Ugh. My MIL got a pamphlet from this scammy vitamin company a few years ago that claimed that vegetables contain a tiny percentage of vitamins now compared with 50 years ago due to modern farming techniques (I don’t know if this is true or not but it seems to me like it would only tell half the story anyway). Now, no matter what is wrong with a person, she starts talking about how they should get on vitamin suppliments because it’s impossible to have enough vitamins from our diets alone and how everything that’s wrong with us is all vitamin deficiency. She was trying to make us buy the scammy vitamin suppliment (it was about $60 a tin!) and I did some research and told her that it contained Vitamin A which the National Health and Medical Research Council (IIRC) advised against as deficiency is rare in the Western world but too much can have toxic effect. I found a reference saying that Vitamin A suppliments are not advised unless you have a diagnosed Vitamin A deficiency. Of course, she just plucked out her trusty pamphlet and insisted that it meant that everyone everywhere was Vitamin A deficient all the time because there aren’t enough vitamins in vegetables anymore. :rolleyes:
Well, after the great Vegetable Strike of 1965, vegetables worldwide decided to lower their vitamin holdings by 10 percent across the board. So really, she’s right.
This is the most depressing thread…
I saw something to this effect in a pretty reputable source not too long ago (don’t recall offhand, but I think it was either the NYT or BBC). Apparently the issue is the modern fast-growing varieties of vegetables; since they mature a lot faster than heirloom varieties, they end up with about half the nutrients. The author of the study was careful to note that you should not interpret this as “don’t bother eating vegetables.”
On another note, my contribution: I once had a co-worker who would readily acknowledge that alcohol killed brain cells. He concluded, however, that it only killed off the weaker cells, leaving the strong ones alone–so the more you drank, the smarter you got.
Doesn’t really matter anyway–“kills brain cells” is a vague and completely meaningless statement.
Fuck, some people really believe in Jesus Horses?
On the other hand, you can draw strength from knowing what you’re up against.
Oh, for sure.
I’m prepared to believe that the many sources out there that say that there are fewer vitamins in vegetables are telling the truth, but how “Vegetables have fewer vitamins” equals “It is now impossible to get enough vitamins from diet, and anyone not taking multivitamins is vitamin deficient” is beyond me. Also - why pills and powders? Why not home-grown vegetables? She has a vegetable garden! Surely that should be protection against the menace of the fast-growing commercial vegetable vendors and their low vitamin produce?!
One of the articles I read in my travels said that not all vitamin content is going down, and that carrots have a higher content of one vitamin than they used to - that vitamin being Vitamin A, of course.
I’ve mentioned this before in a similar thread, but I think it bears repeating:
I knew a grown man who earnestly believed that the Earth’s rotation created a wind which exerted a downwards force and kept us all from floating off into space, and he could not be convinced otherwise.
Ogling a map for a while gives me the impression that the majority of Canada’s rivers flow eastward (e.g. Saint Lawrence, Saskatchewan), westward (e.g. Fraser, La Grande), or northward (e.g. Nelson, Red, Churchill, Mackenzie). It seems to me that most of our southward-flowing rivers (the Saguenay, for example) are in the Great Lakes/Saint Lawrence watershed, and flow southward principally by virtue of the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence either forming our southern border or being close to it - i.e. those watersheds have southward rivers because there’s no room for them to have northward rivers, at least not in Canada. (A few rivers flowing northward from southern Quebec into the Saint Lawrence include the Chaudière and Nicolet.)
Only a tiny corner of southernmost Alberta is in the Mississippi watershed.
Actually, Stockwell Day, former head buffoon of the Canadian Alliance, got into some trouble on this one when he referred to “jobs flowing south like the Niagara River.” The Niagara River flows north.
I stopped asking this question the day I engaged in a three-hour-long debate with a seemingly otherwise-normal young girl who was adamantly upholding the following propositions:
- In ten years’ time, the Earth will run out of natural resources.
- As a result of this, we will all be forced to migrate to the moon.
Key points of her position:
- By “natural resources”, she was not referring only to petroleum or fossil fuels in general, but instead “all natural resources”. Through further inquiry, I was able to determine that air was not included in this category, as “the trees make that”, but I could not ascertain the status of water.
- The ten-year limit was absolute. When offered open access to a broadband internet connection, she was unwilling to attempt to produce even the most questionable of cites for this statement, but nonetheless, this was the official expiration date of Earth’s “natural resources”.
- By “the moon”, she was not referring to, say, Europa, nor was she confusing dear Luna with its redder and more, ah, planetary cousin Mars. She truly believed that mankind’s only hope of survival was to evacuate the planet’s population to the very same gray ball of rock upon which Neil Armstrong first stepped.
- No, she wasn’t just fucking with me. You’ll have to take me at my word on this, but for circumstantial evidence, I submit the fact that the debate actually lasted three hours. It would have taken one of the world’s greatest actresses to feign that level of sincerity for that long, and I’d assume they’d have better things to do.
This debate occurred at my apartment, and, as mentioned, spanned a total of 180 minutes. During this time, I Googled up copious cites to the effect that A) Earth was not doomed anytime soon, B) even if it were, the moon would not be among the best of candidates to colonize, as it has no water, no atmosphere, and indeed no precious “natural resources” of which to speak, and C) even if it did, assuming the space shuttle were to magically become capable of landing on and relaunching from the moon with a 100% success rate and 0% downtime for maintainance, we still wouldn’t be able to transport the world’s population in ten years’ time. Despite this, she steadfastly refused to relent.
The next day, I talked with an old friend with whom I hadn’t talked in quite some time…only to find out he’d gone Young Earth Creationist on me.
Og help us all. Amen.
[sup]Perhaps due to centrifugal force[/sup]
Also, here is a link that will tell you all you need to know on the subject of rivers flowing north: Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos
Lunar eclipses…Not so long ago the topic cropped up in conversation with several friends, between them holding a clutch of various science degrees. It took us a good five minutes to recall accuarately how they do occur.
I saw an informercial on TV a few years ago that was trying to sell coral calcium if I remember correctly. The gentleman who was expounding the benefits of coral calcium explained that the FDA required amounts of calcium are actually the bare minimum you need to live, and that if you took 5000-6000 milligrams of coral calcium a day you would not have any kind of addictions, you would never get sick, etc. I am suprised he didn’t tell you that you would gain the ability to fly. Or about the hideous kidney stones you would end up with after taking many times more calcium than is necessary. Oh, wait, I understand why he didn’t mention that last thing.
It’s true what they say about Ipswich, then? :wally <—Spoken in jest, mods.
The largest river (/river system) in the world - the Amazon - does not run south, it runs generally east, but with a slight northwards component too.
A friend of mine is a patent lawyer and an excited gentleman visited him one day with a proposal to build a cable car system from London to Brighton; London is north of Brighton, so it’s higher up, you see? Just look at a map; it’s higher up on the page.
Threads like this remind me that we’re always just one major social upheaval from being reduced to terrified superstitious communities of peasants living under a totalitarian theocracy, burning as witches anyone who is “different” or who follows the evil that is “science”.
The worst ones I run into are high school science teachers. I heard more urban legends passed off as absolute fact by my high school physics and chemistry teachers than all others combined. It’s like the ones I know never opened a book after they struggled out with their BA.
Absolute drivel… we all know it’s the sound of Gods delivery men unloading crates of angel wings.
My mother never lied 
An aunt of mine one time adamantly insisted that whales aren’t animals, because they are mammals instead.
Well, my sister’s an actress, I have been one in the past, and I’ve spent copious amounts of time with many others, so, although I can cast no light on the sincerity of the subject of your post, I can tell you that you’re dead wrong as far as actors being under the impression that they have something better to do than sit around pretending to be an idiot for three hours… especially after it worked out so well for Tom Hanks.
My grandmother knew perfectly well that there was no such thing as a diesel-electric locomotive, and shame on her grandson for thinking otherwise just because he’d read about it in an encyclopædia.
My primary-school teacher also knew that the moon had no gravity, and that was why spacemen wore heavy boots. It was obviously a widely-prevalent fact.
But then my chemistry teacher was highly offended when, in the course of a dressing-down, he pointed out a behavioural fault of mine and I said “Touché”… he didn’t see how what he’d just said was a point to me at all. :smack: