What is the price if human life?

.... from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diyya

In Saudi Arabia, when a person has been killed or caused to die by another, the prescribed blood money rates are as follows:

100,000 riyals if the victim is a Muslim man
50,000 riyals if a Muslim woman
50,000 riyals if a Christian man
25,000 riyals if a Christian woman
6,666 riyals if a Hindu man
3,333 riyals if a Hindu woman.

Smokin' ...?

I'm not encouraging you to smoke, but scary headlines like “Smokers seven times more likely to get lung cancer” on a report by Salma Khalik of the Straits Times needs to be decoded:

Extracting the data:
population was ethnic Chinese
studt lasted 25 years from 1993 to 2007
45900 were tracked over this period
33292 did not smoke
over 25 years, 463 people were diagnosed with lung cancer
25.5% of these were non-smokers, or 116 by my calculation

Let's do some primary school arithmetic, shall we?
smoker population was 12698 (45900 – 33292 = 12698)
smokers getting lung cancer – 347 (463 -116 = 347)

Now we can decode the scary headline: Over 25 years, and not for one year:
1.12352 of the 12698 smokers did NOT get lung caneer, or 97.3%
2.33176 of the 33292 smokers also didn't get cancer, or 99.4%

Just to be clear about these numbers, smoking for 25 years increases your risk of geting lung cancer by 2.1% (99.4% - 97.3% = 2.1%). If you are a smoker, and I'm not, you figure if this is an acceptable risk. Just don't let relative “prevalence rates” scare you. You are not “seven times more likely to get lung cancer”.

If smokers are thinking about quitting, they should, of course, consider the effects of smoking on blood pressure, general fitness ... I'm not a registered medical practitioner and cannot give medical advice, just someone, moderately numerate, with a sensitive B.S. Meter.

Dubya, dubya ... !

Dubya, by trying to explain the subtleties of terrorism and torture, continues to maintain his title as "The stupidest President of the USA." Before we go into the wrongs and rights of it, shouldn't we find out if it works? I mean: torture ....

Staritng with the commonsensical idea that people will say anything to make the pain stop, to be able to sleep, not to freeze or die of thirst ... you get the idea.

So, how do we know what they tell us is true? What if they are clever or well-trained to mix some true stuff with the lies? The kindergarten answer is: we check against what we already know to be true. Essentially, then, torture is research, however distasteful its methods!

Back to the original question of whether it works. If you already have some baseline info or data against which to check, then yes, it does yield more usable info. Now we can tackle the ethical question, should we use it? Well, if time is short and alternative methods absent or costly, then the pragmatic answer, however repulsive, is yes.

What if we lack any prior situational knowledge? Then, torture is just a dumb, time and resource wasting option because checking is either complicated or tedious. Okay, now the $64 million question about torturing terrorists and dear Dubya's signed approvals. Tactical or operational torture, where there are already boots on the ground or a Predator, satellite or radio-scanning, does provide battle field info.

But for the really useful intel on which committee handles what and who attends and who writes the minutes and whom are vulnerable to influence and of what kind, torture is clearly useless. When we need to know a woman or man's life story, being a friend works better; but that's too subtle for Dubya ...?