sethboy66

Dental problems aren’t about them looking good; teeth used to kill. Dental disease used to be the 5th leading cause of death. Your great-grandparents aren’t the best bar for dentistry in the past as modern dentistry began in the 18th century.

I mean… the title is pretty clear; it’s a ‘warning’ of a ‘risk’, not an announcement of the current situation. A risk is a possibility, and a warning of a risk must come before it is unfolding.

I mean, you are correct, it was not two fish. But is 64 fish some sort of good sample size?

Given the results, it is significant.

Follow up question: does this type of thing accumulate in small fish and then concentrate in larger and larger fish?

No, tritium is treated by organisms just like normal H2O, bioaccumulation is no problem.

The Vatican is its own country, they don’t pay themselves taxes.

Gunter’s chain is 20.1m, so half a Gunter is approximately a decameter; a rope would be unwieldy as it’d be one and two thirds rope per decameter.

The U.S. isn’t a signatory to the convention and nations exist in a state of anarchy, one cannot (in an official capacity) impose their will over another without consent. There are other agreements between Turkey and the U.S. which would permit any and all passage, so in the absence of the Montreux Convention (which is indeed absent in this case) the U.S. can sail a carrier right on through without breaking any agreed-upon rules.

The difference between peacetime and wartime readiness for nukes only relates to tactical nukes; at least when it comes to an competent nuclear power, nuke are always at the ready at a moments notice. They launch nukes, we launch in retaliation, major destruction spread out over large swaths of land, both sides nuclear capabilities are gone (other than subs that were already deployed and didn’t launch their payload). U.S. sails into the Black Sea.

Nukes aren’t designed to stop navies.

While I agree with your main gist, I actually think this overall creates less misunderstanding than more; at least, and probably solely, with respect to what organic means. Because people read that headline and think ‘z0mg life discovered on mars’ and then one of a few things may happen which leads them to realize that organic != organism. Though some of those ‘few things’ may include temporarily spreading their incorrect interpretation to others, I believe even a slightly intelligent person will realize that they may have wrong information when this finding doesn’t end up as front page news and ‘breaking news’ segments around the world.

So at least in that respect, this kind of journalism constantly teaches and reminds people that organic doesn’t mean life. Though, ultimately, I still dislike it as much as the next guy.

Naturally, organic simply means carbon is present in the (non-metal) structure. Generally carbon-carbon, carbon-hydrogen, and a few other bond-types are considered organic. Many articles prey on people’s misunderstanding of this in order to craft a good headline, since “carbon-based material” doesn’t sound as exciting as “organic material”.

And when they say it “be created by processes not related to life as we know it” they should also probably mention that it can be created in the absence of any life at all; since if that weren’t true then it would in fact be direct evidence of life.