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[Truean]

http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/arsenic-found-brown-rice-syrup-organic-foods-baby-185300194.html

Let's all poison the babies! Yeah?

Let me guess, China?

USA! USA! USA!

We don't need the EPA, right?
_____________________________________________
http://news.yahoo.com/gay-marriage-bills-head-toward-votes-jersey-maryland-002207308.html
New Jersey's legislature passed gay marriage but of course the Governor is expected to veto it until a fine whimpering pulp and gain massive votes for doing so.

[Virex]

I sense an impending doom when this thread has dug too deep and awoken a sleeping Vector. 

We are threading on sacred Hilbert space here.

http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/arsenic-found-brown-rice-syrup-organic-foods-baby-185300194.html

Let's all poison the babies! Yeah? Fetuses have rights but once they're born poison is A-OK!

Actually, we're talking about organic foods here. Nobody added the arsenic to it in any form. Instead, the rice crops were grown on ground that was high in arsenic (due to natural reasons, or because of nearby industry that is or used to dump their waste) and apparently someone forgot to check for it. It's not active poisoning, though it's clearly criminal neglegence.

[Truean]

I sense an impending doom when this thread has dug too deep and awoken a sleeping Vector. 

We are threading on sacred Hilbert space here.

http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/arsenic-found-brown-rice-syrup-organic-foods-baby-185300194.html

Let's all poison the babies! Yeah? Fetuses have rights but once they're born poison is A-OK!

Actually, we're talking about organic foods here. Nobody added the arsenic to it in any form. Instead, the rice crops were grown on ground that was high in arsenic (due to natural reasons, or because of nearby industry that is or used to dump their waste) and apparently someone forgot to check for it. It's not active poisoning, though it's clearly criminal neglegence.

or because of nearby industry that is or used to dump their waste

Didn't say it was criminal but directly or indirectly, there's arsenic coming from somewhere and yes, this is the "inorganic" type that they're mostly concerned with. Also pesticides before the EPA banned a lot of those containing arsenic in 2009....

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Organic arsenic is found naturally in the soil, but a more dangerous kind of the chemical, known as inorganic arsenic, was widely used in pesticides for years before the EPA banned it in 2009. Inorganic arsenic has been linked to lung, bladder, and liver cancer, and exposure to arsenic can affect brain function over time.

[Virex]

Hmm, arsenic isn't exactly something that disappears fast, so there are two possibilities. Either a farmer nearby has been using arsenic-based pesticides, or it has accumulated in the soil over years of use. The later is more probable and also more problematic, because that means the ground in the whole area is unsuited for rice.

[Vector]

I sense an impending doom when this thread has dug too deep and awoken a sleeping Vector. 

We are threading on sacred Hilbert space here.

. . . o_O

I love you guys.  Yes, please keep the derailish punnery to a minimum, but thanks also for just being generally awesome.

[Tellemurius]

http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/arsenic-found-brown-rice-syrup-organic-foods-baby-185300194.html

Let's all poison the babies! Yeah?

Let me guess, China?

USA! USA! USA!

We don't need the EPA, right?
_____________________________________________
http://news.yahoo.com/gay-marriage-bills-head-toward-votes-jersey-maryland-002207308.html
New Jersey's legislature passed gay marriage but of course the Governor is expected to veto it until a fine whimpering pulp and gain massive votes for doing so.

Pfft, EPA, bunch of treehuggers if you ask me!
(sucks on inorganic chemicals in his sandwich)

Hmm, arsenic isn't exactly something that disappears fast, so there are two possibilities. Either a farmer nearby has been using arsenic-based pesticides, or it has accumulated in the soil over years of use. The later is more probable and also more problematic, because that means the ground in the whole area is unsuited for rice.

Arsenic poisoning, been there puked that.

[Reelya]

http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/arsenic-found-brown-rice-syrup-organic-foods-baby-185300194.html

Let's all poison the babies! Yeah?

Let me guess, China?

Linked to pesticides only banned in USA in 2009, according to the article, a whole 2 years ago ... not necessarily aynthing to do with China.

Inorganic Arsenic is the kind of thing that accumulates for a while.

It wasn't industrial run-off, but deliberately applied chemicals to the crops (and legal until recently).

[Andir]

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10786081

Just found it interesting/obvious(?)... I don't know if I'd go as far as irritating/rage/whatever worthy...

[RedKing]

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10786081

Just found it interesting/obvious(?)... I don't know if I'd go as far as irritating/rage/whatever worthy...

The study showed that boys believed their answers would be 3 per cent lower if marked by a woman. The girls thought their results would be 6 per cent higher if marked by a man.

Seriously? That's the huge disparity perception? Bunch of wankers trying to blame someone else, if you ask me. I never factored gender into any decisions about what level of effort I put into a class.

[penguinofhonor]

Not sure if satire.

Like, seriously, this guy is either a closeted white supremacist or writes some really good satire.

[GlyphGryph]

I'm... honestly not sure. His arguments don't really support some of his claims, at least not strongly, but I see nothing about the article that indicates he feels whites are in some way superior or not superior - if anything, he argues AGAINST the white supremacist line that the non-whites are taking over and repressing the whites.

There's certainly some stuff about the article that's odd, to say the least, but it doesn't really seem terribly racist in its arguments or conclusions - aside from, obviously, limiting itself to looking at whites. But there's a great many studies that do that, for whites and other racial categories, so even that doesn't really seem all that odd.

[G-Flex]

Not sure if satire.

Like, seriously, this guy is either a closeted white supremacist or writes some really good satire.

4. White working-class men have a strong work ethic.

This whole section seems to imply that dropping out of the labor force, or being unemployed or underemployed, somehow means you have a poor work ethic. This is an assumption you simply can't make. It could easily mean other things, like that lower-class people are hit harder by economic troubles or have more trouble looking for new jobs.

Also:

If college admission were purely meritocratic — eliminating favoritism for the children of alumni, celebrities and big donors — upper-middle-class children would still be overrepresented. That’s because the applicants who would be accepted instead would also hail overwhelmingly from the upper middle class.

Someone almost, but not quite, understands how privilege works. Sigh. In fact, the whole article sort of reeks of that.

[GlyphGryph]

I agree a lot of it seems /stupid/ - I don't think any of it seems supremacist. Half of it is talking about how whites kind of suck more than people give them credit for (even if his arguments as to why are, as I said, pretty weak)

[penguinofhonor]

Well, this is the part that made me think white supremacist:

Yet, 45 of 50 governors and 96 of 100 U.S. senators were still non-Latino whites in 2010. Whites also were 92 percent of the directors nominated for Academy Awards between 2000 and 2011. They were 96 percent of Fortune 500 chief executives in 2011. The numbers are similar for other influential positions in U.S. society. At least for now, the rhetoric about the fading role of whites in American life outruns reality.

Like, it doesn't seem outright like it, but it sort of smells like "See, the black people are trying to take over but we have all the positions of power still, take pride in that!" When, really, whites in all positions of power is problematic.

[Montague]

I'm not really seeing anything racist in the article, he's mostly citing statistics.

Naturally most people going to universities are going to be upper-middle-class-white-people because whites are still the majority in the USA, around 78% and you have to have money to go to college and that means being at least upper-middle-class, affirmative action or not.

The point of affirmative action is to make college campuses a statistical sample of the national demographics. Something like 78% whites, 12% blacks, 5% Hispanics, 4% Asians, ect. So yeah, there are going to be lots of white people in any given university.

If college admissions were a meritocracy, you'd see more Asians. They are overrepresented in universities and it's much harder for them to be admitted then any other race.