I'm confused by your comments, and am asking for clarification of your perspective. What exactly is your point?
While 20% of the population still smokes, the incidence rate has hugely decreased over time[0].
According to the CDC, in 1965, ~43% of the population smoked. In 2011, it was just under 20%, with a goal of 12% by 2020.
Transparent labeling, increased regulation and awareness, plus general advances in understanding the consequences of smoking have had a massive effect on the rates of smoking. It's not perfect, but a similar reduction in obesity over the next 50 years would be an incredible accomplishment.
Now if only we could tackle that burgeoning mental health problem...
While it sounds like your solution works for you, don't you think there's room in the market for one app that does all that?
One of the ways of providing value is to do nothing particularly unique, but to combine several things into a unique workflow.
The fact that you use 4 different services plus one that's been shutdown suggests to me someone else might want that functionality without the trial and error of figuring it all out and setting it all up...
IME non-internet, big corporations, are no better than google. Try reaching someone at your health insurance provider, or almost any other 'customer support" / complaint line.
The problem with this type of evidence is that it assumes the single change in the game was the presence or absence of steroids. To learn more from the data, check out the references I included at the bottom. The TL;DR is that there is no compelling statistical evidence that suggests steroids impacted homers, or offense in general.
The facile argument fails to address the fact that the game underwent expansion (weakening the average pitcher). The strike zone was changed a number of times (if you normalize for strikeout rate, the power in today's MLB is the same as in the 90s). Umpires got a lot better once PitchFX was able provide them feedback. (Lots were let go as well). Colorado started using a humidor, reducing home runs at the greatest hitters park of all time.
There's not really any way of knowing who did or did not use. MLB and mainstream sports media "strongly suspected" PED usage is closer to HUAC findings than real evidence. Also, it doesn't acknowledge the fact that a lot of pitchers were found using PEDs.
In short, it's incredibly facile to look at some superficial stats and hints of suspicion in order to reach the "steroids = homers" conclusion. But when you look at the underlying component numbers and adjust for the changing environment in the game, there is no evidence to support that conclusion. (That does not mean steroids had no effect, just that we cannot detect them with our best efforts.)
Here's an incredibly strong counter argument from Joe Sheehan's paywalled newsletter [I added it to pastebin for reference, I doubt Joe will mind]. http://pastebin.com/DXW0HSSt
Dan Szymborski is one of the top baseball data analysts in the country. From [0] (paywall)
"Despite the rhetoric surrounding PEDs, players caught for steroid/testosterone use do not show a pattern of overperforming their projections in the years leading up to the drug suspension or a pattern of underperforming their projections in the years after a drug suspension."
In layman's terms, if all you knew about players the past 10-15 years was their past OPS+ and whether they were busted for steroids -- now or at any time in the past -- it appears the PEDs had no noticeable effect on the projection of their future OPS+.
What this means is that, even with the knowledge of what outliers such as Barry Bonds accomplished while allegedly using performance-enhancing drugs, as a whole, there's extremely limited evidence of a significant effect on statistics of the drug users as whole. And without double-blind research studies of PED use among major leaguers and/or detailed information of what players are using, all we have to go by so far is the bottom-line results.
Now, none of this should be taken as endorsing the idea that MLB should simply open the floodgates and allow players to do whatever they want. Instituting drug testing is a very good thing for the sport -- but that improvement is for reasons other than the record books, such as the long-term health of players and the public trust. As far as the record books being tainted by PED use, well, it appears there isn't much evidence of that."
In 1991, the commissioner tried to institute a policy banning steroids. He didn't have the authority, so it was no different than if I tried to write that. But it's a clear indication that MLB was aware of the steroid problem and tried taking a small step to fix it.
Regarding the "players being juiced", it's never been shown that juiced players performed better. There have been a number of studies comparing players who were caught using PEDs, before and after, comparing to clean players, etc. None of them show any indication that taking steroids helped players perform better on the field.
If you look at the power-on-contact or ISO of players across periods (the 90s, 00s, current game), you find that there is just as much power on contact in the game now as before. The different is strikeouts, which is clearly tied to strike zone enforcement and some other tradeoffs hitters are making now that teams understand strikeouts are fine if you have power.
I apologize if my tone has some frustration in it, but my pet peeve is people saying that steroids = strength = McGwire hit ball far. The reality is far more nuanced, and if you are able to come into the analyses without preconceived conclusions, it's pretty clear that the 'steroid slugger' era happened to overlap with the power era, but it does not appear to have driven the higher rate of home runs and offense during the time.
However, academic philosophies are only part of the whole field. Practical philosophies, ones that make the topics much more accessible and relevant to everyday life, is another big component. (Mindfulness, stoicism, practical meditation, ethics, etc.)
Until last year, I avoided philosophy because I never found it relevant, interesting, or anything other than navel gazing. It turns out I was only exposed to academic philosophy.
Once I found more practical works, it became much more important to me.
The used of PEDs in baseball was a well known issue dating back to the 1980s. Players, front office types, writers, and anyone in the public paying attention knew about it. I can't comment on the other items, but it's pretty clear that everyone knew about PEDs but just didn't care enough to ban them.
(That said, my personal opinion is that steroid testing done in baseball is much more about using the issue as a wedge to weaken the MLB Players Association, rather than "fixing" the game.)
If the subscribe / unsubscribe pages are in the google index, or discoverable, you could crawl those and look for company names and domains on that page, match them up against your db.
While 20% of the population still smokes, the incidence rate has hugely decreased over time[0].
According to the CDC, in 1965, ~43% of the population smoked. In 2011, it was just under 20%, with a goal of 12% by 2020.
Transparent labeling, increased regulation and awareness, plus general advances in understanding the consequences of smoking have had a massive effect on the rates of smoking. It's not perfect, but a similar reduction in obesity over the next 50 years would be an incredible accomplishment.
Now if only we could tackle that burgeoning mental health problem...
[0] - http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/tables/trends/cig...