Balta1701

Is Organic food worth it is a very, very complex question, and I can't come down on either side. It really depends. I'll just start rattling off my thoughts; 1. Organic foods are often made without certain additives. However, some additives, like some preservatives, exist for a reason. Because otherwise, bad things can happen with food. You can get quite sick from eating things that aren't properly preserved or produced. 2. On the other hand, there is more than a little bit of evidence that other additives to food can also make you sick or kill you, especially with prolonged consumption. Pesticides, etc. Going organic should prevent some of those problems. 3. Some foods are more organic than others. It really doesn't matter, for example, if you spray bananas with tons of pesticides, because they have a thick skin. On the other hand, some foods take up more pesticides or get them on their skins more. 4. Organic foods often have very similar nutritional values to regular food. Especially vegetables. There are studies out there saying that organic foods don't produce significant nutritional gains. 5. On the other hand, it's really hard to control all the variables there. If you're having the exact same diet of organic and non-organic foods, then you're still getting a ton of vegetables, healthy foods, avoiding processed stuff. If you compare a person who's eating an organic diet versus eating heavy amounts of processed, americanized franken-foods, the health benefits would be enormous. 6. You can't tell me that grain fed beef tastes anywhere near as good as free-range or grass fed. Not even close. Ditto on a number of other food varieties. 7. The added cost; I'd love to shop at Whole Foods and go nearly all organic. I flat out can't afford to. I try to do as good as I can otherwise. 8. The government; under the Bush Administration, the food industry lobbied hard to weaken the definition of organic as much as they could, to sell more stuff as organic. They largely succeeded. A lot of things that are labeled "Organic" now wouldn't pass the original standards. 9. The environment; for me this is the biggy. It takes a huge amount of energy and releases enormous amounts of carbon to run our current food production system. It is totally unsustainable; as oil and energy costs continue to go up, maintaining our current food production system is going to be nearly impossible, especially if Global Warming has major effects on the growing system (drying out california, moving the corn growing belts north towards Canada). On top of that, the local environmental damage from fertilizers and pesticides is enormous. The only way that we're going to make the food production system work long-term is some sort of move in the direction of organic production, whether we make it there or not. 10. Overall, the average American diet is really bad these days. Loaded with processed, franken-foods, high fructose corn syrup, things that have been stripped of all their nutritional value, and it is a huge contributor to the obesity epidemic in this country. Costs are enormous. Moving towards anything that is healthier saves this country billions of dollars per year and saves lives.

I'm just preemptively moving this to the filibuster while I type my reply.

Can you make a thread suggesting someone else isn't performihg?

QUOTE (SouthsideDon48 @ Aug 5, 2009 -> 07:02 PM) That Charlie Hough looked OLD!!! How old was he in 1992? He looked like he was in his 50's!!! :-O Charlie Hough is 61.

So Beckham hit that leadoff 3 run home run while I was out I take it?

Nix bails us out.

Damnit Chris

Come on Getz, help us out.

Seems like we're hitting an awful lot of balls near the wall.

Going back a page or 2, one of the defenses of our health care system SS2k5 gave in his post via the Hoover institution was the U.S.'s ability to deal with cancer. The OECD has put out a table of easy data that allows me to put that in perspective. This is death rate via cancer per 100,000 in the population, figures for 2005, sorted by death rate. He's correct, the U.S. is better than Canada or Britain. That doesn't, however, make the U.S. numbers world class. It puts them as somewhat average. Canada didn't have data for 2005, but they're at 169 in 2004. Many of those countries that are better than us have either partial or total government run systems.

These guys never bombed America or had anything to do with that.

Dollar Bill Jefferson finally appears on his way to jail.

The SEC is officially going to start some sort of a crackdown, or at least paying attention, to GS et al.'s "Flash Trading" dealy. That was surprisingly fast turnaround after the original NYT/whistleblower report.

The Financial Times talks to one of the Obama admin's AfPak advisors.

QUOTE (bmags @ Aug 5, 2009 -> 01:26 PM) Correct me if I'm wrong, I was out of state for the latter half of 05, but when Frank went down he did rotate our DH spot, no? Everett played the field sometimes I thought. Frank rotated in to the DH spot for basically 1 month, in June 05, and hit some big time killer game saving/winning home runs for a week or two. But then his foot cracked again and he went back on the DL for another surgery. Everett played the field a handful of times through the 05 season, usually if someone else needed a day off.

QUOTE (knightni @ Aug 5, 2009 -> 01:04 PM) They can't fix the Earth's ozone layer; what makes you think that they can create a breathable atmosphere on a planet thousands of miles farther from the sun than the Earth? ? We took care of the ozone layer problem. It just takes time to fully heal.

QUOTE (Wedge @ Aug 5, 2009 -> 10:49 AM) He was mocking the media for rushing to conclusions. The post was ironic since it was a rushed conclusion based on one game. I got it. My point in reply is; when you're getting basically 10 starts from a guy, if you want good return on him, they all need to be pretty darn good.

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Aug 5, 2009 -> 12:49 PM) How long of a ride is it to Mars or its moon? Direct shot with a space probe is about 6 months.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Aug 5, 2009 -> 09:05 AM) Well it's his fault for not having been born at Rockefeller Plaza on New Year's Eve and having his birth televised. That would be the only way I would trust that he's an American citizen. Dropping the Kaperbole here...serious point...on the Colbert Report, our dentist/lawyer Orly Taitz (did I spell that right? didn't bother checking) was asked what, if anything, the President could do to prove it to her. She answered that there was nothing he could do that she would believe. Then 2 days later she claimed to have received his real birth certificate, and it turns out to be as obvious of a forgery as the CBS documents were. It's literally a case where the people who have decided to believe it will accept anything that seemingly backs up their case and will never accept anything that disagrees, regardless of evidence.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Aug 5, 2009 -> 09:04 AM) Definitely time to get rid of Contreras with his 2.15 ERA in June and 4.06 ERA in July. 5.94 since the AS break, with opponents hitting .303 against him and a 1.8 WHIP.

Seriously Kap, you're actually trying to blame Obama in part for people refusing to believe Obama is a citizen?

Stolen from other thread

G!

I'd really hate to call up Hudson for this reason. But I'm not sure Jose's giving us a lot of options.

QUOTE (DBAHO @ Aug 5, 2009 -> 02:17 AM) Yep, with 23 back to back's and 2 road trips with 6 or more games, it's going to be just that bit harder for them to make the lower spots for the playoffs in the East this season. On the other hand though...their schedule eases up somewhat down the stretch compared to Jan/Feb. That can give a team a push at the end; the Bulls last year were out of the hunt until late in the season.