Overruling NYC’s Ban on Large Sodas

Oh, and tax the heck out of lawns, which do nothing but waste water, and make it legal everywhere (by making it a requirement for a federally conforming mortgage) to grow and sell vegetables at your home.

Hear hear! The social institution of lawns and the strange community by-laws that accompany it always were an abomination.

We always had to legislate these things. It’s no different from “forced” retirement saving. In the anarchist utopia, where people’s true selves are permitted to match their ideal selves, it won’t be necessary by definition. Otherwise there are negative externalities that need to be dealt with.

Now what exactly needs to be controlled is a matter for science…

…Oh, and tax the heck out of lawns, which do nothing but waste water…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Having lived in an “emerging” third world country for the last decade this (above quote) is the thing that irks me most. The first world’s galactic waste of water; but not just water, water that is fit for drinking right out of the tap, used for everything but human consumption.
Here, 90+% of tap water is NOT fit for human ingestion; for that we have to buy RO water separately. Nowhere, that I’m aware of, is drinking quality water used for anything else.

I lived overseas (Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, India) plenty when I was a kid, I’m aware of the drinking water issues.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Didn’t know that, interesting. Most have no idea (as you already know).
The U.S. is so broken; I’ve no expectation of anything but a dystopian future.
As the Borg were so fond of saying; resistance is futile.
Of course, I’ll never lie down for that or any of the other stupid human tricks.
Cheers Ian; don’t let the bastards get you…

I have no problem with what Bloomberg was trying to accomplish, but the judge was right that the exceptions (convenience stores, > 50% milk beverages, etc.) made the law capricious, and, IMHO, self-defeating. Hopefully the city will rewrite the law without the exceptions.

To respond the way I think a conservative would:
The government shouldn’t interfere in the market by eliminating subsidies.

I like the lawn tax idea but Scotts is too important an interest group.

Lawns where I live serve a needed function. the nearby Passaic River floods and lawns and trees absorb the water. Overbuilding leads directly to rather frequent flooding. Overbuilding has taken the form of mcmansions on relatively small lots (on third to four tenths of an acre for a 4,000 to 4,500 foot house. The standard house of 1,500 to 2,000 square feet sits on on half an acre.

The other forms of local over building are big box stores. Zoning which had been pretty restrictive has been taken out of local hands and moved to the state government which approves everything that is large and corporate. The power of local zoning now is restricted to permits for fences and other nonsense issues.

Zoning itself is highly problematic. In most of Western Europe, mixing most commercial and residential uses is done as a matter of course. Urban apartments and row houses sometimes exist facing an inner courtyard with retail and office space on the outer courtyard. A lot of US/Canada suburban pathology is created by demanding that no one buy anything where someone may build a house. The big box phenomenon is a natural extension of this.

Lawns meaning greenspace is not itself the problem, inherently. The problem is the artificial watered manicured lawn, with an enforced grass monoculture and no other use permitted but decorative. It’s intended to let people ape English gentry—or force them to.

I’m puzzled by people who object to taxing corn and sugar products, but seem to have no objections to the very heavy federal subsidies that corn and sugar enjoy. Does it have something to do with preserving illusions about individual free choice? If I can see the tax raising the cost of what I buy, it’s the interfering government nanny state. If I can’t see the subsidy lowering the cost of what I buy, there’s no government interference. Is that it?

The world is too complex now for any individual to know enough to make the wise, informed choices that we’re told we ought to make. The information we get is provided by corporations out to make profits, and the information is provided in ways that create emotional longings. In this context, agents supporting wise decisions should use incentives to mitigate the damage.

Ian,

I wouldn’t use marijuana laws to justify anything, there are already too many underclass rotting in jails while killers roam free.

“limits on plate size in restaurants”, NO, how would you police that…TSA?

“tax fast food very heavily”, NO, you’d kill off a lot of small business’s, while McDonald’s would use lawyers to make sure it got the lowest rate.

“increasing the minimum wage to at least $14/hour”, YES and while we are at it, end all the practices that have led to a declining wage for average US citizens, H1-B’s, L-1’s, TN’s and a host of others that bring in 450,000/yr into the STEM professions

http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/lobbyist-congressional-cheap-labor-drone-marches

“Get rid of ALL the corn subsidies”, YES, make Iowa the last primary in the United States, ban candidates selected by caucus for federal offices.

“Subsidizing small independently owned farms growing vegetables”, WE ALREADY DO WITH OPPRESSIVE LABOR LAWS, put Salinas and the Central valley on next vacation route, or read about Chavez.

“taxing large corporate owned farms at higher rates”, YES, break up farms to smaller parcels would be good for the environment. AND tax the shit out of Monsanto and it’s pinkertons

“tax the heck out of lawns, which do nothing but waste water”, NO, c’mon the grass I have is less than 250ft^2 front and back, the rest is garden, it keeps weeds from growing [used to spend 1.5 hours every other week weeding…most people won’t they’ll just use weed killer]. Plus it’s great place for me and my dog to play. Most people use rain barrels in my neighborhood (remember, I am just south of BC).

I agree with this “Government works when you want it to”. Remember, I am the guy who keeps saying that if want to make progress in the US, we need to return to what brought so much progress during the FDR/New Deal years [1932-1978], what worked before, FDR policies, regulations and laws.

But inspecting for portion control is not like inspecting for cleanliness…one is hard, the other damn near impossible.

Besides, the reason people are getting fat is a combination of work related stress*, imposed idleness at work**, long hours*** [longer than Japan] and long daily commutes that range from 1.25 – 2.35 hours a day. All of this recent, all of it missing for most of the 1932-1978 period. These are the proximate cause, with stress being the biggest, lack of security triggers a hormonal response in primates that cause them to “get hungry” and sugar and fatty starch’s are what will stop the hormone flow.

Now granted, as the rest of Europe returns to the 19th century economics of austerity and shreds the social contracts, things will worsen there as well…

*[stuff like “do I get laid off this week” – “do I really have play the “Tom” role to keep this job” – “how much free overtime do I have to give to keep from being fired” – “if I don’t train my foreign replacement I’ll be fired, but if I do, I’ll be laid-off]

** A lot of workers are forced to remain seated, asking for something as simple as being able to go to the toilet.

***http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=93364&page=1

As for lawns, ok, overstated the case. However no covenants requiring them, no municipal laws disallowing gardens. And in a lot of places they do need to go (like desert states with water problems, and, well, most of California, and…)

I lived in Phoenix for 5 years. Watching golf courses getting watered at 2pm in 105 degrees and with 1% humidity… you could see the water sizzling off the grass and into the air.

@ jcapan
In any event, once again our author illustrates how mindgobbingly obvious the solutions are if we only had the resolve. And I can’t just chalk it all up to evil corporations/media. If you can’t take ownership of your own backside …
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mercy; one would think we’re bots operating under some master droid.
No minds, no will, no autonomy, no brains.
I’m with you; we always have choice.
As I stated above; the society is sick (mentally ill) and frankly, let things fall where they may.
Maybe a culling is in order…

One myth rises above all others. It affects public opinion about what drives America’s diet, how politicians respond to increasing obesity, what we permit of the food industry, and the health of the nation.

It is captured in two words — personal responsibility — The myth has strong, well-funded and politically powerful proponents, most notably the food industry, its trade associations and political figures influenced by industry lobbyists. One example is the National Restaurant Assn. and its state affiliates who use their considerable political muscle to oppose actions such as offering calorie values on restaurant menus (despite more than 80% of the public favoring such action) while trumpeting the personal-responsibility mantra.

Personal responsibility is not a hard sell in a country steeped in Puritan values of hard work, discipline and self-restraint. It works in some contexts but has two fundamental flaws when considering the nation’s diet — it is wrong and it leads down a failed and unproductive path. Every country in the world has increasing rates of obesity. Are people becoming irresponsible in remote islands in the Indian Ocean, poor African countries, China, India and everywhere else? People who move to the U.S. tend to gain weight, and those who move from the U.S. tend to lose. Laboratory animals given calorie-dense foods sold in any convenience store will ignore healthy foods and as much as triple their body weight. When the environment promotes obesity, weight will rise.

Economists use the term “optimal defaults” to describe conditions that promote beneficial or healthy choices…We could reduce traffic deaths by just imploring people to wear seat belts, drive slowly and avoid dangerous roads, but we install air bags. We could deal with air and water pollution by asking citizens to be responsible (wear masks and boil water), but instead we monitor industry, have emissions standards for cars, etc.

The nation’s diet is driven by terrible defaults. Large portions, a tidal wave of food marketing directed at children, schools selling unhealthy foods, and economic policy that makes healthy food cost more than calorie-dense processed foods are but a few examples of defaults that take a massive toll on the nation’s health and well-being.

The challenge is to create better defaults. This will be possible only when we turn from blaming people for irresponsible actions to giving the nation what it deserves — conditions that make responsible behavior the easy choice.

Kelly D. Brownell is a professor of psychology, epidemiology and public health at Yale University, where he serves as director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-dustup20sep20,0,5487871.story?coll=la-promo-opinion

Celsius 233,

Keep me out of your eugenic sentiments, experts in the field say you [and those like minded] are simpletons.

Stress is factor #1 and that stress is directly related to hierarchical status. Cruelty is how you display status as a primate, which leads to premature death, you advocating death by cruelty is hardly new, monkeys express the same thoughts. The fact that you confuse primal urges with higher thought speaks volumes about your intellectual capacity and self realization.

Stress May Drive Obesity Epidemic
By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on May 14, 2008
http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/05/14/stress-may-drive-obesity-epidemic/2286.html

weightA new research study finds that some subjects consume calorie-rich foods at a significantly higher level when chronically exposed to a psychologically stressful environment.

The behavioral impact of stress and weight gain occurred among subjects who were assuming subordinate roles in their social hierarchy.

Because the relationship between diet, psychological stress and social and environmental factors is complex, researchers set out to determine whether individuals chronically exposed to psychologically stressful environments over consume calorie-rich foods.

Scientists at at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, found socially subordinate female rhesus macaques over consume calorie-rich foods at a significantly higher level than do dominant females.

The study, which is available in the online edition of Physiology and Behavior, is a critical step in understanding the psychological basis for the sharp increase in obesity across all age groups since the mid-1970s.

The study also is the first to show how food intake can be reliably and automatically measured, thus identifying the optimal animal model and setting for future obesity studies.

To do this, they studied the feeding patterns of socially housed female rhesus macaques, which are organized by a dominance hierarchy that maintains group stability through continual harassment and threat of aggression. Such structure is a constant psychological stress to subordinates.

During the study, female macaques were given access to a sweet but low-fat diet and a high-fat diet for 21 days each. For a 21-day period between each test diet, the group was able to access standard monkey chow only.

To track feeding patterns, automated feeders dispensed a pellet of either the low-fat or high-fat chow when activated by a microchip implanted in each female’s wrist.

Researchers found socially subordinate females consumed significantly more of both the low-fat diet and the high-fat diet throughout a 24-hour period, while socially dominant females ate significantly less than subordinate animals and restricted their feedings to daytime hours.

This difference in feeding behavior resulted in accelerated weight gain and an increase in fat-derived hormones in subordinate females. Dr. Wilson believes this may suggest profound changes in metabolism and the accumulation of body fat.

“Subordinates may be on a trajectory for metabolic problems. As this study shows, they prefer the high-fat diet and, as a result of the stress of being a subordinate, they have higher levels of the hormone cortisol.

This may be involved in the redistribution of fat to visceral locations in the body, something that is clinically associated with type II diabetes metabolic syndrome,” continued Dr. Wilson.

Using Yerkes’ extensive neuroimaging capabilities, Dr. Wilson and his research team next will attempt to determine the neurochemical basis for why subordinate females overeat; specifically, whether appetite signals and brain areas associated with reward and satisfaction differ between subordinate and dominant females.

@ Hamfast Ruddyneck

Thanks so much for that erudite contribution to this thread.

As I stated above; the society is sick (mentally ill) and frankly, let things fall where they may.
Maybe a culling is in order…

We’re a population bereft of any empathy.

Oh my god, are you drunk?

Honestly if Bloomberg cared he would’ve been better off banning HFCS instead of arbitrary regulations that didn’t were a mish mosh from place to place. That’s why the transfat ban worked while this didn’t.

I would like to give S Brennan a Gold Star on this issue for hitting the nail on the head re stress, excessive individualization of the issues, etc.

Genetics plus environment plus individual will.

You can’t do too much about genetics, at least not with current technology and wealth distribution. Environment includes immediate peers, stress levels (place in the hierarchy), customs under which you were raised (of family, nation, etc.) , and larger societal influence (e.g. advertising, suburban development styles, etc.). Individual will is self-explanatory but, as Ian has pointed out repeatedly, is relatively weak. It is especially weak in the face of environment and genetics, as these are constantly wearing on the individual.

Individual responsibility is important, but it is absolutely crucial to recognize that the vast majority of the population will succumb to the overall social currents of their time and place.

S Brennan and Mandos,

The four years of “recovery” have not been good for most Americans or Europeans. The stock market may be back and “wealth”may have officially recovered but that is not what most of us are actually experiencing.

Not long ago, 65% of Americans owned homes. Most households wealth was largely in the net value of their homes. That plunged dramatically with the banks keeping theirs and the homeowners, aka 65% of Americans, losing an average of 35% of value and nearly or all of their wealth.

Real unemployment remains stubbornly above 10% probably closer to 15%. If you count WPA workers as employed, unemployment now is equivalent to that of 1934-35 and our recession actually is staying under 10% real unemployment longer than the Great depression did.

Government is seen as making things worse by both conservatives and by liberals these days (tax cuts to re-distribute money upwards, shredding of the social safety net). Not true in the 1930s when Social security, FDIC, re-organization (not funding) of the banks, regulation of the stock market, unemployment compensation and the alphabet soup of government programs built up America.

Workers ability to control their own fate has also decreased. Union membership continues its downward trend and it has accelerated during the Obama recovery years. Overall, membership (11.3% in 2012) is down to the rates before the Wagner Act was passed in 1935 and membership in private industry (6.6%) is down to the levels of the early 1900s. Some of this is desperation but much is due to deliberate policy by the Koch brothers and their allies.

Among the states with a sharp downtrend in union membership since 2008 are Maryland, Delaware and D.C., areas with liberal democrats “in control” as well as large black populations (blacks are the racial/ethnic group most likely to join unions according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics). Of course, similar drops were recorded in some states with Republican governors (WI, IN, NJ).

Two things seem to be pushing this. The immediate benefit of the investor class and the political advantage enjoyed by Republicans through weakening unions.

It is time, past time, for a change for the better.

David Kowalski, the comment you addressed to me is insightful and really opened my eyes to a reality that is quite country to my own.

Thanks for letting me know things are worse than they have been in the past [in say, 1932-1978 period*], as you have read my comments dutifully you will notice my strong support for continuing on our present path and plunging my country further into darkness. Thank goodness you told me the truth about the Koch brothers and the Republicans, I never would have guessed they were meanies without your help! Fortunately we have the Democrats and Obama, who is both your hero [AND MINE!!!] to save us from those bad people.

PS , you’re swell guy, thanks for the enlightenm…Oh wait a minute, I just checked my junk mail and there 6 emails saying pretty much the same thing you did…and asking me to send money to Democratic Party bundling organizations. …whoa…yesterday has the same…wait a MINUTE…Monday too…oh look, Sunday’s the same…Saturday too…and Friday…and… HEY, you not one of these guys are you? I guess I’ll have to take back all those nice things I said about you.

*I don’t know why I keep picking that time period, over and over and over and over, since read my comments consistently, you must know, what do you think?

@ Celsius:

You’re welcome. ^_^

Dearest David Kowalski,

I was talking about: “stress, excessive individualization of the issues, etc.”* before you started going off on your unrelated spiel…nothing you say to me is news…other than you addressing me for no apparent reason. And that…Dearest David Kowalski is why I gave your comment any notice…which is probably the purpose of your banal literary device…to get attention.

* – Mandos

It would be easier to teach people about proper diets and make sure they have access to real food. And this approach has about the same chance of being done as the policing approach. Most are forced into obesity and diabetes by economic need, availability of grocery stores or lack of knowledge. Although it is true that not just poor people are fat.

Big Ag and with the rest of the MOTU run our diets/transportation/health care/etc. Nothing is going to change.

Love this post, but unfortunately, I was misled by my education: facts don’t matter.

I had to expunge the word from my vocabulary when I moved to the USA. Now I have to get used to words like “boissons gazeuses” and “sprudelnde Getränke” and “läsk” and …

Ha, Thers. Didn’t know that. Pop is what we call it in Canada, at least in all parts of Canada from Ontario west (not sure about the rest.)

I was born in “pop,” raised and educated in “soda,” and I now live and work right on the “soda/coke” border.

http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/popvssodamap.gif

In the South, it’s “soft drink”, though “soda” seems to have made inroads in recent years.

Exactly Petro,

One of the [many] reasons my thoughts are estranged from many on the “left” is that I was forced to spend my middle-later teenage years living on the street. The “voices” of the left seem to have lives of privilege and access, I think that is why they feel so comfortable with Obama and his policies. Comfort the comfortable and that maim and cripple those whose meritorious efforts might outshine the sycophantic minions whose jobs come from the easy entree afforded by going to the “right” school.

I remember my first job that paid enough that I could afford to share a cold water flat. I remember getting a union labor job which allowed me to save up to buy a color TV, a table and chair. Working outside in subfreezing temperatures and being happy about it. I remember night school at a community college, joining the US Army at thirty to pay for University. I remember a Drill’s laugher as he implied that my easy days were over…and how I looked him straight in the eye and told him that the food and the cot were an upgrade compared to where I had been…I was not joking…and how he knew* that.

I know food insecurity from that time. I know the intense pleasure food can create when you haven’t eaten for a few days, or how it calms the nerves when life hangs by a thread. It is comparable to afterglow. Wanting to recreate that feeling** when life creates similar tension is a reasonable response for those who are low born, or forced to live in ever more hobsian world of insecure/low pay/status work .

In fact, when these issues come up it is an excellent opportunity to turn upper class lecturing around on them. Instead of buying into the trope, point out that the root problem is the poor treatment meted out by the ruling class. As I outlined above, work/social conditions have been deteriorating during a time of great wealth creation…and that is the proximate cause.

Now let’s discuss that Mr. Bloomberg. Why did your class suddenly decide to engage in ruthless exploitation of the very American system that made you so very wealthy? Surely, you knew from previous experience in the gilded age what it would do to our society? Surely you know of primate studies that show cruel hierarchies manifest all sorts of medical maladies that result in a disparity of longevity? And what are you offering now, blame for people who victims of your depravity? To withhold retirement in order than that they may die from your abusive treatment while working?

Are you truly that uneducated Mr. Bloomburg? Are you fit to rule, doesn’t your gross ignorance negate the superiority argument? How come our rulers are so much weaker that their predecessors, why do they require so much more pampering?

Forget super-sized soft drinks, why do you need to be served “portions” of society that are so much larger* than you parents required?

*his life had a similar tune
**hormonal rush
***portions ten to fifteen times larger than the uber-rich of yesteryear

I was talking about stress, lack of control over one’s own life, and a diminished future and present.

The reason that your junk mail is sent is that it is based on a kernel of truth that is then wrapped up in nice packaging and sold down the river.

I abandoned various sites due to the presence and enforcement of the Obots. Is it time to move on from here? Read what I say, not what you “think” I say.

Petro, I read the article, I don’t disagree with what was said, but my point is the the whole conversation is wrong, it always goes back to blaming the victim of our excessively hierarchical society.

Example:

Why do high urban professionals walk more?

Are they better educated on health, higher moral character, better genes? That’s the conversation…only at the bottom of the article is there an un-noticable sentence that brings up the most pertinent fact…walkable neighborhoods tend to have housing that 2-3 times the cost of suburbia.

I would love to live in such a neighborhood. But comparing my near burb at 950/6,000 house/lot to an urban 800/1,000 townhouse/lot results in a $200,000.00 vs $525,000.00 difference, a factor of 2.625. Unlike the hipsters, I grew up in a heavily urbanized area of a major city, today as an engineer, I could barely afford to park there now…and my education far surpasses either of my parents.

These conversations are just the upper class justifying there immoral behavior. Why does the uppermost class[s] require on average 10 times the share of the nations wealth that their uber wealthy parents required?

Bloomberg thought process is easily revealed in this comment from TBP:

Joe Friday Says:
March 14th, 2013 at 5:22 pm

Finally got around to watching a Charlie Rose from a week or so ago with Mike Bloomberg and Bill Gates. In the span of about FIVE MINUTES, Bloomberg stated:

* “Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are SO big they are going to take over the whole budget” MYTH. Social Security isn’t part of the federal budget and has nothing whatsoever to do with federal deficits, and the only problem Medicare & Medicaid have is where they are purchasing their medical care.

* That we should “Raise the age that [Medicare & Social Security] kick in, because life expectancy has gone up DRAMATICALLY from when the programs were created” NO, it hasn’t. For those reaching 65, it’s barely moved.

* “When Social Security was started, there were 33 people who worked for every single recipient, today it’s 3 or 2 or something like that” BLAH BLAH BLAH. There will be about 79 dependents (children and retirees) for every 100 workers in 2030, compared to 95 dependents per 100 workers in 1965. ‘Nuff said.

* “There is no Social Security Trust fund” BLINDINGLY RIDICULOUS. It’s right HERE.

* “Business needs specificity. Of they new what the tax law was gonna be, if they knew what the regulations were gonna be, they would go and create businesses, you would go and buy a new house, he would take a vacation, we all stimulate the economy, and UNCERTAINTY is one of the real problems” GOOD GRIEF. This is NOT how the national economy functions. We are a DEMAND economy. It’s nothing but regurgitated gibberish that has been debunked numerous times.

~

Bloomberg strikes me as an intelligent guy, and he doesn’t seem to have some Looney Toons ideological agenda like the RightWingers, so just how does a man of his caliber get to be so dangerously uninformed ?

Cheap high-sugar products and cheap alcohol should be regulated.
What’s your take on minimum pricing (in this case on alcohol) that David Nutt talks about?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2011/jan/17/price-super-strength-lagers-alcohol

Petro
March 17, 2013
…but I would prefer that we’d look into the problems of poverty and homelessness before we price one of the rare pleasures they can enjoy out of their reach.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There’s been far too much bullshit and hyperbole for comfort. How about “personal responsibility”? It was actually mentioned but shoved under the table by a lot of psycho-babble and personal attacks against those who disagreed.
Personal responsibility doesn’t start at the beginning of the problem; it’s the most likely reason FOR the problem!
Personal responsibility predates all problems; it’s the cause célèbres of a life well lived.
God’s be good; can we have really come this far? Pricing a legal drug out of reach of the poorest?
This whole thread has been a huge disappointment in the discourse of communication via people; are we really this dysfunctional, threatened, frightened, insecure? Can we not simply ask a question of those who speak (so to speak) to clarify their meaning? Rather than launch into an instant attack? We rarely know the people we interact with; so how can we assume to know, what they mean, by what they say?
That we can’t have civil discourse speaks volumes…
And what hope for a future…

Sometime in the ’80’s I recall reading about a study made about diabetes and the Arizona Pima Indian tribe. The gist was that survival biology endowed the tribe, selected through generations of living in their environment and that their metabolism was highly developed to store energy whenever it was available in their bodies as fat. What was found was that modern conditions removed the normal feast and starvation from their experience, in effect continuous feast had become the norm, weight gain and diabetes were the result.

It is not hard to imagine that that same metabolism is shared by a great portion of the human species. But instead of feast or famine in foodstuffs from the natural larder available to hunter gatherers or early agriculturalists, an increasing portion of the population find themselves locked in ghettos without possession of the means to feed themselves and are economically coerced into accepting whatever larder industrial food is willing to provide them without going through feast or famine – an infinite feast of twinkies, if you will.

The health consequences given the dystopian health system available is dire and it is not unreasonable to attempt to head off foreseeable catastrophe which what seems to be attempted. Granted the plan arrived at was ill thought out and harshly applied upon the victims rather that exploring cause and systematic fault and addressing those issues, the wide range of opinions suggested here are nothing but opinions, some with merit, others a vacuous as those calories being consumed. Everything stated so far is opinion and has no more weight than opinion. Little fact has been provided and those who have linked to some presumed authority that agrees with their opinion need to consider their argument much more closely for flaws, you would be better rewarded by finding authority that disagrees and showing where that authority is in error. Some need to grow up as well.

Thanks Petro!

Celsius, thanks for informing me that everybody who doesn’t agree with your view is “dull”.

From my point of view, dictating your “idea” of personal responsibility reads like a slave owners manual.

As you see Ian, these tropes are thinly disguised cats paws of upper class warriors…let them carry their own spear, shield, sword…and water into battle, they have enough advantages without our help.

@ Petro, @ S Brennan
So some of the cohort still survives. Must be the part that didn’t get the clue, or couldn’t get the clue, two hands, a flashlight and a basket to boot.

This forum is not about your opinions. This is a forum where you can express your opinions. This forum allows others their opinions as well. You do not get to decide which opinions will be voiced, or if they are voiced, erode that voice with endlessly stated drivel. This is what you both do. It is tiresome. It is boring. It is jejune. Grow up.

@ S Brennan

That was not dictating, that was informing. Pull your head out of your ass.

@ 233ºC

Ouch!
That smarts when some old petard goes off.