MarginOfError

Okay, I'l bite We've established that the mortality rate for measles is 4 in 1,000 cases. Now, let's establish the number of cases of heart disease. It is estimated that about half of US adults have heart disease. Now let's take a US population of 327,000,000, and assume one third of those are not adults. That leaves us with 215,820,000 adults. Half of those have heart disease, or 107,910,000 adults with heart disease. Using that as the denominator with 600,000 as the numerator produces an estimate of 5.5 deaths per 1,000 cases. So you're right, heart disease is a bigger problem by both magnitude and by rate. But the piece that you're leaving out is that we don't have a vaccine for heart disease!!! We have a vaccine for Measles, and it could theoretically be eradicated. I'll also point out that measles has a tendency to kill the young. 66% of heart disease deaths occur after the age of 75. I know that 70 is supposed to be the new 40 or something like that, but let's face it--75 is kind of old Lastly, what the flip do you mean there's no hysteria about diabetes, smoking, obesity, or high blood pressure. We have an entire industry built up around "fitness" and "wellness." We spent billions on a 30 year campaign to keep kids from smoking that largely succeeded. We have a gazillion non-profits out there encouraging children to get outside and play. We have seen an incredible shift in school meal programs (at least in my area, but my understanding is that it was brought about my Michelle Obama's program) to provide more locally sourced, fresh, healthier food in our school systems to help teach children about the importance of nutrition. And every time I go see my doctor I am bombarded with questions about diet, exercise, preventing high blood pressure and diabetes. I get a lot more exposure to preventing those conditions in my life than I do about measles. It just comes pretty consistently, so doesn't appear to be as sensational.

Lastly, I am a statistician (Master's degree in Biostatistics, to be precise), and as someone who grew up very skeptical of vaccines, I poured a lot of hours into reading the peer reviewed research on this topic before choosing to vaccinate my children. The research is sound. The ethics are sound. The statistics are sound. Are there individuals who suffer from vaccination? Without question. But you also have to recognize vaccines are developed, tested, and validated on a sample numbering in the thousands. For a really big trial, it may go as far as tens of thousands. And then we scale those results by expanding their use into a population numbering in the hundreds of millions. We're going to find some outliers. And yes, some people will be injured. It's tragic, and unfortunate. But it is not a reason to suspend vaccination. In fact, the only hope we have of learning how to identify those that are susceptible to injury is to continue the program. I get that this sounds heartless, but consider this (true) case study. There have been two girls in the United States that have died after receiving the HPV vaccine. Anti-HPV vaccine proponents have declared this as sufficient cause to terminate HPV vaccinations, because even one death is too many. That's a lovely sentiment, and I agree that one death is too many. But let's also consider that literally millions of girls have received the HPV vaccine. So the probability that any one girl will be killed by it is less than one in a million. What's more, if the estimates hold that the HPV vaccine will prevent 2,000 cervical cancer deaths per year, then in the past ten years, we will have prevented 20,000 cervical cancer deaths. That puts us in this great bind place of "one death is too many," but apparently we're okay losing the other 20,000? Most often, when people rail against these kinds of health policy ideas, it comes down to "fear of the new thing" and "fear of it happening to me or someone I know." You have my empathy. You really truly do. I have those same fears. yet I will continue to advocate that health policy is best debated and discussed as a matter of cold-hearted statistics where the chosen policy should reflect what is best for the population, not the individual.

Um, 11 deaths out of 2,671 cases. Or about 4.1 deaths per 1,000 cases. Now consider that by 1962 (before the measles vaccine was developed), the mortality rate was about 1 per 10,000 cases. Let me put those in the same units 1959 - 1962: 1 per 10,000 cases 2000 - 2019: 41 per 10,000 cases And mind you, this is a disease that was declared eliminated in 2000--and we are worse off now than we were sixty years ago! The major difference is that we are looking at 2,671 cases in the modern era compared to 4 million cases in the 1959-1962 era. Largely due to vaccination. Perhaps a little hysteria is warranted. https://physiciansforinformedconsent.org/measles/dis

This probably isn't true anymore. It is estimated that somewhere between 65 and 70% of adults have some form of HPV. Remember, many of them are asymptomatic. Note also that, at least in the U.S., more than 95% of people will have penetrative sex before they are married. 50% will have had sex before the age of 17. The mean number of sexual partners for Americans is 7.2. While I appreciate the point you are trying to make, public health decisions need to operate in the world in which we live, not the world in which we wish to live.

The HPV vaccines protects against strains of HPV that cause over 70% of cervical cancers. Is has been estimated that widespread vaccination could reduce the number of cervical cancer deaths by as much as 2,000 per year (only about half of cervical cancers are detected in early stages, which have a 92% 5-year survival; advanced stages top out at 50% survival; and then there's the fact that not undergoing cancer treatments at all is generally better than having to undergo them) source: https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/infectious-agents/hpv-vaccine-fact-sheet https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/cervix.html What's great is that the 70% thing mentioned above is true for the bi-valent vaccine, which only protects against two strains of HPV (out of about 140). Some critics have complained that the HPV vaccine is pointless because it protects against so few strains, but the target is not HPV--the target is cervical cancer. And even vaccinating against those two strains alone is making a huge dent. Since the original bi-valent came out, there have been quad-valent and oct-valent versions introduced. New to me even is a vaccine that protects against 9 strains, which account for more than 70% of cervical cancers and more than 90% of genital warts. Anyway, I'll stop now. But the reason HPV shots (and I stress, for both males and females) are being pushed is to cut down on cervical cancer. I don't recall them being mandated anywhere, but strongly encouraged. (It's been a few years since I worked in Women's Health, so I may not be fully up to date)

You're in a really tough spot, and so is your husband. It's really hard to take over leadership of a ward that you haven't been in for very long. And while we like to think that we are above petty power struggles, a relatively new member of the ward stepping into a prominent leadership position can really disrupt the established balance of power in a ward. This may not always be a bad thing, but humans are notoriously bad at coping with this kind of disruption. I don't know enough of the situation to know what is causing the discord, but I am pretty comfortable stating that the reasons this one particular family doesn't like your husband as bishop is because your husband is making decisions they don't agree with. This is stressful enough, but becomes even more stressful when the stake president seems to be second guessing those decisions. The bottom line is you need to find a place to vent some of these frustrations. More importantly, your husband needs a place to vent some of his frustrations and share some of the events so that he can get an outside perspective on what is happening. There may be adjustments he can make that will ease the disruption without sacrificing his vision for the ward. It will become difficult for him and you to do so without violating confidences. This forum may be able to absorb some of this, but a non public chat room (where the details are not visible to web searches) would be ideal.

I will take the less popular opinion here and say that you should speak to him. But what you are offering is not a correction, and her certainly wasn't teaching any false doctrine. What his statements needs is a brief statement of nuance. I have used that same scripture to make the same exact point. However, I always add the caveat, "barring cases of mental health and/or depression, those who find themselves happy in this life are likely to find themselves happy in the next." The important part is to focus on the behavior of doing our best to live the gospel and repent--doing so brings lasting joy through eternity. While I have no doubt that your stake presiden(t/cy person thing) would agree, I believe that words are important. Especially when they can affect some of our most vulnerable saints. Adding that one simple caveat is, I feel, a reasonable protection to keep those with mental health struggles from further despair.

Nothing. It's the only thing keeping me functional at the moment

"He then rode away on a bike" I don't know why I find that so funny.

I don't say anything to strangers. Especially adults. I might say something if a group of teenagers is cussing up a storm and there are children around. I've rarely gotten any push back from a teenager when I've said "I know the kids will learn it eventually, but most parents would prefer their six year olds not be exposed to those words just yet." (I've also rarely had to say anything, as most teenagers I've encountered are socially aware enough to dial it back around children) With people I work with, I have never said anything, and most of them choose to self censor around me simply because they have noticed that I don't use the words*. I gave up long ago on getting people to stop invoking the word "God" around me. It's just too pervasive. However, I will speak up when the words "Jesus" and "Christ" are employed inappropriately. I merely say, "I would prefer if you not use the name of my deities in that manner around me." With people I know, that is universally been enough to earn both an apology and a change in behavior. * Funny anecdote: In my current work environment, I've never had a discussion with anyone about the language I choose to use or not use. One of the branches for our software development is named DAAMS, but the database instance it was associated with was named DAAM. I spent more than half a day troubleshooting a problem in the software only to find that I had been trying to point it to the DAAMS database. I stormed over to my supervisor and just started saying. "DAAM....DAAM DAAM DAAM DAAM DAAM." At that point she fell out of her chair (literally) in disbelief of what I was saying. Then I proceeded, "It's DAAM, not DAAMS. Why is the code branch named differently than the database?" After which there was much laughter. More importantly, the database was renamed DAAMS.

Again, since preferential voting tends to favor centrist/moderate candidates, I don't really care if it swings in favor of moderate Republicans. The point is that the gravitates toward more discussion and compromise than our current system, which has become riddled with obstructionists attempting to hold the entire election system hostage to the primaries of two parties.

Maine has this kind of a system. It was approved in the 2016 election and implemented in 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/ranked-choice-voting-maine/557669/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/democrat-prevails-in-maine-congressional-race-that-used-ranked-choice-voting-system/2018/11/15/e8d81cae-e8ff-11e8-a939-9469f1166f9d_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.dde449986a96 I'm a big fan of this type of voting. If the U.S. used preferential voting(or ranked choice voting), it's very likely that President Trump would not have won the Republican Primary in 2016. I suspect the Republican who did win it would be president today under preferential voting, and would have won after reallocating smaller party candidate votes. The biggest feature of preferential voting, in my opinion, is that it naturally moves toward centrist opponents with broader appeal, while the current system benefits extremist candidates in the primaries, leaving us stuck with fringe candidates in the general election. The next big advantage is preferential voting would put a sizable nail in the coffin of two-party governance. Over time, you'd see a broader range of political parties, and by casting a high preferential vote for whatever party most closely satisfies your views, you can send a message about what your values are without the same risk of ceding the election to your least preferred candidate*. This would give candidates much better information about what platforms really motivate voters. * The most recent talking point along these lines being that those who were bitter that Senator Sanders lost the Democratic Primary and so voted for Jill Stein in protest may have contributed to President Trump's election--an outcome far less desirable to them than Secretary Clinton. (I'm not sure there were quite enough of these votes to make that big of a difference, but that's one theory)

This is the standard I fall back on to evaluate these questions. It ties decision to your level of sexual arousal. If you aren't overly aroused, don't sweat it. If you continue to get involved in these make outs specifically to get the arousal, then maybe you should dial it back. Keep in mind also that the nature of the relationship may play a role in the decision. I am much less concerned with adult boyfriend and girlfriend who are moving toward marriage engaging in some make out than I am with teenagers making out on the first date. While the law of chastity is clear (no sexual relations outside of marriage), there are dating-in-a-serious-relationship activities prior to marriage that are not necessarily sexual. It isn't always clear to me where the line is drawn for any two people.

The math is valid, but the math is rarely the challenge with Bayesian analyses. The place where you run into problems with Bayesian analyses are first, the selection of the prior distribution, and 2, the choice of the likelihood function. In this particular case, I don't really object to their choice of prior distribution. They've effectively assigned a Bernoulli distribution with p = 1/1,000,000,000. I'm a bit more skeptical of the likelihood function. The likelihood function gets applied to each "statement of evidence" and adjusts our belief about the prior distribution based on the observed evidence. In this case, the likelihood function operates on the general algorithm If the statement from Coe and the statement from the Book of Mormon are concordant, increase our belief in the historicity of the Book of Mormon. If the statement from Coe and the statement from the Book of Mormon are discordant, decrease our belief in the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Unfortunately, Dale and Dale chose a likelihood function that, when the two sources are discordant, it simply says, "each has equal probability of being true." That is, despite the prior probability that the Book of Mormon is non-historical, the likelihood function assumes that it is, at worst, equally historical as the best scholarly research when the scholarly research is discordant. I'm not sure that's the best way to penalize discrepancies, and may be overstating the conclusion. The other place where this analysis gets mirky is in the evaluation of concordant or discordant. One in particular that I found unconvincing was where they found concordance with Mayan writings talking about leaders being "seated" and the Book of Mormon using the term "seated" when changes of power occur. But that seems to speak more to the translation process than the culture. Furthermore, it's claiming concordance based on changes of power occurring, which is a generally unsurprising observation through history. It would have been more impressive if the likelihood function were weighted based on the temporal proximity of changes in power reported by scholarly work and the Book of Mormon. Likewise, they claim concordance (albeit weak concordance) simply because the Book of Mormon mentions volcanoes and earthquakes and so do the Mayans, but makes no attempt to match time frames. My takeaway...meh....interesting concept. But I am not very persuaded as to the objectivity or rigor in which the points of concordance are selected, and I do think the likelihood function is biased in favor of the Book of Mormon.

From my time as an ordinance worker (mind you, this was 15 years ago) we were told that, when manning the front desk, General Authorities would have temple recommends that looked a little different and were only signed by themselves. I never saw one. But they do have a different recommend. I have no documentation to verify this. I imagine it is in the temple presidency handbooks.

lcr.lds.org is the link to Leader and Clerk Resources, which is where we manage membership records, finances, temple recommends, ministering, etc. It is essential to the administrative function of the Church. The fact that it is not available as lcr.churchofjesuschrist.org indicates that conversion of the web properties is far from complete. And the reason I used "thechurchofjesuschrist.org" is because @clbent04 included in the OP The Church would have no reason to include that particular URL in a press release because, as you point out, the Church does not own that URL. Hence, my claim that this is a bogus story.

I'm pretty sure this is a bogus story. The url thechurchofjesuschrist.org isn't even owned by the Church. What's more, many of the web based properties haven't been transitioned to the new url base. For instance, if I try lcr.churchofjesuschrist.org, I get nothing. I still have to use lcr.lds.org. And if I attempt to access Leader and Clerk Resources from churchofjesuschrist.org, I get redirected to lcr.lds.org.

To clarify, Devil's Due received a cease-and-desist letter for the cover. AOC herself was not a party to the issue.

A bad pun.

Or the literal bus. I'd be cautious of both.

Well, you aren't the first person on the internet to ask this question. But you might be the second. This reddit is the only other link I can find asking the question: So even if they aren't necessary, it doesn't seem that very many people care. For what it's worth, vanity glasses (or glasses as fashion accessory) aren't a thing that bother me. I even considered them before I developed a need for them, just to add to the "nerd look."

Incineration, as I understand it, is a common method of handling medical waste. The point of the Indiana law was to require that fetal remains be treated has human remains, not as medical waste.

Given the number of stories I've heard of a person being called to a position and saying "I had a feeling this was coming," and how those are often celebrated as stories of personal preparedness and sensitivity to the spirit, I find this a curious statement. It seems dangerously close to using concurrence with leadership as the yardstick of whether revelation/intuition/premonition is "true" or "false" The exact position I bear in the ward's organization is not a detail necessary for the discussion. But I will note that councilors that do not council with the bishop and offer their viewpoints aren't much good as councilors. Beyond that, we've been advised that those serving on the ward council serve the entire ward, not just their organizations; and that they should be free to offer council on all matters that affect ward members. If you wish to discuss that further, open a thread. Regarding "pray that your personal bias will not get in the way of the Lord's work" -- thank you. I just wish I knew some more sure way to determine if I were doing that successfully.

I'm going to ask that comments regarding the appropriateness of telling a bishop what callings you should have be moved to a separate thread, as they aren't helpful here. I'm happy to engage in that discussion. But for this current thread, please focus on the issue at hand; clearing one's mind of their own bias* in order to create the opportunity to understand the Lord's will when presented with information previously not considered. * Bias here is pretty broad. It can be that I've already come to a decision, and I inherently believe that my decisions are right. To change my decision now would imply that I was wrong (or less right) before. Therefore, I am biased against changing my decision because I want to be right. Bias can be personal. It can be preconceived based on a list of names provided by an organization president. I don't much care what the source of bias is.

I'm going to step in and advise not to be so quick to judge. There is a lot more back story here than I have shared, and I am withholding details deliberately. I have no doubt that, as much as I'm struggling to be able to see things from his point of view, that his cognitive dissonance is probably 10 times what mine is.