Your doctor called - You're booked for next Tuesday for your Cataract Surgery.

Seriously though, Mt better half used to have the same opinion you do, and yes, on her next visit to th optometrist, they told her she'd be having cataract surgery soon. Now? She very well knows the difference between the formats. As in "Oh wow" 480 to 720p, an "Geeze wow" 720p to1080p.

There are more bullshit myths about HDTV ever since the days when the get off my lawn crowd were telling us that you couldn't see the difference between HDTV and NTSC.

Actually, Genesis would be a good start.

Yes indeed - and glad you supplied that caveat. A good balance of Fruits, veggies and protein (AKA meat) is what makes for a healty diet. Venture too far in one direction or another, and you are likely to develop problems.

I know really, massively healthy men that can pick up over 500 pounds that use calorie bombs at McDonalds to replenish carbs (trust me, it's hard to eat your cals when you need 4500 or more, these are athletes remember).

I remember the days when I played 3-4 Ice hockey games a week. I could eat whatever I liked. Scaling back, and the calorie needs collapse. Sad to say, the appetite does not always follow.

Genetics.

Seriously, today, we see some 105 year old celebrating a birthday, and we think that if only we do everything right, we will live to be at least that old.

Or exercise, or whatever. Somehow, some way, all we have to do is hit on the right combination, and it's "sorry death, you lose."

When in fact its all just wishful thinking. No matter what you do, what you eat, no one gets out of here alive. And genetics has a huge amount more relevance to your lifespan than any organic or vegan delights you pass down your alimentary canal.

And if we do manage to stave off death for a few years, mother nature has other surprises for us - like dementia. Personally, I would trade off 15 years of life to avoid that fate.

And grifters like that woman just prey on the poor suckers.

Problem is, a fair amount of that "herbal crap" does actually work. Even some things called holistic actuall work - although it is stuff that isn't actually holistic.

Take Arnica Montana for instance. It's called "Holistic" but it's actually a rather concentrated medicine that is made by soaking the flowers in alcohol for a week or so, and the results do indeed act as a pain reliever. Monkshood is a rather powerful analgesic which was used until safer alternatives were derived. It's problem is that the theraputic dose isn't all that far from a toxic dose. St Johns wort, and Valerian root are also effective.

There is a whole list of herbal drugs - and sometimes the mainstream pharmiceuticals are based on them. Now that being said, there are some that are ineffective, and a few frauds that have become incorporated into the herbal pharmacy. But that doesn't change the fact that there are effective drugs that are not made by "big Pharma"

The problem is that we are so indoctrinated with the idea that our diseases are somehow "our fault" makes for a powerful blockage of any skepticism that might be shown. Its a powerful part of human nature, whch spans from Eating "right" to retribution by god for supposed sins.

Fact checking for this sort of thing? Ain't gonna happen.

And there you have it. No True Scotsman meets cancer blamer.

All of these insane ideas, end up having at their very core, the concept of your disease is somehow your fault. Get XXX disease? That's because you weren't a vegan, or you ate too much thisorthat.

It gets really weird, because we end up doing things like avoiding all sun exposure, and people frantically thinking they are going to get melanoma and die because they got a little sun, and their skin turned pink for a day.

And the results? Vitamin D deficiency. When I was a child, we got a lot of outdoor time. Coupled with Vitamin D milk, we were covered. I remember even admonitions against taking supplements, because you might get too much D. Now? D deficiency is becoming almost universal.

Folks, we don't live forever, we have a lot of different things that take us out, and problems based on what we eat are our fault much less often than the blamers would have us believe.

But not bp or exxon corporations?

Of course that is what it is based on. But not everyone is Christian, and by going to B.C.E. or C.E. we can avoid discussions like this one. This is just fun stuff for you and me, but its like arguing over the shape of the negotiating table for scientists. Its just a time marker, and not even a very good one, whether we demand that it be related to the Christian church, or something else.

My mother was raised as baptist, but when wanting to marry my father, who was catholic, the catholic church insisted she convert. Upon conversion, she became very conservative about it. Meanwhile my Grandfather, after being widowed, remarried a super fundy woman, and the shenanigans were on.

Growing up was interesting to say the least.

I think it might be biblical injunctions against making penis shaped cakes.

History Channel2. It's your kind of place. All normal science is wrong, and everything is due to ancient aliens.

Halton Arp? Seriously? Who's next, Uri Gellar?

Poe or projecting? Everyone I know is excited.

But you see, your original statement was:

"There are precisely 0 fundies that believe that."

Now that that's been corrected, we can write back and forth correctly

as there are a great many fundies who don't believe in any of the Young Earth stuff these days, but are clearly still fundies as they believe the important thing about their religion is the scripture (or some creative interpretation thereof), not the church.

I would never assume that there is a homogenous belief set. After all Man makes God in his own image. Even aside from just Christianity and the other religions out there. Ever notice how many Christian churches there are these days? There is a whole subset of Americans who spend years searching for the church that believes what they do. And they get emphatic about it. Divorce is a growing problem amongst the fundamentalist/evangelical crowd. Because whne one of th etwp has an epiphany about how things are supposed to be, and the other doesn't tag along, they'll leave their spouse like they did their old church. http://divorce.com/divorce-rat...

And every one of them has the " actual truth"

But on to the Creationism thing.

It's not that long ago that the ID'ers were pushing thier "teach the controversy" bullshit. A highly recommended read is Intelligent Thought - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It's a compilation of various contributors - Pinker, Dawkins, Dennet, Randall, Hauser, and T.D. White, as well as an excerpted judgement by the Judge who presided over the Dover Deleware Intelligent design case.

The part that will be surprising to some is the incredible duplicity of the ID'ers. No mere slight of hand, but outright purposeful lies in their quest to replace actual science with Christian science.

Having been raised in that insane world, (strict Catholic parents with strict Baptist Grandparents) and grown up in a likewise crazy town where all references that might support evolution or an old earth were scrubbed from the curriculum, and the town was shut down on Sunday's until the 1970's, I fully understand that duplicity, and I am much less optimistic than you are. They haven't given up on their quest for domination, they're just waiting.

As cute as that sounds, I'm sitting here enjoying the NHL playoffs in high-def, and enjoying a very clean signal.

Watching television on a old school set is simply awful. And as a 3-D animator (just one part of my job) HD is a Godsend. There were not many things as depressing as the old frame buffer days, when you converted your nice sharp 3-D animations to NTSC then on to tape.

Missing those days is like missing lead paint in your kid's bedroom.

But let me ask, was there some point in time when technology wasn't used for dark purposes? Is there something special about today's technology thyat makes it so awful that instead of seeing the good, a normal person could only look at every new thing, and they only see the bad?

Now, the question then becomes, "Where do we stop at with regards to technology, and how will that stopping make life better?"

The Internet?

Rocketry?

Airplanes?

Medicine?

Electronics

Automobiles?

Trains?

Horses"

Agriculture?

Houses?

All technology can be used for ill as well as good. But when you start to sound like the boys down at the Legion bitching about how awful everything is now, you can rest assured you have just slipped into the past along with all that good/better stuff you lament. I've heard that carping outlook, and it is pure poison.

Congratulations olde-tymer! You made it. Maybe they have one of those old TV's you like at the rest home.