Ahhh perfectly little NRA sheeple. One argument get crushed... all of the sudden its not about that anymore.

We're just going to pretend to know things we couldn't possibly about the president's anecdote (and good chance its nothing more than hypothetical) and pretend like THAT is what we're really pissed about... ignoring the original all together.

Such good little NRA sheeples.

All in all, that's not very good anecdote. That one time you thought about saying fuck you in public to a widely despised, confrontational blowhard? It's a nice thought, but it didn't happen, it wasn't a very creative attack, and it wouldn't have been effective - not exactly the stuff of algonquin round table bon mots.

Great video. I really wish people understood this concept better.

Any of this sound familiar?
"Kids these days are too soft. When we were kids, we rode bikes without helmets, sat in the front seat of cars, <insert outer dangerous activity> and WE WERE FINE"

Of course, you were fine; the fact that you're here to tell that anecdote is proof of that. The kids who died in auto accidents generally don't get to tell their stories.

In terms of what this means for our day to day lives? You can't just look at the winners and copy what they did. You have to look at the losers and avoid what they did.

I cleaned for years too. I disagree. In my experience women's bathrooms are in general much cleaner.

Ergo, the problem with anecdotes.

The best evidence you have for your claims (as I see it) is anecdotal at best.
3rd world countries 1) are not at all vegetarian and 2) don't get most cancers Westerners do largely because they don't eat processed foods or expose themselves to carcinogenic chemicals constantly....we do.
Again, NEVER get your science from the internet.

"Pro-life" is by definition "anti-choice".

If you're really pro-planet, a MUCH better way to go about it is try to get people to have fewer children. That will make exponentially more difference than some people eating fewer animals. In fact, if past human behavior is a guide, if we all stop eating animals, animals will cease to exist for the most part, so that's not helpful to them at all.

Again, fewer people is the proper answer, not forcefully change biologically engrained behavior. I made that choice, so I can eat all the animals I ever possibly can and I've done more for the planet and it's animals with that single action than 1000 vegans with vegan children...or more positive difference than one vegan with children, depending on how you want to look at it.

As a living being, I'm standing up for all living beings who certainly object to your choice to breed, both the voiceless and those with voice, and saying stop making choices that negatively impact us all, like having more children and grandchildren. If enough people would do that, eating meat won't be an ecological issue. ;-)

I didn't watch the videos, I don't get my science from the internet. I read scientific publications that contain peer reviewed science papers, and I've never seen one that said ALL the nutrients found in meat could be replaced with vegetable nutrients easily, simply, viably, or without excessive expense.
Also, it ignores that fact that most produce available in the first world comes with a huge carbon footprint and massive ecological damage because of the production methods, so it's not the 'clean' trade off you seem to assume.

Small family farms were plenty to meet demand for all of human history until about the last 50 years. Quit having kids, and it will be enough again and we can stop abusing animals and the eco system just to make enough food for humans.

A short, good life is preferable to no life at all.

Nope. I should have scheduled the one in that picture that's mine to end his life at least a year earlier, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. NOT doing it was immoral. If someone had been willing to eat him, I would be all for it. If someone wants to eat me, go for it...I suggest slow smoking and a molasses based BBQ sauce. Eating my dog would be ecologically sound, as opposed to the cremation we ended up with, or burial, being the only other option available.
If I raised dogs for food, I would not think twice about ending their life in their prime. That would be the reason they existed in the first place, and without that reason they would never get that chance.

Again, milk cows only exist because someone wanted to partner with them to benefit both. Without that symbiosis, they would not get the opportunity to exist at all. IMO, existence is preferable to no existence. Yes, they need to get pregnant at least once, but as I understand it, that's it so long as you keep up with milking them. Veal, now there I'll totally agree with you that IT'S abuse.

Animals are not people. They do not usually have the same need for freedom, and those that do have that need were never domesticated. It is not immoral to form a symbiosis with another species as long as you both benefit in some way, otherwise you're just a parasite.

? Taste, as in how animals taste? BS, that's not all. That's a component, sure, but there's incredibly more to it than that.

I prefer to give animals a reason to exist, knowing that without that human centric reason, they simply won't get the chance, but I do my best to purchase animal products that are created with the least distress and best conditions for the animals in question...granted that's not always possible to know.

Trust me, I've tried vegetarian 'meats', I know the difference, and absolutely don't prefer vegan fare, or vegetarian fare that attempts to emulate meat. If I want meat, I'll eat meat. You'll get my butter only by prying it from my cold, dead hands. ;-)

I don't think taste is quite as simple as you imply. Yes, there is a component of 'addiction' to certain foods, especially sugar rich foods.
There's no such thing as vegan cheese or chocolate, you mean tofu and carob...and I agree, they both suck.

Sorry, that's simply wrong. A poor eating vegan can certainly negatively impact the planet with their food choices. It's easy. Oreos for instance, are most certainly made with ecologically damaging factory farm methods creating the ingredients...well, those methods and chemists. I don't know off hand the carbon footprint and ecological impact of an oreo, but it's not "none".

*promote

Travis Willingham, the actor for one of the 'bad guys' in this fight has a great anecdote about it:

...and given her the anecdote of a lifetime.

On the other hand, saying YOU ARE INCORRECT does not a counterpoint make. There is absolutely nothing you offer up to support that the majority of feminists make derogatory and often illegal statements about men. There are millions of feminists, and your anecdotal experience doesn't do anything to top anyone else's. You. Have. Nothing.

Secondly, your little shouty pout at me could have been avoided if you read even part of my superbly formatted post. I explicitly wrote that we as a group have an easier time of taking inflammatory comments . Not illegal comments, not rape threats, not rape. Most men (not you) can shrug off an inflammatory comment without needing an MRA support group.

In fact - go back and read my statement and admit that I was talking about inflammatory comments, not rape. Do it. I've never made light of rape and I never intend to, and I don't want your weasely lying post implying that I have. Go back. Read my post. Admit your mistake. I can take an insult, but not a disgusting lie.

Fascinating.

Would be interesting to see ALL of the data; I have suspicions that there may be some (small but statistically significant) segment of the population that trust generics MORE than brand-name drugs. Anecdotally, I know I feel a sense of smug superiority every time I buy generic ibuprofen for headaches instead of branded at a small fraction of the price...

Did, maybe. But how often were corners cut? Based on anecdotes, one can project that those guidelines were ignored quite often.

And it's extremely rare that anyone gets held accountable.

Totally anecdotal and I don't have a strong opinion on the general topic...but...

My first job out of high school was carpentry, along with a few of my friends. I left that career but my friends stayed in it. When we went on a job site we worked with maybe a dozen highly skilled, well payed career construction workers. Eventually my friends were pushed out of the industry. The jobs went away. Instead of a crew of skilled carpenters, roofers and so forth, what they were replaced with was a crew of low payed, unskilled, illegal immigrants lead by a single foreman who split his time between several job sites.

Now those jobs will be listed as "low paying jobs Americans don't want", with no accounting for the high payed, skilled jobs that were lost.

OK, the video's point, and your first 2 answers to it in the comments. @ChaosEngine explained how I see it quite well.

This 'anecdote' proved that you were wrong in your blanket assertion that condoms are only >98% effective in the lab, because condoms are >98% effective outside the lab....at least in one case I know of, and certainly others.

I do understand that deniers want to be called 'skeptics', but I also understand that that's not at all what they are.

I/we don't need to convince those that are clearly closed to convincing if I/we don't allow their obstinacy to be a road block to progress. Giving them more hearings, more time, and more chance to kick the can down the road gives them that opportunity.
I don't WANT to leave them behind, but I also won't die on the beach because Bubba wants to sit in the bus parked in the soft sand at the low tide line, and debate whether there is such a thing as a tide...especially when the tide is already 1/2 in, the motor's sputtering, and the wheels are under water. At some point one must decide to not let them and their never ending, constantly changing, factually challenged 'argument' doom all of us, even if it means ignoring their continuing argument and acting without their consent. I'm not sure we should kick them off the bus...but they are starting to mess with the driver and sometimes steal the keys....so it might come to that some day.

You only answered half my question. The answer that proves this?

Nice anecdote. I assume by your smiley face that you know anecdotes are not proof of anything except an individuals experience.

In normal usage of the terms, denier and sceptic are synonymous. Although I do agree that there should be a distinction along the ways you've said.

It is lazy stone age thinking. You're not going to get anywhere if they're a roadblock and you don't spend the time convincing them otherwise. Do you really want to leave your fellow man behind? I think you should strive to put him on a better path. (I mean sceptics/deniers as a group - not on an individual level).

OK, his studies beat my anecdotal bias.

...That being said, I will continue to eat breakfast cereal with milk pretty much every day (as I have since I was very very young), and be strongly tempted to attribute my own lack of having ever broken a bone to that.

The other anecdote I have in my favor is coming from a farm family that raised chickens. I grew up in a prairie grassland area (converted to irrigated farmland thanks to aquifer access), while my cousins lived a couple hours away in limestone hills ranchland. Both of our families raised free range chickens.

Our chickens produced very thin-shelled eggs, and displayed behavior to suggest they were calcium-deprived. For example, our chickens wouldn't cannibalize their own viable eggs, but if we threw empty shells to them they would fight to eat the shells. Same but to a lesser extent for leftover bones, etc. (I assume they fought less over these because bones are harder to near impossible to break down with a beak). On the other side of the table, we sometimes exchanged eggs with my cousins, and their chicken's eggs were always extremely thick-shelled and hard to crack open.

When I asked about that, my folks told me (and later my Biology teacher confirmed) that was because the sod/soil around my home and flora and fauna growing from it contained very little natural calcium. Chickens raised in our area would often be supplemented with commercial feed that contained extra calcium, but we let ours range for food and eat table scraps; almost never supplementing their food with any commercial stuff. But the limestone (aka calcium carbonate) around my cousin's house contained very high amounts of natural calcium, which was naturally infused into the plants / grains / insects that their chickens ate, giving them incredibly thick shells.

So, I guess that while calcium intake apparently doesn't have a very statistically significant impact on human bone growth, I think that it must have a much more significant role to play in egg thickness if you happen to be a chicken... At least if you compare extremes of low natural calcium diet versus extremely high natural calcium diet.

I put very little stock in these personality tests. In particular, I don't trust them because they only describe whatever personality you have in positive, flattering terms - a trait/tactic very similar to horoscopes. Of course you will like the result if you are being compared to Shakespeare and told that you are among the most brilliant minds in the known universe.

So the MBTI's practical use is overwhelmingly unscientific, and it's often criticized for this. Criticism ranges from the pragmatic fact that neither Jung nor Myers and Briggs ever employed scientific studies to develop or test these concepts, relying instead on their own observations, anecdotes, and intuitions; all the way to charges that your MBTI score is hardly more meaningful than your zodiac sign.