What's on your mind?

[Raiden]

*advertises miniespionage* Join #espionage_graveyard and win a prize!
Prize is...a cake from SA XD

[MoonRaven]

*jumps in*

[Kleene Onigiri]

So annoying how people see politics so simple as "good" and "bad" and nothing in between...

[Hime-Chan]

This is our main problem when I say "genetically modified" things: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto
I'm not saying that all of it is bad, I'm just wary of it! Maybe it's just because the EU and especially France haven't been positive about it

If the USA, and now most other countries, didn't have a problem with added sugar and other weird stuff in food, then obesity wouldn't be such a problem. I was lucky enough, that even if my parents weren't working desk jobs, cooked most of our meals, and taught me how to cook. Food is a lot more important than the latest clothes and phones and whatever. I don't know why everyone thinks that vegetables are expensive, they aren't, especially if you buy them frozen or in cans!


I am also not saying that France is better than rest of the world, it's laughably not. I facepalm so much at my country that I actually left it. And while you mentionned the "spotlight" of the USA, that's the main problem, it feels like everything your country do is bigger and better, while it sure isn't. There's been so much meddling, and trying to teach the rest of the world lessons while they let their own population have basically no healthcare and poor education (and tv-shows aren't helping, that hero complex makes us want to gag).

Which is sad because there's a lot of scientific research going on in the US (and probably other stuff that I'm not aware of), it's just all tarnished by the rest.

About the anti-vaccination movement: considering that the only people I've heard talking about it are Americans, I categorize that as an American problem.

Brycec: I'd go with either gruyère/cheddar or mozzarella

[Elixir]

Some food taste better with milk products. That's what milk are for for some adults. I put large amount of cheese to my pasta. I don't care about the fat content, as long as it's delicious. I'll just work out the excess fat later.

Btw, almond milk tasted weird the first time I tasted it, but I eventually liked it. I'm more inclined with Soya though.

About GMO, our planet is changing, and it's evident from the natural calamities that we see or encounter. Our soil is no longer as fertile as it was before. Organic solutions are sometimes not enough to fill the world food table, as it's ever becoming more and more expensive. Hence, there is necessity to adapt to these changes. For example, a rice variety that is genetically modified to resist pest or lessen it's water requirements during draught, these efforts of scientist help farmers in creating food for us that is sustainable and economical. I don't see anything wrong with it.

Choosing what food to eat is your choice, however, pointing malice to what others would have, scientifically proven to be safe, is not nice. Just saying.

[Kor]

About the anti-vaccination movement: considering that the only people I've heard talking about it are Americans, I categorize that as an American problem.

This is like sticking your head in the sand, to be honest. At the very least, this attitude shows willingness to proclaim a stance without trying to educate yourself on this issue. I obviously don't expect people to educate themselves on stuff they were never interested in or stuff that have no value to them, but if you're bothering to make such a categorization, at the very least I think you owe it to yourself to not mislead yourself like that.
I mean, a simple 5 minutes worth of google research would show you that this problem is much more than just an American problem. One of the most infamous papers regarding (and supporting) anti vaccinations originated in the UK. Heck, I also saw once an article in Israel about parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids.

[brycec]

This is our main problem when I say "genetically modified" things: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto
I'm not saying that all of it is bad, I'm just wary of it! Maybe it's just because the EU and especially France haven't been positive about it

If the USA, and now most other countries, didn't have a problem with added sugar and other weird stuff in food, then obesity wouldn't be such a problem. I was lucky enough, that even if my parents weren't working desk jobs, cooked most of our meals, and taught me how to cook. Food is a lot more important than the latest clothes and phones and whatever. I don't know why everyone thinks that vegetables are expensive, they aren't, especially if you buy them frozen or in cans!


I am also not saying that France is better than rest of the world, it's laughably not. I facepalm so much at my country that I actually left it. And while you mentionned the "spotlight" of the USA, that's the main problem, it feels like everything your country do is bigger and better, while it sure isn't. There's been so much meddling, and trying to teach the rest of the world lessons while they let their own population have basically no healthcare and poor education (and tv-shows aren't helping, that hero complex makes us want to gag).

Which is sad because there's a lot of scientific research going on in the US (and probably other stuff that I'm not aware of), it's just all tarnished by the rest.

About the anti-vaccination movement: considering that the only people I've heard talking about it are Americans, I categorize that as an American problem.

Brycec: I'd go with either gruyère/cheddar or mozzarella

I thought cheddar was yellow, but then again I have have only seen a pumpkin that was not orange once, so something probably happens before it gets to market. It did not taste like mozzarella either.

As for your healthcare and education in the US complaint, you do realize that a lot of data used to compared those two sectors may not actually be the truth don't you? After all, such data is nothing more than statistics, which like things on the Internet, can be made to say anything a person wants.

Now, the generation that is succeeding mine does seem to be getting dumber, because not only is propaganda still being shoved down their throats, which I am sure happens in a lot of the countries around the world, but also they are also dealing with a system that punishes kids for getting the right answer but only doing it one way. There is also the fact that teachers are not really fired in the US and the only person that has fired teachers so to date in the US, to my memory, has been hated by the people in their area, so that means terrible teachers are still working in schools.

The healthcare system is no better, since as I have already mentioned here doctors just had out drugs left and right. While there are those that do need medication for their ailments, that does not mean that everything needs to be treated with meds. Then you have the fact that people think that they need health insurance, when it is the very thing that makes medical expenses high. For example, there was a doctor that was able to charge to less than $150 for not accepting insurance, according to The Blaze (I am linking here because the source cited on the site has something annoying to go through to read the article).

Edit: The source on the statement about a man paying less than $20,000 in hospital bills could not be found, so I deleted the claim from my post.

[Jecka]

MAL's been hacked and Nyaa's down for maintenance. Great weekend so far. :V

OMM 2: Why is it so muggy today? *dies*

[Stopwatch]

About the anti-vaccination movement: considering that the only people I've heard talking about it are Americans, I categorize that as an American problem.

This is like sticking your head in the sand, to be honest. At the very least, this attitude shows willingness to proclaim a stance without trying to educate yourself on this issue. I obviously don't expect people to educate themselves on stuff they were never interested in or stuff that have no value to them, but if you're bothering to make such a categorization, at the very least I think you owe it to yourself to not mislead yourself like that.
I mean, a simple 5 minutes worth of google research would show you that this problem is much more than just an American problem. One of the most infamous papers regarding (and supporting) anti vaccinations originated in the UK. Heck, I also saw once an article in Israel about parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids.

The stats for the US really aren't great, "according to recent findings from PhRMA's Second Annual National Health Survey, 1 in 4 Americans believe vaccines can cause autism in young children, including 30 percent of adults who are responsible for raising a child. This troubling belief was also more prevalent among younger Americans of child-bearing age 18-34 (30 percent) and those without a college degree (30 percent)." To give some sort of comparison, in my classes at school I don't know a single person who's refused a vaccination which unfortunately is anecdotal evidence, meh.

That said, that "autism link" thing (which originated here, ugh) is seriously messed up :/. It's been disproven so many times and even if it was true, would some people really rather have their children have measles or some other horrible disease than be autistic? Those priorities are pretty skewed :/. (I had a quick look for UK stats but all I got was a measles outbreak in Wales fairly recently so.)

Personally my opinion is that unless someone has a compromised immune system or some other valid reason for not being vaccinated then they should be vaccinated. If a parent doesn't have their child vaccinated then not only are they putting their child in danger, but they're also - when grouped together with all the other people refusing vaccinations - making it so that crowd immunity isn't as strong and so making it more likely that people who can't have the vaccines for genuine reasons aren't safe either.

And in the UK (or at least I know it's so for England and Wales, though Scotland and N.Ireland's education systems being different means I don't know for sure for them) it's part of the National Curriculum to learn about this stuff (no, I don't know how long it's been in there for, it could be a relatively recent thing, idk). The fact that some people still believe in some of the myths about vaccination after that worries me tbh. But then I sort of vaguely know several people who take the Bible literally so .

EDIT: Oh, and I ended up talking earlier today to someone who did about some stuff on dairy products as part of her degree. I found it an amusing coincidence after the discussions on lactose-intolerance in here yesterday.

EDITEDIT: ...wait, what? Do you have a source for the claim about our soil not being as fertile as in the past? There may be issues with farming which have driven us to use different tactics (pesticides, for one >_<), but I don't think I've ever heard that as a reason before.

[MoonRaven]

I've moved now. Feels a bit funny.

[Iwamoto Yuri]

where did you move moonie?

[Jd-]

@Hime-Chan: There are a lot of issues that need to be addressed in that post--not simply from the perspective of proving someone wrong, but from addressing the same misinformation that is exactly the reason this problem continues to persist indefinitely.

I can tell from the expected citation of Monsanto that you are very unfamiliar with what genetically-engineered crops actually are. Being fearful of consuming GMOs due to Monsanto is exactly like being afraid of driving a car because of General Motors. This is because of a simple fact: All GMOs are not the same nor were they ever expected to be. It is a very broad concept and by no means one that can be written off in such a way.

Let's get on with the anti-vaccination movement. It all began when British "doctor" Andrew Wakefield published a "study" (in the interests of profiting from it directly) in once-respected British medical journal The Lancet postulating that the MMR vaccine causes autism. This affected immunization rates in many, many countries around the world--the U.S., the UK, Ireland, much of Europe, Asia. This is because fear-mongering and misinformation spreads quickly. This is doubly so when it concerns the lives of children, as all parents want what's best for their children and they do not want to risk them "contracting" autism as a result of being given a vaccine at their directive. As it turns out, Wakefield's financially-motivated "study" was completely wrong but not before the damage had been done. His legacy is now that of being complicit in the endangerment of human civilization as a whole. I suspect you'll feel a little angry when you see a child with whooping cough and know their suffering is almost definitely the product of one man's greed and shortsightedness.

This issue is extremely important, even beyond just the hysterics in Europe and the Americas:

In 2003 in northern Nigeria—a country which at that time was considered provisionally polio free—a fatwa was issued declaring that the polio vaccine was a conspiracy by the United States and the United Nations against the Muslim faith, saying also that the drops were designed to sterilize the true believers. Subsequently, polio reappeared in Nigeria and spread from there to several other countries. Health workers administering polio vaccine have been targeted and killed by gunmen on motorcycles in Kano.

To summarize the issue as succinctly as possible: It is important for everyone to be vaccinated. The vaccines will not work on everyone to begin with, and some will be ineligible to be vaccinated. To combat this, we have another resort that's even more effective: herd immunity. By vaccinating the rest of us, we can protect ourselves and double our defenses. This has been proven to be extremely effective over the past several decades, but it is now faltering due entirely to the anti-vaccination movement.

If we assume that Wakefield is right and that vaccines do cause autism (they don't), it would still be worth it to continue vaccinating. The video below sums up everything you need to know in a minute and a half:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfdZTZQvuCo

it feels like everything your country do is bigger and better, while it sure isn't. There's been so much meddling, and trying to teach the rest of the world lessons while they let their own population have basically no healthcare and poor education (and tv-shows aren't helping, that hero complex makes us want to gag). Which is sad because there's a lot of scientific research going on in the US (and probably other stuff that I'm not aware of), it's just all tarnished by the rest.

To me, though, that sounds a lot more like the product of a needless inferiority complex from the "other side". There are plenty of good things about France without resorting to that kind of rhetoric. If we went on stereotypes and generalizations, all France would be known for to the outside world would be being filled with an aimless and lazy population who spend all of their time striking to get out of work and also always surrenders--which is completely unfair and not something I or anyone mindful of the rest of the world would believe. However, that is what you get with generalizations, and it's the exact same for those regarding not just America but anywhere else.

Falling into the trap I described earlier of projecting your misgivings of your own country onto another is really something that should be avoided. It ultimately causes you to defend the wrong things and ignore the right ones.

[MoonRaven]

where did you move moonie?

To the campus of my new studying place.

OMM: I just finished watching Doctor Who. The episode was quite good.

[Elixir]

EDITEDIT: ...wait, what? Do you have a source for the claim about our soil not being as fertile as in the past? There may be issues with farming which have driven us to use different tactics (pesticides, for one >_<), but I don't think I've ever heard that as a reason before.

Uhmm.. there are lot's of factors affecting soil fertility, and I think it's pretty obvious that continued use of its nutrients will cause the decline in its fertility, hence the use of fertilizer, organic or chemical. If you do some googling, you'll see in graphs that there is a trend of increase in fertilizer consumption over the years. Obviously, the demand for food rises as population increases, and with limited agricultural areas (and some are converted to residential or industrial use), land use will intensify to yield more crops. There is also the problem of decreasing arable land per population throughout the years. If you wanna go technical, try read "Soil Fertility Decline in the Tropics" by Alfred Hartmink and http://www.fao.org/ag/magazine/0306sp1.htm

Personally, I've seen the decline in the yield of vegetables within our land primarily due to soil degradation, excessive rainfall, and soil acidity. As if it's not the same as before as I was saying.

[Hime-Chan]

@Hime-Chan: There are a lot of issues that need to be addressed in that post--not simply from the perspective of proving someone wrong, but from addressing the same misinformation that is exactly the reason this problem continues to persist indefinitely.

I can tell from the expected citation of Monsanto that you are very unfamiliar with what genetically-engineered crops actually are. Being fearful of consuming GMOs due to Monsanto is exactly like being afraid of driving a car because of General Motors. This is because of a simple fact: All GMOs are not the same nor were they ever expected to be. It is a very broad concept and by no means one that can be written off in such a way.

Let's get on with the anti-vaccination movement. It all began when British "doctor" Andrew Wakefield published a "study" (in the interests of profiting from it directly) in once-respected British medical journal The Lancet postulating that the MMR vaccine causes autism. This affected immunization rates in many, many countries around the world--the U.S., the UK, Ireland, much of Europe, Asia. This is because fear-mongering and misinformation spreads quickly. This is doubly so when it concerns the lives of children, as all parents want what's best for their children and they do not want to risk them "contracting" autism as a result of being given a vaccine at their directive. As it turns out, Wakefield's financially-motivated "study" was completely wrong but not before the damage had been done. His legacy is now that of being complicit in the endangerment of human civilization as a whole. I suspect you'll feel a little angry when you see a child with whooping cough and know their suffering is almost definitely the product of one man's greed and shortsightedness.

This issue is extremely important, even beyond just the hysterics in Europe and the Americas:

In 2003 in northern Nigeria—a country which at that time was considered provisionally polio free—a fatwa was issued declaring that the polio vaccine was a conspiracy by the United States and the United Nations against the Muslim faith, saying also that the drops were designed to sterilize the true believers. Subsequently, polio reappeared in Nigeria and spread from there to several other countries. Health workers administering polio vaccine have been targeted and killed by gunmen on motorcycles in Kano.

To summarize the issue as succinctly as possible: It is important for everyone to be vaccinated. The vaccines will not work on everyone to begin with, and some will be ineligible to be vaccinated. To combat this, we have another resort that's even more effective: herd immunity. By vaccinating the rest of us, we can protect ourselves and double our defenses. This has been proven to be extremely effective over the past several decades, but it is now faltering due entirely to the anti-vaccination movement.

If we assume that Wakefield is right and that vaccines do cause autism (they don't), it would still be worth it to continue vaccinating. The video below sums up everything you need to know in a minute and a half:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfdZTZQvuCo

Eh, I wasn't saying that vaccination isn't important, I'm just saying that I've never heard people publicly claiming that vaccination caused autism or whatever by anyone in the last 10 years. Most of the children's vaccines are either compulsory or reimbursed. Every person I know is vaccinated.

it feels like everything your country do is bigger and better, while it sure isn't. There's been so much meddling, and trying to teach the rest of the world lessons while they let their own population have basically no healthcare and poor education (and tv-shows aren't helping, that hero complex makes us want to gag). Which is sad because there's a lot of scientific research going on in the US (and probably other stuff that I'm not aware of), it's just all tarnished by the rest.

To me, though, that sounds a lot more like the product of a needless inferiority complex from the "other side". There are plenty of good things about France without resorting to that kind of rhetoric. If we went on stereotypes and generalizations, all France would be known for to the outside world would be being filled with an aimless and lazy population who spend all of their time striking to get out of work and also always surrenders--which is completely unfair and not something I or anyone mindful of the rest of the world would believe. However, that is what you get with generalizations, and it's the exact same for those regarding not just America but anywhere else.

Falling into the trap I described earlier of projecting your misgivings of your own country onto another is really something that should be avoided. It ultimately causes you to defend the wrong things and ignore the right ones.

My point wasn't, and is still not to say that France is better than the USA, my point is that both aren't better than the other.
But just to be annoying, and I say this with sarcasm: At least we still have union who try to protect our workers
All of my classes on American History that I studied at university were taught by Americans teachers who had some reasons to have a rather negative view on the US (one of them being a communist indian-american and the other a pro-soviet which the CIA has a file on), might be the reason. I was not trying to be angry or anything, really.
I was trying to say show that the negative views on your country mostly stemmed from 1. the medias and 2. politicians.
We rarely hear all the horror stories you have happening in Europe, they don't feel blown out of proportions. When something happens in the USA, we hear about it for weeks, it gets a bit annoying after a while.
Most of our sensational pieces are of our president mussel cheating on his girlfriend with some actress, with a few murders of drug-dealers here and there.