(no subject)

Note that none of these are about gun ownership.
[Poll #1025917]

edit: I'm giving y'all the benefit of the doubt and assuming that if you've used a gun, you learned about gun safety and a teeny-tiny bit (at least) about how to use one before you did.

(no subject)

Guide to pesticide load (sort of) on commonly eaten fruits and veggies.  The full set of data is here.

I'm trying to decide how much weight I want to put in this and how much I trust the Environmental Working Group to make 'editorial' decisions.  I've seen some of their information about the safety of cosmetics, and some of their analysis seems flawed or at least not careful or not mainstream to me. 

For example, they rate toothpastes and note which brands of toothpaste contain potentially dangerous ingredients.  They consider sodium flouride (a requirement for endorsement by the American Dental Association) to be a harmful ingredient, so toothpastes that contain flouride get lower rankings. Okay, that's non-mainstream but not so bad. What bothers me more is that they consider silica a dangerous ingredient, but silica is dangerous when inhaled.  There is no risk of silica inhalation from using toothpaste.  Last time I checked out their website (admittedly, a few years ago), they didn't make that readily apparent to anyone who might be using the site to check product safety.  Raw data is good, but it has to be analyzed appropriately to be useful. I think it's irresponsible to pitch something (like their database) to the public without really making sure they know how to use it properly. 

Long story short, having a list of which fruits it's a good idea to buy only organic seems like a good idea, but I'm not sure I trust EWG's judgment (or data analysis) to trust their list.  They also don't seem to fully cite their references; they just say "based on the results of nearly 43,000 tests for pesticides on produce collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration between 2000 and 2004." 

(no subject)

Paying my car insurance premium on the day it's due is not something I want to make a habit of, but I'm sure I'm not the only person who has ever done it.  It is not terrible.

I'm very glad State Farm has a telephone payment system.  I'm also glad I have the sort of credit card that gives 1% cash back, and that I have the money in the bank to pay my bill in full.