It was logical to think that giving extra oxygen to premature babies (whose undeveloped lungs represent one of the biggest threats to their survival) would be a good thing. An epidemiological study confirmed that doing so caused blindness (I think - it might have been deafness). [/QB]
It is blindness, and at times mental retardation. I had a friend named Kevin while I was growing up who had that happen. He was blind, and had been in an incubator when born because he was so premature. He also never developed mentally past that of a 8-9 year old.
He was a good kid though, and a Cub Scout with me.
His parents did nothing wrong, and followed the recommendations of their doctors....and as a direct result their child was irreparably harmed.
posted
AJ, you bring up a good point.....and it was this point in particular that I wanted to discuss when I got involved in this thread.
That a lot of the surface points Price makes are NOT contrary to current medical beliefs. I don't hear people spouting off that our diets today are so much better than they "non-modern" ones, or that no one needs to be concerned with nutrition. We all accept these things as givens, really....that many things are wrong with the modern diets most of us follow, and that nutrition is key to maintaining health.
But they didn't back when Price was writing.
I find it very interesting to hear what people used to think, and then compare it to what we know today. I love to see how things have evolved over time, and since the body of scientific work has grown so much over the past 100 years science is a great subject to study for examples of how thoughts/beliefs evolve.
For the most part this has remained a great thread. Thank you to all who continue to participate in good faith. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
yes, Price has elements of what are now seperate disciplines in his writing. It genuinely appears he tried to do the best he could with the statistics of the day, but he's mixing medicine, sociology, and a dash of political science together in areas which we now understand are distinct. (although sometimes still related)
AJ
Price's work would probably make a fabulous assigned text for a History of Science class.
Posts: 11265 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
As far as steven is concerned, he appears to have managed to drink Price's bathwater as if it were champagne, and committed infanticide with the baby by throwing it off the Empire State building.
posted
THis is an interesting snapshot of life during the great depression... it was almost worse than a concentration camp!
quote: A report just received from the Bureau of Home Economics, Department of Agriculture, Washington, presents figures for the average amount of the various foods used in different income groups in different parts of the United States. These showed that in general about one-third of the income up to $2500 was spent for food per family; further, that the total flour equivalent ranged from 0.39 to 0.50 pound per capita per day. These quantities will furnish about 829 to 1063 calories per day, per capita. It will be seen at once that this provides a large number of the calories required for growing children and sedentary adults per day. With this number of calories derived from refined flour products there is no adequate provision for a normal amount of such body-building materials as minerals and vitamins. These have been removed, largely, in the milling process, and are largely denied to our modern civilization insofar as the cereal foods are concerned. This includes vitamin E, so essential for the functioning of the pituitary gland, the master governor of the body.
posted
and now.... all kid's cereals are vitamin enriched for a "Complete Breakfast"
I think that's exactly what Dr. Price wanted accomplished and that Price would be very happy to read the nutrition information on the back of a cereal box today. (although I doubt he'd entirely approve of Cap'n Crunch)
quote:His parents did nothing wrong, and followed the recommendations of their doctors....and as a direct result their child was irreparably harmed.
It's likely that the doctors didn't do anything wrong, either. If I remember your age correctly, they had the results of this study and it's quite likely that the choice was risk blindness or let the boy die. It's also possible that they were incorrect in their risk assessment, but I find it hard to fault them for that without knowing something more.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
A couple of quotes from Price, re: nutritional supplements:
"There are two programs now available for meeting the dental caries problem. One is to know first in detail all the physical and chemical factors involved and then proceed. The other is to know how to prevent the disease as the primitives have shown and then proceed. The former is largely the practice of the moderns. The latter is the program suggested by these investigations ... " (emphasis mine).---chapter 16.
" Dr. Wayne Brehm who is associated with two Columbus, Ohio, hospitals has recently published the results (5) of a study of the effect of the treatment received in 540 obstetrical cases divided into six groups of ninety individuals each, on the basis on which their nutrition was reinforced in order to study the comparative effects of the different treatments. The reinforcement of the diet consisted in Group 1 of taking calcium and synthetic vitamin D as viosterol; Group 2, calcium alone; Group 3, viosterol alone; Group 4, calcium and cod liver oil; Group 5, cod liver oil alone and Group 6, no reinforcement. For those receiving the calcium and viosterol there was extensive calcification in the placentae, marked closure of the fontanelle (the normal opening in the top of the infant skull) and marked calcification in the kidneys. For those receiving calcium alone there was no placental calcification, slight closure of the fontanelle and no calcification of the kidneys. Group 3 receiving viosterol had moderate to marked placental calcification, moderate closure of the fontanelle and no calcification of the kidneys. Those receiving cod liver oil alone had very slight placental calcification, slight fontanelle closure and no calcification in the kidneys. Those receiving no reinforcement had very slight placental calcification, normal fontanelle closures and no calcification of the kidneys. The effect on the mother was a prolonging of labor in Group 1 and at birth the fetal heads were less moulded not being able to adjust their shape to the shape of the birth tube. These infants had a general appearance of ossification or postmaturity. This strongly emphasizes the great desirability of using Nature's natural foods instead of modern synthetic substitutes." (emphasis mine).---Chapter 21.
As far as the link between diet and behavior goes....Does anyone here seriously believe that kids fed junk food behave as well as kids fed a better diet?
Pottenger notes several times in his work that the cats that were fed a deficient diet in his study were harder to handle, more prone to biting and scratching, and showed perverted sexual desire or no sex drive at all. ---if you want a word for word quote, that's fine. Ask.
I've also read that most child molesters tend to eat a really awful diet. I can also link you to a story about John Wayne Gacy that says that he was completely addicted to M&Ms, and could not get them in prison. The author of the essay would bring Gacy candy in exchange for Gacy's paintings of clowns, etc., and he said that Gacy would devour the entire bag quickly as soon as they were handed to him.
Are these behaviors, in some cases, to some degree, a result of diet? What do you think?
Oh boy, here comes the crapstorm.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Does anyone here seriously believe that kids fed junk food behave as well as kids fed a better diet?
This question demonstrates how badly you are misinterpreting the nature of the objections to your claims.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:His parents did nothing wrong, and followed the recommendations of their doctors....and as a direct result their child was irreparably harmed.
It's likely that the doctors didn't do anything wrong, either. If I remember your age correctly, they had the results of this study and it's quite likely that the choice was risk blindness or let the boy die. It's also possible that they were incorrect in their risk assessment, but I find it hard to fault them for that without knowing something more.
I wasn't trying to say that the doctors had done anything wrong. They acted in good faith, trying to save a child's life, providing the best care they could at the time.
My point was that even the best meaning person can cause serious, irreparable harm to others...all because they did what "seemed" logical at the time. The problem was with the data and the methodology or the research at that time period, not with the doctors who treated him.
Not that that made his parents feel any better.
That is why I resent people claiming pseudo-science as fact. It can cause so much harm, and is done with so little thought.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Originally posted by steven: Dag, here are the possible answers, to my mind:
a. No, kids misbehave because of what they are taught/see others do.
My response is: I respectfully disagree.
b. Yes, but.....
c. Yes. What else is new?
There IS a third way the conversation could go....most of us would probably say that it is a combination of factors, with diet being a very strong, important factor in behavior.
steven, I really don't have an issue with some of the findings. I do question the methodology though, and the further you go into this research the more the errors in methodology matter.
Dr. Price never said that modern supplements are bad, because he never had the chance to see them. They came along well after his death. We have no real way of measuring how well different things were absorbed and utilized by the people in his studies, because he didn't have any way of doing that back then. It wasn't his fault....but that doesn't change the fact that his results are far harder to verify due to the lack of such data.
Do you know why cats AREN'T used in modern medical research, at least not for things that will be used on humans? Because their physical composition is so different from humans that a lot of things don't extrapolate well. They can (and are) used in some very early preliminary studies, of course, because some basic factors are the same, but there are far too many confounding variables to ever be sure WHY something happens in an experiment for the data to be trusted. At least not without more testing.
Even studies in monkeys and chimps, the best, most similar animals we know of, are not completely effective in transferring data to human studies. It is far better to test on them than not to test of them, of course, but the results are often different between the groups. Even if something happens in three different types of animals, it doesn't necessarily mean that the same thing would happen in primates, marine animals....or humans.
Cat studies may have been the best they knew of back in the 1920's and 1930's, but compared to the body of medical knowledge we have these days any study that completely rely on cat data is completely flawed, and not a good model for comparisons.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
One of Porter's favorite facts is that the human male is more genetically similar to a chimpanzee male than to a human female. [/randomtangent]
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote:Originally posted by beverly: One of Porter's favorite facts is that the human male is more genetically similar to a chimpanzee male than to a human female. [/randomtangent]
I can't tell if this is a joke or not.
Posts: 1658 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
Parents who allow their children to eat only junk food are likely to be parents who allow their children to misbehave.
You now have another, equally possible connection between junkfood and poor behavior, in which there is no direct causation. Whether or not it's true is up for debate, but the fact that it makes as much sense as the idea that the junkfood is a causal agent in poor behavior is of high importance to this discussion.
Of course, we've been over this before. Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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posted
It is still good to point out. Most things, particularily when it comes to human behavior, is not black and white , one thing or another. Trying to cast the issues like that is not science, and probably won't answer anything.
Now, in measuring physical characteristics, or applying science to a specific issue once confounding variables have been accounted for properly...then it becomes a yes or no type of thing.
posted
One of the things that separates scientific from unscientific modes of explanation is what happens when we reach the limits of the data. A scientist will generally say "needs further study" or make some sort of educated guess laden with a series of caveats (such as...this hasn't been found in humans, but...). The unscientific person (and in this case pseudo-scientific) becomes more strident, repeats the already stated elements, and acts as if the case is proven. In broader terms, the unscientific person will earnestly try to substitute logic (and logic alone) to fill the gaps in the data. Scientists use logic to point to possibiliites. The unscientific person discussing "science" uses logic to as a substitute for further study. I suspect this arises out of the desire to have issues "settled," but I haven't actually studied the psychology of unscientific reasoning in science, so I'll just throw that out there as a provisional hypothesis.
I am probably one of the few people on this BB who has read eugenics "research" monographs in the original. Granted, I was limited to only those publishing in the English language, but they often cited other sources' "data." There are good reasons that the word "eugenics" has such a bad reputation. It's not that they were always wrong, it is that they were led down the garden path by substituting logic where data were lacking. And they came to some conclusions that were driven more by the goodness of fit with pre-established cultural biases than they were driven by the data. The racial determinants of intelligence were only the most easily refutable of these. And if you read it, the logical arguments go something like this:
The "northern European 'type,' by virtue of having to survive in a harsher climate, became both hardier and more cooperative. Interpersonal cooperation required the development of bigger brains to deal with more complex language..."
and so on.
These people weren't bad logicians. They could spin a "just so" story as good as the rest of us. They actually knew their genetics (from a Mendelian and Darwinian viewpoint) and were drawing logical conclusions from the observations of the state of the world at that time. Everywhere where the races came into contact, the white/northern races prevailed. They had better technology as evidence of their greater intelligence. It was just the natural order of things expressing itself in a grand sorting out of the world as it must be.
The idea of an African genesis of the human species was actually quite a shock to some, but even that could be fit into the eugenics model -- as, indeed can almost ANY result given enough time to think creatively about it. Humans evolved in Africa and the more adventurous ones -- the more curious ones, migrated away. Not the weaker ones being pushed out, but the ones that had the most curiousity... See where this is going?
So anyway, what I want to say about eugenicists is that they weren't stupid, nor were they acting in a particularly scientific manner. They had a bigger agenda -- explaining the "manifest" superiority of their own kind over all other humans. It was used to justify a lot of horrid stuff, but it was all supposedly very cut and dried "science."
Sadly, one thing they didn't have is the kinds of peer review we have today. Nor was science more or less the exclusive province of academia (where, all other things aside, it meant that there could be some management of the field). Amateur "scientists" wrote all kinds of stuff after reading and synposizing (usually incorrectly) the work of others.
Just as there were people earnestly trying to do these things in the name of furthering mankind (or some other equally high-minded goal) there were people hoping to make a buck. The pseudoscience of phrenology is just a expression of the lower end of this continuum. People could cobble together a systematic viewpoint that had all the trappings of science, except the rigorous restrictions on only drawing conclusions supported by actual data.
But hey, even the real scientists don't always restrict themselves so closely...so why require this of amateurs?
Why indeed?
What I find particuarly irksome in the hucksterism of the Price-Pottenger institute, and the people who continue to urge that we draw our conclusions from their 70 year old data is that AT BEST they are like the eugenecists -- substituting logic for missing data. AT WORST, they are hucksters and I label them so. Because they aren't committed to use of modern data. No no! They say instead that human nutritional research took a wrong turn somewhere soon after Dr. Price published and there's some sort of medical conspiracy to block us all from learning THE TRUTH! What we really need to do is ignore 70 years of research and pick up where Dr. Price left off. Oh, and by the way...buy our books and materials.
As has been amply pointed out here:
1) Price was an amateur. Not bad for his day, but seriously lacking in some areas simply because he couldn't have known about discoveries that were not yet discovered. Not his fault. But surely anyone coming along after him might want to be familiar with those 70 years of nutritional research.
2) studies in animals have no direct bearing on studies in humans. They can in some cases point to possible things to try when dealing with human ailments, but you can't just leap from cats to humans and consider the matter settled.
3) In correlational studies, there are ALWAYS confounding variables that need to be considered. And the furhter away you get from relatively simple things like metabolic effects to talk about effects on whole systems, whole humans, and then nebulous concepts like "intelligence" the more confounding variables you need to consider. And the more likely that your correlation has no causal link at all.
A case in point on "simple" intelligence. Research done on flies going through a maze. With each successive generation you pick the flies that solve the maze in the least amount of time and let the "winners" breed. In a few generations, you have superior maze-flying fly. The G-10 flies are so much better than the G-1 flies that you almost want to call them a new species. So...try them out in a new type of maze. Guess what... Turns out you bread flies that had a specific behavior (like a bias for flying in straight lines, or never landing on the lower part of a wall) and they only looked more intelligent because the test was one they would excel in.
Rats are smarter than humans. If your only test is spatial memory. They can "remember" places in a sequence much, much better than the average human. Therefore...smarter.
The point is that you have to be careful and check...You should not be unscientific and just jump to conclusions that because you were breeding for intelligence, that the flies and their chromosomes were with the program.
4) Price was working with a then-current scientific method. I totally refute this. At the same time that Price was doing his work, and the eugencists were doing their work, there were people making genuine discoveries in science and proving their conclusions to be correct. It wasn't that the scientific method wasn't well known, it was that people felt more free to ignore it when it would've potentially taken too long, or spoiled their beautiful theory. Price, for all I know, only wanted to point out that better nutrition was important (as AJ has said). And, as I have said, he was a well-intentioned amateur who didn't really do all the work necessary to prove his point.
At the same time he was doing his work, we had people developing detailed theories of associative learning and memory -- a notorioulsy tough area to work in, that have stood up well for a good long time. We had people developing clear understanding of disease and treatment that have helped save countless lives since then. It wasn't impossible to do good science. It was just more difficult.
And again, maybe I shouldn't really blame Price, the dentist/amateur scientist, but those who have misappropriated his name and deliberately misunderstood and misapplied his work.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
By the way...Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA...not it's existence. People new about chromosomes and mapping of traits to chromosomes back when Price did his work. It wasn't a secret that there were genetic bases to traits. People might've been a little less sure of how it all worked than we think we are today, but it wasn't like a switch was thrown. People educated in biology had a pretty decent model for how things worked from a genotype => phenotype point of view.
That's one reason why we don't make excuses for the eugenics movement. They showed sufficient logical abilities to cobble together some remarkable "explanations" based on their understanding of genetics. They just didn't bother to see if their model was really valid. And while they were spouting some outrageously biased and harmful stuff, the data were clearly available that should've given them at least a sense of unease with their conclusions. They just didn't see it.
I have recommended it before, but if you are interested in this stuff you owe it to yourself to read The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould. It covers IQ testing, eugenics, the brain-case measurement movement and lots more stuff. It has excellent examples of real scientists succumbing to investigator bias. It's a fascinating read.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
Bob, I looked at that book and thought it was very, very interesting. I think I will have to pick that up now.
I have been thinking I need to start reading more non-fiction for years, but this years NYR is to actually do it. I started last year, and read about 7-8 of them, but considering that I go through about 3-4 books a week at times that really wasn't much change.
I have wanted to read Isaac's Storm since I saw Mr. Larson talk about it on BookTV, of all things. I just bought In the Heart of the Sea this month, and will probably start that soon. The Mismeasure of Man looks wonderful, and that will probably be the first non-fiction book of 2007 for me.
posted
Thanks CT. I think your posts in this thread have been remarkable!
Kwea, I'm so glad. That book is among my favorite non-fiction of all time. Stephen Jay Gould was such a brilliant science writer. I enjoyed his column in Natural History magazine for years. He was my favorite essayist doing popular presentations of Biology in the 20th century. I hope you enjoy it.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
Bob...what did you think of "The Bell Curve"? I know that Gould re-released MMM and updated it to respond to the authors, and that one of my favorite boos, GG&S was written partly to refute some of their claims as well. I still find that it sparked a huge discussion about these issues, and probably will add that book to my list as well.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
I would probably have to re-read The Bell Curve to recall enough of it to give an opinion.
I enjoyed Guns, Germs and Steel, but have had some problems with Jared Diamond's writing in the past. That one was awesome, though.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
A lot of the things people seem to complain about when discussing "The Bell Curve" are things the authors themselves didn't say or try to imply. People read all sorts of things into it, of course, and the authors knew they were messing with nolitile issues.
I plan on reading that as well, and probably will post on it once I have finished.
God, my NF reading list is huge now. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:The principal mutation [lactose tolerance], found among Nilo-Saharan-speaking ethnic groups of Kenya and Tanzania, arose 2,700 to 6,800 years ago, according to genetic estimates, Dr. Tishkoff's group is to report in the journal Nature Genetics on Monday. This fits well with archaeological evidence suggesting that pastoral peoples from the north reached northern Kenya about 4,500 years ago and southern Kenya and Tanzania 3,300 years ago ... Genetic evidence shows that the mutations conferred an enormous selective advantage on their owners, enabling them to leave almost 10 times as many descendants as people without them. The mutations have created 'one of the strongest genetic signatures of natural selection yet reported in humans,' the researchers write.
(Emphasis added. I linked the /. blurb - you can view the whole article from there. I haven't done that myself, yet.)
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
This is entertaining. Bob, every time you start talking down to me like you're my uncle, I laugh harder and harder. And harder. Keep it up. Your well-meaning cluelessness brightens my day.
As far as behavior and food goes, no one has satisfactorily explained away the fact that cats on a deficient diet behaved much differently that cats on a better diet, down to the fact of very different sexual behavior.
Bob, it sounds like you're saying there's no connection between food and health. It also sounds like you're saying that there's no connection between bone structure, including both bone density bone and size, and diet. Pottenger and others proved that bone structure is extremely dependent on diet in every animal species studied. You can find straight-toothed, healthy natives in backwaters all over the globe.
Think about from my point of view, Bob. I go to Costa Rica and find perfectly straight teeth among all the jungle-raised Indianos I meet. I grew up in the US, so I have seen plenty of crooked teeth. How is it shocking that I would conclude, after reading both Price and Pottenger and thinking about my own personal observations, that crooked teeth and poor health are mainly diet-related?
I definitely admit that moderate physical activity is part of it too. There's no question that exercise increases bone density.
It however, is purely fanciful to assume that exercise can completely counteract a steady diet of junk food in forming bones and teeth. I don't think exercise can get rid of your cavities.
Finally, I personally have noted that when I eat better, I have more energy, and therefore am more likely to exercise. I also have noted that I have a lot more stamina for exercise when I eat better.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by steven: This is entertaining. Bob, every time you start talking down to me like you're my uncle, I laugh harder and harder. And harder. Keep it up. Your well-meaning cluelessness brightens my day.
As far as behavior and food goes, no one has satisfactorily explained away the fact that cats on a deficient diet behaved much differently that cats on a better diet, down to the fact of very different sexual behavior.
Bob, it sounds like you're saying there's no connection between food and health. It also sounds like you're saying that there's no connection between bone structure, including both bone density bone and size, and diet. Pottenger and others proved that bone structure is extremely dependent on diet in every animal species studied. You can find straight-toothed, healthy natives in backwaters all over the globe.
Think about from my point of view, Bob. I go to Costa Rica and find perfectly straight teeth among all the jungle-raised Indianos I meet. I grew up in the US, so I have seen plenty of crooked teeth. How is it shocking that I would conclude, after reading both Price and Pottenger and thinking about my own personal observations, that crooked teeth and poor health are mainly diet-related?
I definitely admit that moderate physical activity is part of it too. There's no question that exercise increases bone density.
It however, is purely fanciful to assume that exercise can completely counteract a steady diet of junk food in forming bones and teeth. I don't think exercise can get rid of your cavities.
Finally, I personally have noted that when I eat better, I have more energy, and therefore am more likely to exercise. I also have noted that I have a lot more stamina for exercise when I eat better.
Translated: I didn't read your post, so let me re-hash what I've already said and toss in a personal attack to spice things up!
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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posted
More importantly, steven, is the apparent fact that you either a) haven't read this thread or b) don't understand what has been posted on this thread.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by steven: As if personal attacks are in short supply in my detractors' posts.
Translated: I'm feeling threatened by other people's superior debate skills, so I will fall back on my superiority complex to comfort myself.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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posted
It's what's being implied, Dag, not what I'm actually being called. It's also not Bob, mainly, but Kwea, who called me an arrogant ass over on sakeriver when he knew I was reading that forum.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by steven: It's what's being implied, Dag, not what I'm actually being called. It's also not Bob, mainly, but Kwea, who called me an arrogant ass over on sakeriver when he knew I was reading that forum.
Translated: I can't remember when Bob's been a meanie mean head to me, so I'll ignore your point and talk about somebody else.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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posted
Bob has already admitted several times that he regrets the tone he took with me last year on this same issue.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by steven: Bob has already admitted several times that he regrets the tone he took with me last year on this same issue.
Translated: I can't admit to myself that Bob is being nice, so I'll talk about another time when he may or may not have been mean. I can't remember, so I'll just ignore you so that I can keep padding these feelings of persecution.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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posted
Primal, I'd consider your mockery a page or two ago to count as a personal attack. Does that count in your book, too?
Let me say it another way--my ego's on the line here, to some extent. When you cheat in a fight against someone who's ego is on the line....and I do call comparing giving oxygen to premature babies to eating a diet that has proven itself over tens of thousands of years to be cheating. One of those two things had 50-200 years of partially theory and partially observation behind it. The other has at least some science behind it, and thousands of years of practice behind it.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:It's what's being implied, Dag, not what I'm actually being called. It's also not Bob, mainly, but Kwea, who called me an arrogant ass over on sakeriver when he knew I was reading that forum.
Well, think about it from Kwea's perspective. He grows up on the internet, where there's no shortage of arrogant asses. Then, he spends some time around steven, who's also grown up on the internet. Do you really blame him for drawing the inevitable conclusion that steven is an arrogant ass? I mean, the facts are all there, right? Plus, there's not denying the conclusion that (1) cats tend to be arrogant asses, and (2) cats == humans in all ways.
Seriously, I'm starting to wonder if you're functionally illiterate. That's not a slam -- I'd honestly like to see some test results. I can't fathom how someone could so badly, repeatedly, unerringly misinterpret so many crystal clear sentences.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Originally posted by steven: Primal, I'd consider your mockery a page or two ago to count as a personal attack. Does that count in your book, too?
Let me say it another way--my ego's on the line here, to some extent. When you cheat in a fight against someone who's ego is on the line....and I do call comparing giving oxygen to premature babies to eating a diet that has proven itself over tens of thousands of years to be cheating. One of those two things had 50-200 years of partially theory and partially observation behind it. The other has at least some science behind it, and thousands of years of practice behind it.
Translated: I don't understand this "humor" you speak of- especially Irony. That one always confuses me.
Second Paragraph Translated: I'm trying to confuse Primal Curve by being completely unintelligible. Try "translating" this, you son of a sweaty person!
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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posted
Speaking strickly from a cat's perspective, (and having been the servant of several cats in my lifetime), cats do not "equal humans in all ways". Cats are demonstrably superior to humans in all ways. Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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