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

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Because its already there in tobacco. I suppose we could add it to non tobacco products, but the question didn't specify that. Plus it's horribly addictive.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Apparently nicotine is one of the very few things in cigarette smoke that isn't carcinogenic. Afaik, cigarette smokers adjust their smoking to get the amount of nicotine they want. This implies that (unless inhaled nicotine is extremely likely to cause emphesema or somesuch), smokers will inhale less of the dangerous stuff if they have high nicotine cigarettes.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

It's possibly this could work, but I'm skeptical it would work to modify anyone's behavior.

[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?

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

Two problems.

First, megadosing on nicotine doesn't make it last any longer, which means the time an addict can go between smokes won't get longer, which means just the same smoking level.

Second, nicotine has its own pretty bad effects- mostly on the cardiovascular system. It raises heartrate and blood pressure, putting extra strain on the system.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming that people would give themselves the same amount of nicotine, but with less of the other sorts of smoke mixed in.

I'm not suggesting that smoking enhanced cigarettes would be as safe as not smoking, just that it might be safer than smoking standard cigarettes.

[inquisitiveravn.livejournal.com]

Nothing to do with cigarettes per se, but I was at BJ's today and spotted nicotine gum, in mint and some kind of fruit flavor at that. While I don't think I've posted anything about my ideas on harm reduction and nicotine on LJ, it looks like some of them aren't as far fetched as I thought.

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

Even though it's not carcinogenic... nicotine has one of the *lowest* ratios of lethal-dose to effective-dose among psychoactives. If someone is truly after a nicotine "high", once they're there it doesn't take much more to kill them.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Still, people seem to smoke without a high risk of nicotine poisoning.

This suggests that doubling the amount of nicotine in a cigarette might be safe.