tonight. enjoyed the geology proving again with facts that the earth is more then 6k years old and we didn't have to be there to witness it.
but then again am also a big fan of "dont let the truth get in the way of a good story."

He painted an excellent if bleak picture talking about how the atmosphere was practically poison and there was no ozone layer etc. Almost everything dies. Then a brief mention of chemosythesis and much later in the show ocean currents fixes everything? The presentation was excellent except for the entire glossing over of what exactly fixes the shit show and he moves on to continue the geologic changes which obviously impacted the climate but not the atmosphere or the out of control global warming much less loss of the ozone layer.

Can't help but wonder why that was omitted seems pretty important after spending so much time talking about how it went wrong. I feel as if I was left hanging as the subject quickly changed.