npts2020

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewage_treatment "Increasingly, people use treated or even untreated sewage for irrigation to produce crops. Cities provide lucrative markets for fresh produce, so are attractive to farmers. Because agriculture has to compete for increasingly scarce water resources with industry and municipal users, there is often no alternative for farmers but to use water polluted with sewage directly to water their crops. There can be significant health hazards related to using water loaded with pathogens in this way. The World Health Organization developed guidelines for safe use of wastewater in 2006.[61] They advocate a 'multiple-barrier' approach to wastewater use, where farmers are encouraged to adopt various risk-reducing behaviors. These include ceasing irrigation a few days before harvesting to allow pathogens to die off in the sunlight, applying water carefully so it does not contaminate leaves likely to be eaten raw, cleaning vegetables with disinfectant or allowing fecal sludge used in farming to dry before being used as a human manure.[62]" While it is recommended that raw sewage not be used for crops, the WHO still has guidelines for doing so because in some places it is not practical to treat it first.

It may have been more obvious but these guys seem to think wealth inequality was never greater than in modern America. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/aracheology-wealth-inequality-180968072/ Maybe because there is much more "wealth" to distribute today?

I could see, at some point in the distant future, something like genetically engineering a giant roach (or pick your favorite hard shelled creature) and using the exoskeleton for a small ship but even if that technology ever comes about, what would make it worth doing?

One of the problems in the US is that there are 50+ systems for voting (every state and territory controls its own elections and some states even allow precincts to make up their own rules). I live in Pennsylvania and a recount wouldn't have helped anything in 2000 because there was no paper ballot, just the voting machine which presumably would give the same result every time. The Green Party sued the state over the issue and actually won so now there are paper ballots that are counted by machine, including mail-in ballots. Pa. is one of something like 7 states to not allow any processing of mail-in ballots before polls open on Election Day which can sometimes lead to substantial delays in calling the outcomes of close votes.

Depends on how you write and approach things. Look at science, for example, there is more written than any current human could ever hope to absorb but I don't see by what criteria you could ever call science "static" or unable to "evolve".

Me either but I watch C-Span almost every day and the amount of ignorance and hatred (pretty astounding IMO) on display by callers is not encouraging when one would think these are people who actually bother to follow Congress.

That was "The Prisoner" in the US, great show with a lot of social commentary. The Lotus he drove was pretty nice, too, if you like cars.

Is this guy the best guitarist ever?

If you can think of any way of making the above statement in bold any clearer, I am all for that clarification, so help me out. Apparently, the "/" means something other than the and-or I always thought it meant. I don't know if there is a realistic solution to give advice about. It all comes down to education and access to factual information. Maybe make education more like entertainment? I don't expect that. This is why there might not be a realistic solution. The rest exactly describes a sector of the lazy/inept people to which I am referring. Everyone on Earth is given 164 hours every week and the struggle to "succeed" is real but I have noticed little difference in the political awareness between friends who work all the time and those who seemingly don't work at all. If anything, the busier ones seem to have better knowledge of the candidates and issues so lack of time probably isn't the reason. IMO it has more to do with interests and seemingly few people are interested in politics until they can see it directly affects them. The problem is, voting is politics and when you do it without bothering to make yourself informed, you are entering an auto race without first having learned to drive. I wholeheartedly agree that process of educating ones self is not easy or necessarily exciting but it is something that every voter needs to do. I am not claiming that all or even a majority of voters fit into the lazy/inept category I mention but will assert it is a large enough plurality to have significant effects on elections. Agreed, except I am pretty sure I stated that the lazy/inept was a generalization and why. I assure you that I am not wealthy and wasn't aware that there was an ongoing narrative from the upper class about people being lazy/inept about educating themselves for voting. If you are talking about something other than that, you are bringing up subjects I have never mentioned in this thread.

I am the one who claimed those voters are too lazy/inept to educate themselves about the issues (and candidates) prior to voting and have not seen anything written here to change my mind. My interest is mostly academic but also practical as I have advised a couple different local campaigns about voter registration, ballot access etc. The topic of most interest for me is why the above seems to be true and if there is any practical way to change things to have a better informed electorate. If I have "hammered down" on anyone, I apologize, but I will push back against mischaracterization of what I have written.

Call it whatever you like but unlike your meme I never claimed it had anything to do with being smarter or less smart than anyone. Do you think that someday you can debate without twisting my words or claiming I wrote or inferred things never written explicitly? Here I had thought the discussion was about voters being lazy/inept about finding out about the issues the are voting on and had nothing to do with work habits or social grace...

Believe whatever you like but I have not seen a single shred of evidence that contradicts anything I have written, whereas I have explained why I view a plurality of the electorate as being inept/lazy.

When the highest rated demographic in the study has substantially less than a 50-50 chance of knowing about common news stories, I would find it highly surprising if those same people were any better informed about relevant issues.

Ok, besides my personal experience, check this study out. from the article "The study found the most conversant voters tend to fall into the 50-70 age group, with wealthy, educated white men over the age of 47 being the best informed. The least-informed voters were young, low-income minority women. The average minority female voter age 47 or less with a below-median income had a 30% probability of knowing a typical news story. By contrast, the average white male voter age 48 or older with an above-median income had a 44% probability of knowing the same story."

I am not sure where one would go to get such "facts". What I do know is that almost nobody I talk with knows much factually correct about any of the topics under discussion by the candidates. Don't think I claimed this was applicable only to Trump voters... See above where the generalization comes from.