yada yada. Gay sex is so mercilessly unhealthy compared to real sex that it’s not even funny. Pit bulls are so mercilessly mean compares to regular dogs that it’s not funny. Pork is so mercilessly unclean that it’s not even funny… [fill in the blank] music is so mercilessly unmelodic when compared to real music…

See what I did there? Stating an unfounded opinion in a hyperbolic way doesn’t make it true.

If you want to wash your hands 50 times a day and drench them in purell after touching every doorknob, have at it, but please keep your personal phobias/obsessions/compulsions/superstitions out of my kitchen/bedroom/living room/favorite restaurant/legislature.

See, our opinions differ widely, but no matter how strong my opinion is, it will never affect your life.

C. S. P. Schofield: One does not need to have direct relatives who are intellectually disabled in order to feel that using the word “retard” as a generic term of abuse is not cool. It is possible to feel empathy for folks who are not members of your family. You might try it sometime!

Before the genie of standardized food labeling was introduced, companies made whatever claim they wanted on the package. They had NO incentive whatsoever to put anything that showed their product in a bad light on their product.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/free.png

How many gunshot injuries and deaths (and how much childhood trauma) would be prevented if we took guns away from law enforcement?

There is nothing “retarded” about poking someone with a needle or shooting at someone’s feet or insisting that food labels agree with your politics…those are truly stupid acts. Monumentally stupid, and more so because those people don’t have a developmental delay to excuse their careless, willful stupidity.

My stand on the word “retarded” is more a stand on courtesy and semantics than a stand on political correctness.

I’m starting to wonder if DUI is ever based on anything
other than falsified (or rubberstamped) police records.

May we presume you have a developmentally challenged person in your family? Because if you don’t, I’m not sure what to make of your outburst.

Marie,

Bittman is a writer for the New York Times; this means that his point of view is invincibly provincial – pretty much restricted to the island of Manhattan and select surroundings – and that he is dumb as a post (it’s a requirement). Once you understand those points his entire article is explained.

I have the answer – you are! For using the word retard, you asshole.

I love how he talks about “cries of hysteria from food producers who argue that all foods are fine” and then says that his plan would work because sales of soda could drop 16.5 percent. The cries of hysteria would likely come not because “all foods are fine,” but because sales would drop, production would drop, employment would drop. Bittman makes no connection between his lofty ideals and the real world of economics.

Underwriter Laboratories and the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval are good examples of successful voluntary labeling.

Needless to say, I’d like this to come about through market forces, due to other consumers bitching about it as I do, rather than by regulatory fiat.

In a similar vein, I won’t buy any product whose manufacturer attempts to deceive me via the label. I recently picked up (and put right back down again) something (I forget what) which listed “evaporated cane juice” as an ingredient. I took that as an attempt to indicate the presence of sugar without mentioning the word sugar. There’s something deeply disturbing about an industry that feels the need to mislead its customers in that way.

I think that if you go read the labels in a health-food store you will see that there are companies prepared to voluntarily meet all kinds of standards in order to woo specialized markets.

Can people be able to relieve stress by joking at work? Of course.

But threatening someone using potentially dangerous/deadly devices? You are too stupid to continue working for me, goodbye.

Count me (and my unreconstructed paleo-liberalism) in on this. The more people understand the market and societal distortions that result from our subsidies and trade policies the better. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people would want to keep less-than-optimal-market policies in place for cultural reasons — but at least they’d actually know what they’re doing and why. Yeah, I know, a pipe dream.

Here is a PDF from the Adam Smith Institute, I can’t remember if it talks about harm done (it’s been a few years since I read it): http://www.adamsmith.org/sites/default/files/images/pdf/unfair_trade.pdf