These look like trick questions.....

[nancylebov]

From The Last Psychaitrist:

Was Brontosaurus A Herbivore?




I.

1a. George Washington is the father of our country, the Revolutionary War general who helped free the colonies from their British rule. In what country was George Washington born?

2a. What modern animal is most genetically similar to a triceratops?

3a. T or F: The majority of the available scientific evidence strongly suggests that nicotine increases the risk of cancer.

4a. Your best friend in the whole world, Tom, sends you a letter which begins with the first two lines of Richard III: "Now is the winter of our discontent..." That's bad, right?

5a. Galileo, the scientist famously remembered by his first name, invented the 3x telescope. What, if anything, was going on in America at the same time?

The questions are entertaining, but I'm most interested in one of the comments, which says that European schools do a better job of teaching critical thinking in the primary and secondary schools than the fact-based early education in the US.

As far as I can remember critical and contextual thinking were hardly touched on in my primary and secondary education, which was at what were considered pretty good public schools in the US. (1959-1971)

I'm curious-- were you taught critical thinking in primary and/or secondary school? When and where were your schools?

And would smoking be safer if nicotine was added to cigarettes?

Comments

[inquisitiveravn.livejournal.com]

How carefully did you read the piece? A few paragraphs down from where he says it isn't carcinogenic, he drops this paragraph:

Unfortunately, nicotine does increase the risk of cancer-- just not in the same way that other carcinogens do it. (It facilitates the development of lung cancer, and possible breast cancer.) The evidence for this is not substantial but it isn't inconsequential, either. So telling people it doesn't cause cancer-- the information you were motivated to disseminate-- is absolutely, and dangerously, wrong.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Obviously not carefully enough, though I wonder what the difference is between "carcinogenic" and "facilitates the development of cancer".

[siderea]

I'd guess that he means nicotine either potentiates carcinogens or exacerbates some aspect of tumor growth (e.g. blood vessel formation, something that without cancer might not have any deleterious effects and even be healing) One of the special things about cancer is that it's a normal process (cell division, the basis of tissue repair) run amok; cancer is a circumstance in which what is normally innocuous or even healthy is potentially lethal, and the deadliest poisons are the preferred medicine.

[inquisitiveravn.livejournal.com]

This is sheer speculation, but possibly "carcinogenic" means damages cells directly and "facilitates development of" means interferes with the body's mechanisms for get rid of damaged cells?