I had to deal with this recently. In a post on another message board, I said that someone “welshed” on a bet. Well, I got an anonymous email (in that I don’t know which user sent it), stating that “Catherine Zeta-Jones is Welsh, you welch on a bet.” So I replied that they were both acceptable, and sent him a link to the definition at dictionary.com. He then said, “I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.” Ok, then…you go right ahead and disagree with the dictionary. More power to ya.
Two words:
Atkins Diet.
:rolleyes:
That is all.
Stranger
Funny…I had that same opinion regarding several of the posts on this thread.
What is particularly irritating is in a discussion in which there may be room for a legitimate difference of opinions someone pops in which complete ignorance and starts making definitive statements that are based upon mistruths, like arguements based upon nonsensical interpretation of thermodynamics or misinterpretation of radiological dating methods.
See every discussion every conducted on New Earth Creationism for examples of this. :rolleyes:
Stranger
One of my big red flags is the moon landing. If someone says they don’t believe it happened, I immediately file them in my mental “too stupid to deal with” category, and walk away.
Can I ask what you mean? You don’t believe it works? Or what?
Oh, the Atkins Diet “works”, all right. It works by starving your body of nutrients needed to properly digest the protein- and saturated fat-heavy diet it recommends. You’ll lose weight, but heck, you’ll lose weight if you swallow a tapeworm, too. That doesn’t mean it’s good for you.
Decades of clinical research have demonstrated that carbohydrates fill an important role in good health. Overly refined carbs and especially starches and sugars aren’t very good for you (they tend to muck up your blood sugar regulation), but that doesn’t mean that a greasy, cheese covered 1/2 pounder is more healthy for you if served between two leaves of lettuce rather than a bun. Humans are omnivores, to be sure, and the most rich source of most nutrients comes from meat, but we didn’t evolve eating only, or even mostly, meat. You get every vitamin you need (I think) from raw red meat…but you’re not going to live a long, healthy, heart-disease free life.
But yeah, if you eat nothing but burgers sans bun, you’ll lose weight. You’ll also spend half the time on the pot trying to **** your intestines out, like many of my cow-orkers.
Stranger
There’s a woman like that here.
The conversation went like this.
Her: “I don’t beleive that people walked on the moon”
Me: "Why?
Her: “Because I beleive in the Bible”
Me: “And the Bible says you can’t walk on the moon?”
Her: “Well no, but I just don’t beleive the moon is anything you can land on. It’s a light in the sky.”
Me: “So you don’t think the moon is a big rock orbiting the Earth?”
Her: “I don’t know what it is, but I know you can’t go there.”
Me: “Why?”
Her: “It’s like when you go in a submarine. If you go too far down you get crushed, the same thing would happen if you go too far up.”
I pointed her to Badastonomy.com, but it didn’t help.
Unfortunately, dictionary.com is not a publisher, but a service that uses many different dictionaries, some of which contradict each other.
Unless I know exactly what the source is, I don’t trust it.
In the “welch/welsh” case, you are correct Susie, at least, according to my dictionary, the Webster’s New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition.
Under “welch” it lists only: vi. [Slang] var. of WELSH.
Under “welsh” it lists: [19th-c, slang, prob. < fol., with reference to alleged character traits of the Welsh] [Slang] 1. to cheat or swindle by failing to pay a bet or other debt 2. to evade (an obligation)
But because of the different definitions in various dictionaries, this may be a gray area. In other words, either of you may be correct.
And how shocked are you that most of us use punctuation?
Yup, sounds elitist to me. 'Course I’m just a backwards Southerner, so you probably don’t want my input.
Gee, I suppose me (the soon-to-be lawyer) and my engineer husband should get together with our friends the doctor, the computer engineer, the French and Russian translator, the graphic designer (hi PinkMaribou!), the nurse, the museum director, the environmental engineer, and the other attorneys I know. Then we can get together with your educated friends (only “Yankees” are educated you know) and have a huge pissing match to find out just which group is better.
I am sure they all will be highly delighted to be called closeminded and backwards because they live in Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio, you enormous :wally
But if you’re eating nothing but burgers sans buns, you’re not really doing Atkins properly. I did it, and lost nearly 80 pounds, and I’ve kept it off for over a year. I ate plenty of fresh veggies with my burgers. FWIW, I ate mostly chicken and fish, rather then red meat. I didn’t eat all the pre-packaged crap that screams “LO-CARB!!!” on the label.
I never had to spend half my time on the pot, **** my intestines out. I was under the care of a doctor, and I had all the bloodwork done.
The ones who think, “All the burgers and fried eggs and bacon I can stuff down!” are wrong, sure. But don’t be so quick to judge.
Yes, it was in my home dictionary as well, but I linked to dictionary.com for convenience.
I know that “welch” is valid as well, but my issue was with him telling me that I used the word incorrectly when I didn’t. He was wrong when he said that I’d misused the word, but still didn’t want to admit it. Just a minor annoyance. I swear I’m over it. 
msmith537, you might want to consider offering up an apology. I give you myself as an example, though you might want to spellcheck and copyedit the thing a little better than I did.
We all shoot from the hip occasionally, and sometimes we hit an innocent bystander. Be big enough to admit it.
Stranger
Do the world a really big favor and actually READ the book before you blast Atkins. It doesn’t say to eat nothing but meat and fat. It wants you to eat fresh vegetables, and unprocessed/lightly processed carbs like whole grains and avoid garbage foods of processed rice, overprocessed flour, and starches that do not have a favorable proportion of fiber to sugars like potatoes. I eat 10 portions of veggies a day, I do get 25-35 grams of dietary fiber without suppliments…most people eating a regular food pyramid diet seem to need food and fiber suppliments more than I do…and I am not untypical of someone who has read the book and is working the diet correctly. And oddly enough, my bloodwork is excellent, and I don’t have to take meds to control my type 2 diabetes.
I’ve read through the Atkins literature, and yes, while it does suggest (well, the diet actually mandates) a certain amount of vegatable matter, the whole “carbs are absolutely bad” thing is right off the wall, and the idea that red meat is good for you, from a longevity standpoint, is contradicted by mountains of peer-reviewed studies.
The thing that Atkins et al get right is the fact that Americans (and the industrialized world in general) eat way to many refined carbohydrates with no nutritional value aside from raw calories. Because they digest quickly, they make you feel more hungry, causing you to eat more carbs…and thus you get the people who eat a family-size back of crisps in one sitting. Hello, diabetes.
You’re right; a diet with moderate portions of meat, espeically fish protein (I’m not so excited about fowl though from a culinary standpoint it is easier to store and prepare) combined with sufficient servings of fruits and vegetables is very healthy, and will make you feel less hungry than eating a bunch of junk food, or white toast and cheerios, et cetera. But the emphasis (from what I’ve read on his own literature) in the Atkins plan is on the protein, which is wrong. The emphasis should be on a well-rounded diet with a minimal amount of processed sugars and saturated fats. If you want to lose weight, you eat less and exercise more (the former being the more effective of the two, but both are important.)
Sorry about being a little blunt on the subject, but as a former SCUBA instructor, I’m sick of seeing these grossly overweight (and therefore extremely risk prone) divers chowing down on plate after plate of eggs and bacon, but refusing toast, and claiming, “Oh yeah, I’m on the Atkins plan, and I’ve lost 30 pounds already. Can’t you tell?” Gads, no, and I don’t want to try to haul you up the swim step after you’ve had a heart attack or suffered a massive DCI from nitrogen oversaturation. Lay off the fried eggs and take a walk, will ya?
Stranger
This is a little different, but… I went to a movie once with a friend of mine. I forget the name of it, but it had a character who was kind of psychologicaly tormented, somewhat self-destructive, full of angst… And after the movie when we were driving home, my friend said to me that she just had a hard time understanding there are people out there who feel that way, because she had never felt that way and it just seemed really weird to her. She had no first-hand knowledge or empathy for that state of mind. And I just thought to myself how lucky she was to not have experienced it. And I had a hard time believing that there were people who did NOT have those feelings!
Send him in here; I’ll smack him around with my dictionary for ya. 
My mother refuses to believe that light travels… You turn on a light and its just on, instantly, everywhere. She says that she’s waiting for the day when my own kids come home from school and tell me that “the whole light traveling thing” has been disproven.
I thought it was an executioner. Paging Dr. Freud…