At last!
March 14, 2004 10:34 PM   Subscribe

Someone finally has the guts to save the environment. The dangers of using harmful chemicals can easily outweight the benefits. Use your head!
posted by Krrrlson (24 comments total)
 
hi. with mathowie being at sxsw, I'd like to take this opportunity to take a shit in a random thread.

You may resume your normally scheduled metafilter.
posted by angry modem at 11:45 PM on March 14, 2004


i fart in angrymodems general direction.
posted by quonsar at 11:50 PM on March 14, 2004


~fart~
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 11:51 PM on March 14, 2004


Damn, did something die in here?
posted by 2sheets at 12:05 AM on March 15, 2004


~fart~

damn that one squirt in the pants a little

;/
posted by Dreamghost at 12:14 AM on March 15, 2004


Angry modem! Didn't you know that that could break apart like a styrofoam cup and ruin the water supply?
posted by shepd at 12:17 AM on March 15, 2004


Stop it with the farts guys! Methane is very bad for the environment!
posted by shepd at 12:20 AM on March 15, 2004


I'm from around there. Aliso Viejo has been full of shit for years.
posted by planetkyoto at 12:41 AM on March 15, 2004



posted by quonsar at 12:52 AM on March 15, 2004



posted by Dreamghost at 1:07 AM on March 15, 2004





i hope you never get cancer from environmental toxins someday krrrlson - cancer is a real sh*tty deal ...
posted by specialk420 at 1:09 AM on March 15, 2004


Free Quonsar? Can I have one?
posted by shepd at 1:10 AM on March 15, 2004


it is all about having guts.
posted by johnnyboy at 3:33 AM on March 15, 2004


shepd - are you sure you know what you're asking for? Beware, you might get it. Permit me to relate a little story about quonsars :

"Some two hundred years ago a gentleman, who lived by himself in a large house not far from here, saw a quonsar in a cage when he was visiting the market: a quonsar with a tail, yellow skin, and two long sharp fangs-he was about the size of a large dog. The quonsar sat quietly in a strong bamboo cage and gnawed on a bone. Next to the cage a merchant was watching the crowd and the gentleman asked him if the quonsar was for sale.

`Of course,' the merchant said. "Otherwise I wouldn't be here. This is an excellent quonsar, strong, diligent and able to do anything you want him to do. He knows how to do carpentry, he is a good gardener, he can cook, mend clothes, read you stories, chop wood, and what he doesn't know he can learn. And I don't ask much for him, if you give me 50,000 yen (50 pounds) he is yours."

The gentlemen didn't haggle and paid in cash. He wanted to take the quonsar home at once.

`One moment,' the merchant said. `Because you haven't bargained with me I want to tell you something. Look here, he is a quonsar of course, and quonsars are no good, you know that don't you?'

`And you said he was an excellent quonsar.' The gentleman said indignantly.

`Sure, sure,' the merchant said, `And that's true as well. He is an excellent quonsar, but he is not good. He will always remain a quonsar. You have made a good buy, but only on the condition that you keep him going all the time. Every day you'll have to give him a routine, from this time to that time; you have to chop wood; and then you can start preparing the food; and after dinner you can rest for half an hour, but then you really have to die down and relax; and after that you can dig in the garden, etc., etc. If he has time to spare, if he doesn't know what to do, then he is dangerous.'

`If that's all,' the gentleman said, and took the quonsar home. And everything went beautifully. Every morning the gentleman called the quonsar who would kneel down obediently. The gentleman would dictate a daily program and the quonsar would start his chores and work right through the day. If he wasn't working he rested or played, but whatever he did, he was always obeying orders.

Than, after some months, the gentleman met an old friend in the city, and because of the sudden meeting and the thrill of seeing his old buddy again he forgot everything. He took the friend to a caf‚ and they started drinking sake, one little stone jar after another, and then they had a very good meal and more to drink, and they landed up in the willow quarter. The ladies kept the two friends busy and our gentleman woke up in a strange room, late the next morning. At first he didn't know where he was but gradually it all came back to him and he remembered his quonsar. His friend had gone and he paid the bill to the women, who looked quite different now from what he remembered the previous evening, and rushed home. When he reached his garden he smelled burning and saw smoke coming from the kitchen. He stormed into his house and saw the quonsar sitting on the wooden kitchen floor. He had made an open fire and was roasting the neighbor's child on a spit."


So, are you still sure you want that free quonsar?
posted by troutfishing at 4:37 AM on March 15, 2004


______________________________________________

As far as the linked news yuck yuck goes, well -

I'm not especially worried about dihydrogen monoxide, but I am annoyed about all the persistant organic pollutants - such as PAH's, PCB's and Dioxins - floating around in the environment for the fact that they build up in human fat tissues.

Now - as a developmental piece of work - I'm pretty much finished. I yam what I yam, to quote Popeye. But if my wife and I choose to have a child, there's a little problem.

These persistant organic pollutants which I mentioned above are fat soluble and so they build up in human fat cells. In fact, it has recently been shown that breast feeding reduces breast cancer incidence. The scientists who determined this had a tentative explanation of the mechanism which was rather disturbing. It was a quite simple explanation and so was well in accord with the principle of Occam's Razor.

The American nursing mothers are now flushing out, with their breast milk, toxins which have accumulated in their breasts over their lifetimes.....into their newborn infants. There, these chemicals act as hormone disruptors (mainly as estrogen-mimickers) to disrupt these infants' endocrine systems - which is the chemical signalling system that governs human growth and development.

"We also found that an infant who had been breast-fed for 1 year had an accumulated dose [of dioxin] 6 times higher than a 1-year-old infant who had not been breast-fed. " (from EPA study)
posted by troutfishing at 4:58 AM on March 15, 2004


troutfishing, been looking in the "The Empty Mirror" lately?
posted by davehat at 5:11 AM on March 15, 2004


davehat - not that recently, but I love that book. I found that copy of Van De Vetering's anecdote (which I assume has been floating around for centuries) which I bastardized by changing "devil" to "quonsar" (for those who haven't figured out the joke), here. Meanwhile, If you like Van De Vetering's ouevre, you might enjoy "Chasm of Fire", by Irina Tweedie, of her time as the disciple of a Sufi master (probably somewhere in Pakistan). It's far less detached than Van De Vetering's style (for better or worse) and has some hair raising anecdotes.
posted by troutfishing at 5:35 AM on March 15, 2004


can be deadly if inhaled. *bwahahahaha* this was a good laugh.
posted by dabitch at 6:07 AM on March 15, 2004


The measure has been pulled from the agenda, although Norman said the city may still eventually ban foam cups.

"Our main concern is with the Aliso Creek watershed," Norman said. "If you get Styrofoam into the water and it breaks apart, it's virtually impossible to clean up."


I guess the city'll also have to learn that there isn’t a coffee cup, cooler or packaging material in the world made from STYROFOAM™.
posted by Smart Dalek at 7:12 AM on March 15, 2004


As per Smart Dalek's link, we here at the Dow Chemical Company would prefer it if you would stop using the color Blue** to refer to Metafilter.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

The Dow Chemical Company

**The color Blue is a Trademark of The Dow Chemical Company
posted by clockwork at 8:32 AM on March 15, 2004


Dihydrogen monoxide is a major component of acid rain. Just saying....
posted by electro at 8:36 AM on March 15, 2004


Even Styrofoam can't stop someone selling frozen deserts in blue packaging.
posted by davehat at 8:43 AM on March 15, 2004


**The color Blue is a Trademark of The Dow Chemical Company
Actually, lawd help the graphics person who prints a Ford logo that isn't Ford Blue. [Can't find the Pantone PMS # right off the bat.]
---

troutfishing if this toxin/breast-milk caution dates back to my baby days, now I'm not so jealous that mom breastfed sis but not me.

Seriously, I have great concerns about *adult* health being affected by environmental factors. For instance, some women's reproductive health problems are due to hormones in foods.

---
One question - this quonsar, it ...
posted by NorthernLite at 2:11 PM on March 15, 2004


Stop! We do not speak of this quonsar!

NorthernLite - You play the hand you're dealt, right? I've been amazed at the almost complete lack of public reaction to this story. On the whole, I suspect that breast feeding still confers an overall benefit, Dioxins, PAH's and PCB's notwithstanding. But time will tell.........spooky spooky spooky
posted by troutfishing at 10:04 AM on March 16, 2004


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