Drinking Liberally, or Some Days It Just Doesn't Pay To Chew Through The Straps

[elfs]

Omaha and I went to the Burien Drinking Liberally tonight. I don't have all that much in common with most of those people, and tonight, I had even less.

Omaha and I sat the girls down at a separate table so we could have a night together. The girls are behaved enough that they can be trusted to sit by themselves through a meal, and they did well enough tonight that one woman came up and complimented us on teaching children how to behave in a restaurant. Unfortunately for Omaha and I, the evening was not to be as quiet we had hoped.

The woman sitting next to us started out, with me at least, on the wrong foot. "I hope Barack Obama becomes president," she said. "He'll be ready to deal with the terrible things that mother nature is about to hit us with. That what it says in the Mayan Prophecies. Four years from now we're going to be in deep, deep trouble. And the prophecies were right, too, they predicted the economic crash we're having right now."

Oh, grief.

"But I have two causes now that I'm a grandmother and retired," she went on. "The first is world peace, and the second is clean water."

"Well," I said, making a mistake, "Clean water isn't really a problem in the US and Canada."

"Oh, that's where you're wrong," she insisted. "Too much water in our country has flouride in it."

It went downhill from there.

She and her male companion were anti-flouridation nuts. They were anti-vaccination nuts. He went on and on about thimerosol in vaccines, and when I told him there hadn't been any thimerosol in vaccines in ten years but that there'd be no noticeable affect on public health, he said, "Autism rates are up." No, autism diagnoses are up because the diagnostic criteria have been broadened, but there's no appreciable increase in rates of autism. (Or if there is, there's a commensurate drop in diagnoses of other forms of "mental retardation" which have been deprecated by the medical community.)

And then he dropped the final straw. He was a 9/11 truther. He did not believe, thankfully, that the entire thing was a conspiracy, "But," he intoned seriously, "Something happened to building 7 that they're not telling us about." Uh, it caught fire and collapsed after too much damage?

But she was certainly the leader of the two, going on and on about flouridation, and how it was a seventy-year-old conspiracy by the coal companies to give them a way to dispose of ash waste buildup in smokestacks, and how it was a carcinogen and a toxin and the AMA had said that pregnant women shouldn't drink flouridated water. Sigh.

I was very grateful that we had the kids. They gave us both an excuse to get out of there before too many more braincells were sacrificed under the stress of being "polite."

Comments

[ibsulon.livejournal.com]

Eh, I hope most of 'em aren't like that. :) -- sigh.

[irismoonlight.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the timely reminder than not all the annoying science-denial kooks are on the right side of the political spectrum.

[grian-ruadh.livejournal.com]

Well, look on the bright side: they represent two more votes for Obama even if they are the left's very own variety of wingnut. *facepalm*

[trinsf.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, they're all wrong. Autism causation by vaccine has been disproved. Everyone knows that the new study shows autism is caused by either TV, or something else related to staying indoors when it rains a lot (http://www.slate.com/id/2151538/). This is especially true where you live -- the studies showing correlation between increased rain and autism are based on data from California and the PNW. (Why do I know about this silliness? Because I had to write a paper evaluating the arguments for my English class.)

[lovingboth]

Hmm, people might not be walking miles to get water, but there are going to be places where the stuff coming out of the tap is drinkable but isn't 'clean' (in terms of having fertilizer run-off or various industrial wastes in it, rather than fluoride added).

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

I'm beginning to lean against fluoridation, since the EWG came out against it (http://www.ewg.org/node/23541). There also doesn't seem to be good evidence for a benefit (as opposed to fluoride in toothpaste).

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Goddess, no. Left-wing science kooks tend to be more limiting in the damage they can do because their obsessions are for more research and their worldview is one in which more investigation will uncover the "hidden truth." Right-wing science kooks tend to bend to ideology; left-wing science kooks bend to conspiracy.

I hate the idea of throwing money at research into "complimentary and alternative medicines" that have no evidence behind them, but I prefer that to shutting down research programs entirely.

[(Anonymous)]

Actually looking forward to the 4 years away Mayan thing, hell of an excuse for a party for all Shadowrun nuts (the RPG not the Microsoft crap).

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but you're not about to claim that nationwide flouridation is a multi-generational conspiracy to pacify the American people. That was one of the things her boyfriend claimed: that if it weren't for flouridation there would be more political violence and maybe the corporations wouldn't run the country the way they did.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

It wouldn't surprise me if there turns out to be a correlation between early TV watching and attention deficit problems in young children. All the kids I've seen recently who are parked in front of TV to babysit them have ADD- and ADHD-like problems.

[fallenpegasus]

Where their any sane people there?

[shunra.livejournal.com]

It might be hard to distinguish cause from effect in that.

If you have a bouncing-off-the-walls kids who only quiets down to survivability when his curiosity/fascination is engaged by industrial-grade stimulus (TV, and particularly children's TV), you might easily use that stimulus a lot.

Don't blame the parents for odd-seeming behavior until you figure out what made that behavior make sense in the first place.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

A few. I just didn't sit next to one. (Scarier yet: she's a former state representative.)

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

In at least one case I'm pretty sure it's the overstimulation that did it. Oddly enough, both of her children exhibit the exact same behavior set. Mom's idea of parenting wee little ones is parking them in front of the VCR, you see.

[shunra.livejournal.com]

Look, I hate TV and don't own one. When I did, my kids had very strict viewing-time limits, not least because I saw how badly disengaging from a viewing session affected them.

In other words, I've seen the effects of TV and I don't like them.

But: cause and effect, please? Does the exact same behavior set come from genetics, environmental toxins, or something else and lead to the kind of kids who just don't stop bouncing unless they're in front of a television?

Blaming moms is dangerous, because if you decide "it's mom's fault" when it isn't, you will lose time in finding out whatever it is that is really causing the epidemic, be it television abuse, environmental stuff, or the changing definition of what is acceptable or normal in children.

[fallenpegasus]

"Blame the Mom" is the reason that autism and autism-spectrum disorders took so long to be properly researched.

On the other hand, when I see an obese 5yo kid sucking down on a coka-cola, I'll blame the mom.

[fallenpegasus]

Ah jeez, and here I was working so hard to calm down about politics.

[shunra.livejournal.com]

Can you tell just by looking whether the kid is obese-and-gaining or obese-and-losing?

What if, for instance, the kid has all that weight gain due to a combination of inactivity due to a traffic accident that broke a limb and along with it, the kid's ability to move? What if that coke or pastry are the single-solitary treat the kid is allowed after a week of of virtuous celery chewing?
What if the kid has much larger problems and has earned the treat for stellar performance in the struggle not to wet his bed?

Another scenario: what if the mom and dad are divorced and don't see eye to eye about nutrition? For your particular scenario, let's imagine the dad has custody and the mom takes the kid out for a treat he can relate to.

You can't tell at a glance, really not.

[ladyperegrine.livejournal.com]

As a mom of a nine and six year old, I thank you. I often have to curb my own judgmental tendencies, but I heartily believe that the intense guilt and anger thrown at parents (particularly moms), from many sources, does very little to give concrete help to families. It's good to read a voice of compassion and kindness. We really can't know the intricacies of someone else's life at a glance.