Well this is refreshing; it looks like the truth. Usually people cramming words into the mouths of the dead are self-serving, bullshit-spewing weirdos. Either that or maudlin, irrelevant losers.

This guy, on the other hand, is a university professor who appears to have actual research behind his claims. It goes against him, of course, that he's attempting to improve or revive his famous great-grandfather's reputation with this article, but the research looks real and I presume it's open to review.

How refreshing.

The fact that he himself still has anything to do with determining the flow and popularity of new films. Seriously, the man is artistic poison. I used to like his reviews until I realized he gives 4 out of 5 big-budget films an automatic pass; it takes something as awful as the Transformers sequels to drag an F rating out of him. Roger Ebert reviews are the film equivalent of payola, I'm almost certain of it. I'm not saying he needs to be a pretentious, judgmental ass, but seriously: can he even remember back to the time when he had standards?

And that whole vintage review thing? I get that it's cute when video game magazines or music rags do it, but they make it a weird little back page bit - often with some self-mockery thrown in there. I continue seeing dead serious reviews of things like Gone With The Wind when I look up his work. News flash, Bob: even you, old and outdated as you are, were still egg #37 back up in your mom's ovaries when Gone with The Wind came out. Yes, the Wizard of Oz, too. Quit spewing your bullshit about old movies; we don't care.

And speaking of video games, I'm sure you've all read plenty about his pretentious screed(s) that video games are not, and can never be, an art form. If the jackass was born 40 years earlier I'm sure he'd have said the same thing about film. He looks at passing media coverage of crap like Saints Row, chooses to consider that the apex of the art form, and concludes it will never be Art at all. Never mind that Saints Row, Streets of Rage, or Halo are our equivalent to Chris Tucker movies: no one ever said those were high art, they're just mindless fun.

Anyway, I should probably stop validating him with so much attention. He's a self-involved tool with no sense of perspective or irony whatsoever, he can't critique his way out a paper bag these days, and hopefully he'll retire soon.

I finally get to join the club! The elite and ever whiny "I read this on an obscure technology/politics blog two months ago and slashdot is just posting it now?" club.

But seriously, this made serious rounds pretty quickly in medical and sociological circles, and even I read it more than a month ago. I'm actually astonished such an active submitter as Pickens didn't get it through till now. It's pretty much talked to death everywhere else (pardon the unintentional pun), and it's not exactly an old conversation to begin with. Most doctors feel pretty similarly to Dr. Murray; they've been saying these things to each other for years as far as I know. They're not all brave enough to respect a patient's verbal requests over family and staff objections (although even here Murray says he had copious, accurate notes of his correspondence with the patient), but Murray's blog hardly describes anything new or emergent.

Yes!

But not horny for you. Good god, not for you.

So therefore any and all attempts at increasing government spending represent greedy politicians squeezing more cash out of the populace?

Even the most hardcore libertarians I know believe the government has taxation authority for transportation infrastructure, weights & measures enforcement, and a military - including growing those things when needed. But not you, you saw through even those bullshit arguments! Guess the next time I-90 buckles or a new town with 2 million people thinks that *maybe* it's time they got a freeway we'll have to point out that: "No! Lee Greatrex opened our eyes and we know that government spending shalt never grow!".

Wake up and smell the rotting pig entrails, pal. The FDA has been underfunded and under-mandated since the 70's. If I recall, they don't even get inflation adjustments under some congresses. Increasing their budget by 33% is still not even 1/10th of the budget and none of the authority that epidemiologists, food safety advocates, and drug company whistle-blowers think they need.

Following your google search, I read the first three articles referencing food-related shutdowns. Every one, even the ones entitled "FDA shuts down" or claiming that the FDA "ordered" someone to stop production, ultimately acknowledged that the company "agreed" to cease production and signed a "consent decree" with the FDA.

So it's still exactly as I read in Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan books: the FDA finds violations and they have to whine, beg, and invoke publicity campaigns to get dirty producers to shut down or improve conditions. They still can't force anyone to do anything most of the time.

So anyway, thanks for playing, and judging by your second paragraph it's time for your thorazine, so please follow the nice nurse to your bedroom and she'll give you a nice gentle prick in the ass. Right where your opinions and your research come from.

It's the second, of course: meat-eaters aren't a unique class of person vulnerable to completely different pathogenic illnesses than those who don't eat meat.

On the other hand, animals and animal products are an excellent way of acquiring any pathogenic illness that isn't transmitted by sex or air, and they're still the number one source of novel diseases. Anthropologists have pretty well established that major plagues usually jumped directly from animals, often livestock, into humans. They didn't call it swine flu for the nasty imagery.

The powerful connection between animal products in the food supply and infectious disease must be what they're really getting at - and the reason they don't want to risk making animal-borne bacteria any stronger.

This summary might be the most misleading I've ever seen on slashdot.

For one thing, the FDA has almost no authority in many of their jurisdictions; they can recommend things, but in most cases have no power to change policy or punish reckless companies. This is especially true with meat and produce. Do some googling about dirty slaughterhouses and meat packing plants and you'll find accounts of the FDA actually pleading with meat packers and state health districts to stop distributing meat from plants that had floors, walls, and packing equipment test positive for wide varieties of serious food-borne pathogens. The same goes for packing plants that had open holes in the walls and ceilings, or rodents literally scurrying underfoot on the packing line. The FDA had absolutely no authority to mandate closure of those plants, and still doesn't as far as I know.

They shouldn't have withdrawn their recommendation against antibiotics in feed (saying the right thing is never wrong in science), but that recommendation never affected policy in the first place; it's total bullshit to imply, quite strongly, that the FDA just doesn't care anymore and thinks it's totally fine for meat producers to inspect themselves.

They don't think it's fine; they fucking hate it. At least the scientists do, and the field inspectors do. The FDA does have a lot of senior management who, by many internal accounts, dedicate themselves solely to rubber-stamping industry proposals - and harassing any pissant scientist who objects. If this new policy is half as blase or half as scientifically ignorant as the linked article implies, and indeed came about to dodge a lawsuit, you can bet it came from some ass-covering prick at the top who doesn't represent the viewpoints of even 10% of the FDA staff.

So ultimately, the FDA doesn't have the mandate, the funding, or the legal prerogative to do even one-tenth as much as the scientists and lower-management would like - and which organizations like the NRDC expect them to do. The politically appointed senior management pull bullshit like this, and people like the NRDC and the submitter use corruption at the highest levels to denigrate a lot of dedicated, well-meaning scientists by calling the whole organization a bunch of lazy sociopaths.

If you want safe food and better drug testing then don't piss on the FDA: you should bitch at Congress about the fucking pro-corporate morons they appoint to lead the FDA, and about the shitty laws and budgets that leave the FDA with not even half the money and authority they need to do the job we expect of them.

Criticizing pseudo-scientific babble doesn't amount to saying "I don't wanna listen because no one here is expert". I'll talk to an educated layman or an inquisitive ignoramus all day long. What I don't like is politically motivated fools with no training in any type of science babbling on about global ecology.

I'm also rather tired, as an evolutionary biologist with some training in ecology and climate, of hearing slashdoters with CS and physics degrees spout off about climate change, drug resistance, ecosystems, etc. when a solid 8 of 10 responses on those topics are so fundamentally wrong that any competent AP Bio student could correct them.

There's nothing pretentious or avoidant about saying it's a waste of time to carry on discussions I know for a fact will promote politics and wrong-headed intuitions over science. When someone so firmly believes a wrong opinion as to bother posting it, and 4 other people mod up their ignorant drivel, and not a single person mods it down...and this happens over and over and over...why shouldn't I point out that it's clearly a waste of time?

As for your contention that I simply "don't wanna hear that we have screwed everything up" accusation, I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion but I believe quite firmly in the dangers of anthropogenic global warming, and I have no problem facing that or any other problem of our species head-on. My criticism of this topic and this posting refers to the virulent climate change deniers I see on slashdot, people who are especially dangerous because they often have enough training in some sort of science and enough practice in informal debate to make some serious bullshit sound reasonable. So your second criticism is in fact precisely opposite the truth.

This has nothing to do with me being told I'm wrong; I've never posted in one these threads before. I've never put forth any opinion, that I can recall, on this topic. I'm simply tired - as someone with university training and research experience in evolution and ecology - of seeing global warming, drug resistance, etc. completely and inexcusably mangled by slashdotters showing off their distant memories of high school biology.

Nice try, though, dismissing my entire multifaceted objection as pure, simple stubbornness. Way to oversimplify.

Why even bother posting this? It will just dissolve into a global warming debate within seconds, and slashdotters are by far the stupidest people I've ever conversed with on the topic of climate change and global warming. Normally slashdot opinions are above average on a given topic, but with global warming they're well below average: it's all fuzzy, intuited 'science' from physicists and programmers with zero understanding of ecology, copious libertarian babble, and wanton libertarian bashing.

It's just going to be a giant flamewar, and the average reader will truly be stupider for having read it.

Pfffft....maybe if you're an ignorant plebe. You'd be amazed what I can do with my unary counting system. It beats binary hands down.

Look at that, it's one o'clock again. Time for another beer. You know, just one....

Never gonna happen. There are too many politically conservative idiots, like my mom, who believe attempts at converting to metric represent a "socialist" conspiracy, and almost literally scream at any attempt to remove Imperial units in favor of metric.

Socialist? The fucking metric system? Seriously?

The government already tried to phase in metric sometime in the 1970s, if I recall, emphasizing it in schools and installing additional signage on highways with metric speeds and distances. People responded to this with caterwauling and by shooting the road signs into tatters. Dave Barry summed up the final results the best:

Here's the problem: I'd bet money that at least 1/2 of those *are* spam. Vindictive pricks who bomb the shit out of product review scores are becoming more common. They'll negatively review products they've never seen from companies or people they've never spoken to because of the author/companies political views, PR gaffs, a nerd-o-sphere uproar like this, etc. They'll organize campaigns to bomb the reviews of every single book from an author or every product from an entire corporation for purely political or vengeful reasons. We've discussed this problem on slashdot many times before.

These self-righteous bastards view it as some kind of justice, when in fact they're just polluting the review ecosystem with lies, hearsay, and crappy manifestos. If the product or company is that bad it will become clear, from the legitimate reviews, quite quickly. No need to break out your weird brand of street justice and fuck up the system for everyone.

This time the people at Ocean Marketing are arrogant, mismanaging pricks; most of the time you can't be so certain when you see this kind of event unfolding.

Honestly, when I was reading the Penny-Arcade post I started wondering whether this was really just a vengeful ex-employee, or even corporate espionage from another vendor. It wasn't until I read multiple older reviews and forum posts corroborating this story that I became convinced otherwise.

Beware internet justice: you never really know who's behind the keyboard or just what kind of destructive, ignorant campaign they're running.