Vote for the best Halloween candies, for science

you mentioned " Hershey bars with candy corn in them" which implies chocolate embedded with CC, but in reality, it is just a candy corn-flavored bar made by Hershey - no chocolate is involved.

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Wine gives me a migraine. Good thing there’s vicodin and mint juleps.

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I would happily take a mint julep or an old fashioned as a substitute.

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Why would they even do that?

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beats me!

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I see your salmiak and raise you with horehound:
image

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Absolute genius, of course. I think I’m going to mash a bunch of candy corn together into a bar today!

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Sadly missing are the tantalizing homemade paragons of the pre-paranoia era: candied apples, Rice Krispy treats, caramel apples, popcorn balls. Even Crackerjacks don’t appear on the list anymore.

Back in the ‘golden age’, the sheer bulk of these treasures along with full size candy bars used to more than half-fill the preferred sack at the time – a pillowcase.

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Wow, that’s the coolest thing ever.

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Thanks for participating! We’ve had a great response in the first 10 hours (already >900 responses), but very biased towards folks who picked the “science” articles. Would be awesome if you could share with others just to beef up numbers of the other categories. Also, it would be AWESOME if more kids filled it out. Game on! Dave

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Come to my house and you’ll get whiskey.

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Come on, wax lips!

Oh, yes.

Either option seems inexplicable, but I suppose the first brings to mind poo with undigested corn in it, so it was a non-starter…

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So, a bunch of candy corn walk together into a bar and asked to get mashed.
The bartender says “Hmm, don’t you mean ‘smashed’?”
The candy corns say “No, we mean ‘mashed’.”
The bartender says “Oh! Well, you can get smashed here, but the mash is back at the distillery.”


Best that occurred to me on short notice, and trying to connect to the liquor aspect of other comments here…


I’m always intrigued by things like whether people say “smash” or “mash” :slight_smile:

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As my daughter once observed…

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Sadly handing out home made treats these days tends to get one a visit from “concerned” citizens and authorities.

Thanks to moral panics about razor blades in apples and poisoned candy.

The few known cases of such things tend to be parents or family members attempting to, or accidentally, harming kids. Or completely unrelated deaths and injuries.

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Last year, only 0.5 % under the age of 15 voted and only 11% went trick or treating. I suspect voter suppression.

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Hmmm… it sounds silly, but this makes me very uncomfortable because it is probably a violation of Canadian ethical human subjects use guidelines and regulations. For Dr. Ng, who is involved in science literacy, this is just sloppy, as he should know better and should recognize he is violating scientific norms and probably regulations. Some examples:

  • Although it has an informed consent statement, it doesn’t give contact information.
  • The consent form lies to you. It says that it is not intended for research purposes, but then says the data will be published (just because boingboing is not at an official ‘science journal’ doesn’t mean it doesn’t count as being published. A blog post is a publication). This probably means it IS for research purposes. The investigator usually cannot make this determination on their own–it is one that the IRB must make as part of seeking approval.
  • Asserting that the data will be posted is also troublesome, because this is also publication. Posting the data is exploiting a ‘non-research/research’ loophole that facebook and researchers at Cornell got called out for a couple years ago. That incident is in textbooks now. Essentially, I can do a study that is ethically questionable outside the university, then post the data to the public or give it to university researchers, and let my ‘collaborators’ inside the university use it because it is technically no longer human data. Plus, there are examples in public data sets where a huge proportion of individual responses are actually identifiable. What steps are being taken to insure anonymity?
  • Then there are parts of it that really seem to be for research purposes, like the dress color question, and it even says ‘This next section is for scientific purposes. Seriously.’. This is inconsistent with the consent statement.

This all would be fine if hosted via google or surveymonkey for BoingBoing, or by CAGNA, the Candy Growers of North America lobbying group, but the fact that UBC researchers are involved and are hosting it means they need to follow their policies, and this probably doesn’t. This is only mildly onerous–it would probably require some training (which would highlight the problems with this) and make a submission to the local IRB who would probably complain about the same things i am complaining about here; make them change font sizes or something, and then approve it as exempted from further review.

Signed
Prof. Jack Skellington
Institutional Review Board Chair
Christmastown Institute of Technology

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Oh, the humanity! Yet again this so-called “survey” neglects to include Peanut Butter M&Ms. Those candy encrusted, chocolate smothered pebbles of en-pasted umami-leguminous goodness. Why? WHYYYYY?

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:flushed:

Damn! Someone beat me to horehound. I ADORE horehound drops. But they’re hard to find.

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