From: timi@mendel.berkeley.edu ( Tim Ikeda)
Newsgroups: rec.food.veg
Subject: Re: Get real, Abhay!
Date: 13 Nov 1992 04:00:30 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: mendel.berkeley.edu


From: gph@hpindda.cup.hp.com (Paul Houtz)  <posted in a paranoid moment>

>   This doesn't bother me as much as the misinformation that seems deliberately
>   posted by some posters.  I find that disturbing, as if there are forces
>   out there that are using their significant resources to suppress
>   information about vegetarian diets.   I hate to sound paranoid, but look
>   at it this way:
>
>      1.   How many of us have time to read newsgroups about things we are
>           not interested in?  I like workstations.   I don't spend a lot
>           of time posting anti-PC information to comp.sys.ibm.pc, do I?
>           I wouldn't either, unless I were paid to.
>           Yet we have people like Rich Young, et al, who are meat eaters,
>           and who spend apparently enormous amounts of time reading and
>           posting voluminous information to this newsgroup, one in which
>           they can't have even the faintest personal interest.

There is no accounting for taste. I have a penchant for watching very
bad sci-fi and collecting late-model HP calculators. Nobody else
understands this but most of my friend accept it. Grudgingly.

>      2.   Rich, in particular, seems to have additional time to do a
>           surprising amount of research, and has access to professional
>           publications most of us do NOT have access to.   Note also that
>           he posts from Kodak, not from a major university.

Actually, the publications Rich seems to reference are probably
available at any good university with a nutrition department.

>
>      3.   There are multiple people doing it, and I get the distinct
>           impression sometimes that there is a COORDINATED attack going
>           on whenever Michael, Ted, or Abhay make a posting, in order to
>           give the appearance of a consensus of disagreement.
>
>    Perhaps it is simply that meat eaters feel so threatened by vegetarians
>    that they feel the need to follow this newsgroup and defend their diet
>    to people who really couldn't care less.   I don't know.
>
>    I do know that when I was eating meat, I was interested in diet, but
>    I couldn't have cared less what was going on in this newsgroup.

>    Somebody would have had to PAY me to put in the kind of time that
>    Rich Young, et al, must be putting in to keep up their attacks in this
>    group.

Somebody would have to pay me too. But this isn't my hobby. While I 
haven't been lurking here all that long, I still find it difficult
to classify most of Rich's postings as "attacks."  If the "opponent"
is "misinformation" or "a single-sided view", then perhaps these
are indeed attacks.  Personally, I welcome other points of view and
thoughtful dissent. To assume that any single study or quoted fact
in human nutrition research is inviolate is to descend into the very
same closed-mindedness of which these others are accused.

I guess that I do not share your anger, nor do I feel "violated" 
when others holding different opinions express their views. I do
not have a paranoia so much as I have a phobia.  I'm very afraid of
what happens when people attempt to reorient discussion in the
context of an "us vs. them" mentality. Admittedly, this is a
seductively easy mindset in which to fall -- all the more reason
for vigilant tolerance.

Failing this one can always resort to the newsreader's filters.

And now a disclaimer:  Why do I bother to read this newrsgroup?
1) Information and recipes.  Too bad both represent such a low
proportion of the total net traffic.

And now a trial balloon:  Perhaps this newsgroup could benefit with an
unofficial, new tradition of requiring each person who posts a
comment or rebuttal to also post a new recipe. 

   ...which means I've got commit one of my less noxious recipes to 
paper this weekend.  So be it.

Regards, 
Tim Ikeda

Disclaimer #2:  I use Kodak products. But in my defense, I have to add
that I prefer Ilford paper for black and white printing.