dannym3141 said:

The self righteousness of your post almost made me feel sick. Vegetarianism SHOULD be a stepping stone to veganism? It SHOULD be whatever the hell you want it to be - for example a temporary situation for when you SHOULD return to eating meat.

Now i'm not going to do what you did and reel off the standard list of reasons why veganism is bad for you, they are well documented and discussed but we all know that it is very possible to have a varied and sufficient diet regardless of what you limit yourself to.

As for your comment about milk, i did a quick bit of research - most of the sources i can find saying that milk causes calcium to be ejected out of the body sourced from the bones and/or cause osteoporosis are new age blog style websites written by a vegan who - like you - clearly has some serious agenda.

As for decent sources, here is what i found:
- Several scientific papers noting that though some observational studies have shown more alkali diets being beneficial to bone health in pre- and post- menopausal women, it has yet to be proven in any definitive clinical trial
http://osteoporosis.org.za/general/downloads/dairy.pdf
(and other sources, but not as scientific)

- The Harvard School of Public Health state that it is not clear what the best source of calcium is for bone health. However the consumption of dairy products has more beneficial effects than just bone health - protection against colon cancer for example, also other vitamins, proteins and minerals that are present.
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/calcium-full-story/#calcium-from-milk

Job losses may seem irrelevant to you, but i suggest that's because you have a very very tenuous grasp on the farming profession and don't rely on it for your income. No, you can't simply replace any and all dairy farms/farmers and workers with plant-based farming alternatives. There are a huge number of reasons for this which only a farmer would be able to tell us in detail, but for example - the equipment is different and requires a huge investment (both for acquisition and storage and transport and so on), the land and buildings are not necessarily interchangeable, the skills and knowledge are often built up since childhood and are not instantly transferable, the connections within the industry for logistics and business dealings are different. These are just a few that i thought up.

Yes, some animals are poorly treated in the farming industry and it makes me very sad to think of. However if you are careful and attentive you can ensure that you do not consume any products that were unfairly treated. This is like saying that a minority of clothes sold in shops are made in sweatshops by exploited child labour, therefore we should ban all clothes from the planet.

I could go on and on and on, and even begin my own dissertation on how "everyone going vegan" would be detrimental to overall public health and prosperity; if we grow more crops, more animals must be killed to ensure the crop is healthy and full.. we are not able to process celulose because we evolved.. there are things you can't get from plants that your body needs.. etc. But this comment is already very long, and i think i've broken the backbone of your argument already.

I will mention though that your crusade could end up being very damaging to the health of people who have auto immune diseases and/or allergies that rely on meat to have a balanced and varied diet. I recently discovered that i have coeliac disease (auto immune response to gluten) and secondary lactose intolerance, and i really wish i could explain to you just how difficult it is to avoid gluten containing grains and lactose.

For you it is a choice to not eat anything that comes from animals, for me it is a necessity that i have to avoid gluten and lactose otherwise i get debilitating pain within half an hour. If i did not have access to meat and eggs, there would be very little that i could eat. Wheat is added to almost everything, or almost everything is made in the same vicinity as wheat products resulting in cross contamination. Meat and eggs are sometimes the ONLY thing that i can be sure are safe to eat, and yet some self righteous do-gooder like yourself sits there on a high horse telling me how terrible it is that i inevitably, medically do what our ancestors have been doing for hundreds of thousands of years of human prosperity and ascendance.

If you'd had a bit more of an open mind when you wrote that comment, if i hadn't found out i have these medical conditions, if you'd said things in a debatable way, presented your sources (you provide none), offered it up for discussion rather than a commandment written on a stone tablet, then i probably wouldn't have replied like this. But when i'm forced into doing something and an interfering busybody strolls along and shrieks "oooooooooh you shouldn't be doing that!!!" it really does wind me up.

artician said:

I expect that I'm a potential-Brony. Pre-brony? I don't know. All I do know is that I haven't had time to watch it yet, but every single thing I see and hear about this show virtually guarantees I'll be a fan once I do. They nailed a sweet spot with the art and animation, and that ridiculously saccharine-sweet tone is just the right kind of self-parody and legitimate cuteness that only comes along once in a while.

Howdy - sorry for the delay, was traveling on business. The issue you are referring to below with regards to reusable water bottles is I believe related to the type of liner (thin coating of polymer based material that is coated on the inside of some but not all of these bottles). In most cases when polymers come in contact with food (incl. water) the concerns are usually not in the polymer itself, but in some of the additives (processing aids, plasticizers, anti-oxidants, UV stabilizers, pigments etc) that in some cases have negative impacts on some human metabolic processes. I would emphasize 'some'. The recent outrage over BPA is not supported unequivocally by scientific evidence, but there is enough uncertainty to move away from it as a plasticizer in PET bottles. If one was to use a food grade polyethylene or polypropylene water bottle, requiring no liner, and totally suitable as a water bottle, then there is no concern at all with the long term use of this material in water bottles. Next time you go through the grocery store, have a look at all the packaging - films on processed meets, stretch wrap on fresh meat cuts, all of your cold dairy products - the vast majority of these are made from one of either polyethylene or polypropylene, with a smattering of polystyrene and polyvinylidene chloride thrown in. All perfectly safe.

As for how the balls are made - these are blow molded. If you have a look at the plastic baseballs made for kids that come with a big fat plastic bat (or really any hard plastic ball that you might find at Wal Mart or Toys'R'Us, you'll see the small ridge that runs equatorially around the circumference of the ball (that's the parting line where the two mold halves come together) and somewhere on that line there will be either a little tiny hole or a small protruding knob that used to be the parison where the air was injected into the small plastic glob forcing it to the walls of the mold like an expanding balloon. This is the same type of molding that makes your liquid dishwashing detergent bottle, plastic ketchup and mustard containers, and plastic milk jugs. Hope this helps a bit. cheers

As I see it, if you truly want unbiased news (in English, from an American perspective), you need to consume everything on Fox News, MSNBC, NPR/PBS, the BBC World Service, and Al Jazeera, and then make up your own mind based on all those sources. You could probably throw in a few more, but since that's all too much anyways, I concede that there is actually no unbiased news available. Of course, Fox and MSNBC are blatantly biased, and at least NPR, the BBC and Al Jazeera try not to be.

chicchorea said:

Happy Birthday neighbor,

Enjoy.

I hope you avoided the flood...feet and more wet here.

poolcleaner said:

No, no, no it's wizard magic. Stop denying the truth and join the majority in our moral duty to behold miracles. The earth, the sun, the tides go in, and the wizard detects all keys. Every public transportation has a wizard. It's just common knowledge, dude. Grow up -- Accept the miracle!!!!!

YOUR WAY OF THINKING TRANMOGRIFIES THE MIRACLES OF GODS AND WIZARDS INTO MUNDANE BULLSHIT. Doesn't life shine brighter and carry dutiful meaning when we belive in miracles and predestined immaculate key detection?