ORLY-EP0109A - Workers Rights, Friday the 13th, OTC Empathy Blockers, Negative Power Bills, and more!
Welcome to ORLYRADIO #109A for Friday MAY 13th, 2016 - where we dismantle the current events for your edutainment through mostly rational conversations that make you go ‘Oh Really’! I’m your host Andy Cowen, with my usual suspects, Fred Sims, Stephen Griffith, and Daniel Atherton.
Audience Feedback From Previous Shows:
We make mistakes. Please, if you find one, pause the podcast, and send us a note. orlyradiopodcast@gmail.com or phone it in 470-222-6759
RANT Segments & Headlines:
http://www.snopes.com/2016/05/12/poultry-workers-diapers-oxfam/
OSHA: Occupational Safety and Health Administration https://www.osha.gov/ Part of the Department of Labor and was founded by the Nixion Administration April 28th, 1971
https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/poultryprocessing/ “Employers must also comply with OSHA’s sanitation standard 29 CFR 1910.141, that requires that toilet facilities must be made readily available and that employees are able to use toilet facilities when needed.”
NIOSH: The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health www.cdc.gov/niosh Part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under the Department of Health and Human Services, formed Dec 29th, 1970.
How do I find out about employer responsibilities and workers' rights?
Workers have a right to a safe workplace. The law requires employers to provide their employees with safe and healthful workplaces. The OSHA law also prohibits employers from retaliating against employees for exercising their rights under the law (including the right to raise a health and safety concern or report an injury). For more information see www.whistleblowers.gov or Workers' rights under the OSH Act.
OSHA can help answer questions or concerns from employers and workers. To reach your regional or area OSHA office, go to the OSHA Offices by State webpage or call 1-800-321-OSHA (6742).
Small businesses may contact OSHA's free On-site Consultation services funded by OSHA to help determine whether there are hazards at their worksites. To contact free consultation services, go to OSHA's On-site Consultation webpage or call 1-800-321-OSHA (6742) and press number 4.
Workers may file a complaint to have OSHA inspect their workplace if they believe that their employer is not following OSHA standards or that there are serious hazards. Workers can file a complaint with OSHA by calling 1-800-321-OSHA (6742), online via eComplaint Form, or by printing the complaint form and mailing or faxing it to the local OSHA area office. Complaints that are signed by a worker are more likely to result in an inspection.
If you think your job is unsafe or if you have questions, contact OSHA at 1-800-321-OSHA (6742). Your contact will be kept confidential. We can help. For other valuable worker protection information, such as Workers' Rights, Employer Responsibilities, and other services OSHA offers, visit OSHA's Workers' page.
This Friday the 13th in History:
Sources: http://www.historynet.com/today-in-history http://news.discovery.com/human/psychology/friday-13-events-120713.htm
Nov. 13, 1789 - Benjamin Franklin wrote "Everything appears to promise that it will last; but in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes," according to U.S. government documents.
Sept. 13, 1940 – Five German bombs hit Buckingham Palace and destroyed the Palace Chapel, as part of Hitler's strategic "Blitz" bombing campaign, according to reports from U.K. newspaper The Guardian.
June 13, 1952 – A Swedish military DC-3 plane carrying a crew of eight disappeared over international water in the Baltic Sea. This became known as the "Catalina affair" because one of two Catalina rescue planes sent to search for the plane was attacked by Soviet forces. In 1991, the Soviet air force admitted that it had shot down the DC-3 as well, according to the BBC.
July 13, 1956 – The United States and Britain turned down Indian and Yugoslavian pleas to stop atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, according to The New York Times.
Nov. 13, 1970 – A huge South Asian storm killed an estimated 300,000 people in Chittagong, Bangladesh, and created floods that killed as many as 1 million in the Ganges delta.
Jan. 13, 1989 – The "Friday the 13th virus" infected hundreds of IBM computers across Great Britain, wiping out program files and causing considerable anxiety at a time when large-scale computer viruses were a relatively new threat.
Oct. 13, 1989 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average underwent the second largest drop it had ever experienced at that time. Nicknamed the Friday-the-13th mini-crash, the Dow dropped 190.58 points that day. Today, that drop doesn't even make the top 10 list of largest drops.
Aug. 13, 1999 – The day would have been Alfred Hitchcock's 100th birthday.
-BREAK- Logical Fallacy
http://www.logicalfallacies.info/relevance/appeals/appeal-to-consequences/
Appeal to Consequences
Explanation
An appeal to consequences is an attempt to motivate belief with an appeal either to the good consequences of believing or the bad consequences of disbelieving. This may or may not involve an appeal to force. Such arguments are clearly fallacious. There is no guarantee, or even likelihood, that the world is the way that it is best for us for it to be. Belief that the world is the way that it is best for us for it to be, absent other evidence, is therefore just as likely to be false as true.
Pascal’s Wager Foundation Example
Appeal to Good Consequences:
(1) If believe in God then you’ll find a kind of fulfilment in life that you’ve never felt before.
Therefore:
(2) God exists.
Appeal to Bad Consequences:
(1’) If you don’t believe in God then you’ll be miserable, thinking that life doesn’t have any meaning.
Therefore:
(2) God exists.
Both of these arguments are fallacious because they provide no evidence for their conclusions; all they do is appeal to the consequences of belief in God. In the case of the first argument, the positive consequences of belief in God are cited as evidence that God exists. In the case of the second argument, the negative consequences of disbelief in God are cited as evidence that God exists. Neither argument, though, provides any evidence for Santa’s existence. The consequences of a belief are rarely a good guide to its truth. Both arguments are therefore fallacious.
Real-World Examples
Each of the arguments above features in real-world discussions of God’s existence. In fact, they have been developed into an argument called Pascal’s Wager, which openly advocates belief in God based on its good consequences, rather than on evidence that it is true.
Another example occurs in the film The Matrix. There Neo is asked whether he believes in fate; he says that he doesn’t. He is then asked why, and replies, “I don’t like the thought that I’m not in control.” This is not an appeal to evidence, but to the unpleasantness of believing in fate: Fate would imply that the world is a way that I don’t want it to be, therefore there is no such thing..
-BREAK- Voicemail
Science Bitches!
I don’t know if it’s time to stop taking Tylenol, but it’s definitely worth thinking about; strange new side effects discovered about this popular painkiller - https://news.osu.edu/news/2016/05/10/empathy-reliever/
Increasingly deadly wildfires definitely affected by… all together now… global warming!: who could have possibly guessed that longer, hotter summer seasons lead to drier forests and worse fires? - http://www.rdmag.com/news/2016/05/its-not-just-alberta-warming-fueled-fires-are-increasing-1
But it’s not ALL bad news. Germany has jumped on the green train so hard that power cost the country NOTHING for a few hours on Sunday: anyone who tries to tell you that renewable energy just isn’t reliable enough for large scale power grids is LYING to you - http://qz.com/680661/germany-had-so-much-renewable-energy-on-sunday-that-it-had-to-pay-people-to-use-electricity/
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/10/denmark-wind-windfarm-power-exceed-electricity-demandWho says you can’t predict the outcome of a horse race? “Not us!” says swarm intelligence: Tech company Unanimous used a new AI to win a 540 to 1 odds Superfecta bet for the Kentucky Derby - http://www.hngn.com/articles/199167/20160511/ai-uses-swarm-intelligence-correctly-predict-winners-kentucky-derby.htm
NASA Patent Vault open to the public!: We should ALL be excited about the wave of invention and innovation this windfall could bring - http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/Science-Notebook/2016/0509/Technology-transfer-NASA-opens-vault-of-space-age-patents