would be great without the autotune

RT @librarythingtim: Radiation Dose Chart from xkcd (via @macrael) — fascinating

lots of interesting stuff in the comments

some good succinct answers in the comments:

"How can all these numerous, various radiation-type waves we're beaming everywhere NOT be doing some crinkly shit to all living things in proximity.

@JasonsRobot: Because they are weak compared to the dose of cosmic rays, Earth's natural radioactivity and UV radiation from the sun that most living things get every single day

@Arken: Yeah. But it's not like they're 'instead' of cosmic, natural, and uv stuffs. It's on top of. Plus, the man-made ones are all freaky. Our bodies evolved being bombarded by the natural stuff so that's old hat. How can we know if we can deal with the added onslaught of new stuff.

@JasonsRobot: We can know because we have studied the EM spectrum for a couple of hundred years know and we know a huge amount about it."

"What actually happens is that once scientists get hold of a good concept they gradually refine and extend it with greater and greater subtlety as their instruments of measurement improve. Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete."

"Vaccine-autism claims, "Frankenfood" bans, the herbal cure craze: All point to the public's growing fear (and, often, outright denial) of science and reason, says Michael Specter. He warns the trend spells disaster for human progress."

RT @amyvdh: great article by Vaughn Bell: "media technology scares from the printing press to Facebook"

"Through reporting as shamelessly biased as this, British journalists have done their job extremely well. People make health decisions based on what they read in the newspapers, and MMR uptake has plummeted from 92% to 73%: there can be no doubt that the appalling state of health reporting is now a serious public health issue.
[...]
The media created the MMR hoax, and they maintained it diligently for 10 years. Their failure to recognise that fact demonstrates that they have learned nothing, and until they do, journalists and editors will continue to perpetrate the very same crimes, repeatedly, with increasingly grave consequences."

"In the Keystone Initiative’s first eighteen months, the hospitals saved an estimated hundred and seventy-five million dollars in costs and more than fifteen hundred lives. The successes have been sustained for almost four years—all because of a stupid little checklist."

"The movement blaming vaccines for causing autism emerged in the early 2000s, and it was one of the most catastrophically horrible ideas of the decade."

RT @ivan_herman: BBC News - The arguments made by climate change sceptics (thanks to PhilA on FB)