Dylan Lawrence Moore

Holy shit. A whole new level of understanding to the word "assclown".

Also, a source that just popped into my head that was really one of the sources that helped me sort this sort of thing out. It's seven hours long, but if you can put up with it it's totally worth it: Video on Youtube: Mark Passio: New Age Bullshit and the Suppression of the Sacred Masculine Audio version on Peace Revolution Podcast: Peace Revolution Podcast 074: Intellectual Self-Defense and How to Validate Knowledge -Dylan

I know what you mean about dealing with someone who isn't even capable of rational discourse. Option 1 is kind of some vague fantasy in the far-off worlds of my mind, but I always leave it there just in case the person decides to come to the light side. I don't want to try to tell you how to deal with your dad, so I'll just let you know how I dealt with my mom and how I broke it down in my mind. Basically, if we look at 3 different ways to deal with it, an argument or a conflict has be concluded physically (duke it out), emotionally (shout it out), or rationally (intelligent discourse). Luckily physically doesn't seem to be in the situation here, so I'll leave that out. When someone comes after you emotionally, they're breaking the situation down pretty much to one dimension: someone has to dominate and the other has to submit. You do as I say because I said so. When on the rational level, win-win negotiation is possible. For whatever reasons, outright shouting someone out and dominating them appears to have become uncouth, so a trick is for a person to give airs of being rational ("you should do this because it makes sense") while in reality they are being emotional ("you do as I say because I said so"). A key to recognizing this is if the person gets irritated when certain topics or questions come up or even outright ignores them. Once I figured this out, I realized that when someone attempts to control me via emotional dominate/submit methods (whether they're pretending to be rational or not), this someone is attempting to modify my behavior by threats or throwing tantrums. In either case, I accept this as aggressive and violent (from violate) action toward myself and I defend myself accordingly. Specifically in the case of someone pretending to be rational, once I can identify that the person is pretending, I immediate drop all pretexts of rationality and let them know I understand that there is a fight (verbal/emotional fight) going on and that I intend on fighting back if they choose to push the issue. Since I began doing this, most notably with my mother but I've had a few other encounters, the person trying to bully me drops that shit like it's hot as soon as I let them know a.) I recognize what they're doing and b.) I mean business. They'll usually tell me that I'm overreacting, taking things too personally, accusing them of something they're not doing, or something equally creative, but in every case they stop. If they had the gonads to challenge me openly in the first place, they would have done it and not hid behind a facade of being rational. Even if I were to lose one of these "stare-downs", I still don't think they would bother me again; predators look for weak and sick prey because, hey, the strong prey is just too much work. In the case of my mom, as I began to apply to previously mentioned recipe to her, she would periodically try to come back and test the waters with me. Like I mentioned in the previous post, I decided to respond to this with increasing intensity. If she tried to whine or complain that I was overreacting over her doing something small, I would turn up the heat even more. Why? Because an inch is as good as a mile. Any time I let anyone in my space, regardless of how small of space it is, I've set the precedent that taking my space is okay. Taking my space is not okay, regardless of amount. I love rational discourse and am willing to talk with someone all day about whatever problems they might have with me, but when it comes to taking my space I have zero patience--all rational discourse is dropped until the perpetrator gets out of my space. I especially don't let anyone get me with the "you're reacting so much to such a little thing" act, because that's the act they're going to try to get me with. Anyway, that came out longer than I was expecting. Like I said before, it sounds like you're father isn't going to be able to choose option 1, so all I can recommend is option 3 until he figures out option 2. -Dylan

Wanted to say first off: glad to hear that you survived the wreck and even though your friend is in pretty bad condition, I'm also glad he's not dead. It looks like you guys are playing a chess game. He's just knocking pieces off the board acting like he's winning, and you are trying to play by the rules. You've been staying rational and he's completely emotional, spending some effort to pretend like he's being rational in order to fool you into staying rational. This was a common situation with my mom for many years (luckily not with carwrecks), and I eventually figured out how to give her three options when something like this starts: Speak rationally with me. Shut the fuck up. Prepare to have emotional garbage dished right back out at you. Then probably most importantly, after having an altercation with her from showing these options, I make sure to make the response equal or even BIGGER if she does it again. If I didn't, she would just revert back to the way the situation was. When I began to do this, she pissed and moaned, cried, and threw fits in the process, but now she is extremely wary of starting shit with me -- there must be weaker prey somewhere else in the woods. It looks like your father has no interest in being rational so I wouldn't bother wasting your energy trying to be rational with him. If he decided to be rational in the future, then great, you could talk to him then. But until that time, based off my own experience of what looks like a similar situation, I would recommend putting your energy into what you think are more productive things. Good luck! -Dylan

Reading this topic reminded me of what I've read from Carroll Quigley. I don't know if he's popular reading around these boards, but I would recommend picking up a copy of Tragedy and Hope and The Evolution of Civilizations from Quigley ASAP. I have never read more fascinating history books. In Evolution, Quigley has a quick part near the beginning about military history to give some examples of a point he makes. To oversimplify a bit, his point was that any instrument of society, an organization that achieves some practical purpose (like an army being created for defense), inevitably degenerates into an institution in the society, an organization that has the same structure as the original instrument, but no longer fulfills its practical purpose and exists solely as a means unto itself (basically, it becomes bureaucratic). Some of the examples I remember off the top of my head are: Roman legionnaires who were smashed by German invaders because they refused to adapt their military strategy to accommodate for enemies on horseback. French knights who refused to prepare for English peasant-archers, mostly because it was inconceivable that "high-born peoples could be killed by low-born peoples at a distance". Doh. The entirety of the cavalry units of Europe up until the very end of WWI who insisted under chemical gas, tanks, barbed wire, and machine-gun fire that 25% of cargo space transporting supplies should be filled with feed for horses. I can't make up my mind whether this or the French knights is more of a forehead-slapper. There was another example in there about Swiss pikemen, but I forgot the specifics of it. The point of these examples is that each of the mentioned militaries became so institutionalized and addicted to their blood money/subsidies, that they actively resisted any change whatsoever even if it meant their obvious defeat. To take that to the next level, in Tragedy and Hope Quigley extensively goes over the in-fighting that went on with the US military after WWII. The Airforce, being the droppers of the bombs on Japan, decided that they were the end-all to all war and that no other money needed to be spend on any other branch of military, because any war could now be stopped with the perfect weapon. However, as was mentioned previously in the thread, nuclear bombs aren't very useful for military targets, especially during the time right after WWII when the rocket technology was inadequate to even remotely suggest successful delivery to a target (interesting point: Americans solved this "problem" by making smaller bombs. Russians made bigger rockets). It's been over a year since I read the book, but from what I remember, the Airforce was pretty successful in claiming a large part of the military spending pie which went to non-effective military spending. So the point I wanted to make regarding the topic of this thread: I think a free society would handle nukes by first figuring out if they're even worth a damn. The official numbers may be less than a trillion to uphold the nuclear warfare program, but how many radiation- and chemical-related lawsuits were swept and continue to be swept under the rug because the government decided it was better that way? The Manhattan Project was on the verge of being shutdown due to lawsuits from the horrible effects of the fluorine factories on workers and neighbors (fluorine was needed to enrich the uranium), until the government came up with the idea to call fluoride "medicine" and thus nullify future lawsuits in the pursuit of national security (read The Fluoride Deception if you want to know more about that story). Without the institutionalization of taxation to guarantee the extraction of blood money and a government to nullify any non-consenters, any organization that starts becoming "institutionalized", a la Quigley, would quickly find itself with a bunch of unhappy and thus non-paying customers. I think a free society would find more useful things to do with uranium.

Exactly. I mentioned this in my email to her with the "Was this the value system and dispute-resolution method that was in use whenever I did something "wrong"?" Apparently it was interpreted as hot air from my direction. I'm not sure where I implied this, but I certainly didn't mean to. I'm well aware approaching an emotional problem rationally is about as useful as running into a wall. This is the reason I exploded like a volcano instead of trying to talk it out. Also, I guess I need to point out again that I've already gone through a "deFOOing" stage with her when I was 19 and she knows damn well that she no longer has any control of my life, not even via threat of taking away her love and support. 3 years from home has demonstrated this rather succinctly. I don't mind talking to her and we get along fine now, assuming she doesn't bring up old topics where she just paints me as the total bad guy. I suppose the deal is that when she does this, I see it as a brand new attack, while she continuously interprets it as me lingering on the past, thus making an attempt to show me as the aggressor instead of her. Which now that I think of it, it looks to me like the course of action is to make this obvious. That is, show her that I'm not initiating aggression, rather defending myself to the aggression that she has initiated. The "is that the same integrity I was given when I was young?" argument is completely valid, but I think it's too easy to swat off as me "delving on the past". I'm still open for any advice, though. I don't really need understanding, philosophizing, or sympathy - I feel pretty comfortable on that stuff. I'm looking more for tactics which other people have found to be effective. -Dylan

Hi Everyone! I had an interesting debacle with my mother the other day and I would like to get some input from the boards here. I apologize that the post is long and really appreciate anyone who reads through it all to give me a comment. The debacle involved a video Skype call which first involved me getting upset and rather close to explosively angry at my mother. This cooled down to a level we both appeared to find acceptable. By the end of the call my mother attempted to guilt me into saying I loved her, to which I told her that I refused to answer. The call ended on a strange note and I later found an email sitting in my inbox which was... annoying to say the least. But before I get to that, a bit of history and a more specific description of what went on during the call. My parents divorced when I was 4 and my mother gained custody over me and I was allowed to see my father once every other weekend. My mother was the type that probably won't come as a surprise to anyone frequenting these boards: helicoptering, melodramatic, beautifully rhetorical when it came to being right, and always searching for ways to "discipline" her child (I was the only one, by the way). Her favorite methods of doing so were humiliation and taking away things I liked. She didn't hit me very often but was practically an artist when it came to twisting anything I said or felt against me. She was also what I like to call a "wannabe fundamentalist Christian". That means she believed in all the garbage, however just couldn't seem to find the energy to do it herself. Thus I forced to church, forced to pray, forced to read the Bible, and forced to "honor thy mother". She had severe anger problems and would blow up at a moment's notice. It was like living with a bomb with an unknown length of fuse. She would go back and forth between how much she loved me and how readily she would kick my out of the house if I didn't "honor and obey". By the time I was a young teenager I realized that literally anything I said was simply used as cannon fodder against me, and I learned to tell her and show her absolutely nothing and became adept at making up lies and stories to throw her off the scents of me associating with "Satanic" activities (you know, like reading the Lord of the Rings or something equally as evil). Even if she couldn't catch me with anything, she would often just make things up and get me in trouble for them. I would rarely challenge her accusations because the punishments for her fantasies were usually not as bad as her knowing the real information. Plus if I ever used logic or rationality, I would be met with arguments like "Yea, well that makes sense and all, but I'm mom, so too bad." Staying at the house was like being in a constant state of war; my only defense was a shield of apathy and emotionlessness. When I was 14 my dad's life more or less fell apart and he was barely able to take care of himself, let alone me every other weekend. This was a huge blow to me as those two days every two weeks were the only chance I had to feel safe. Now there was nowhere to run. When I was 16 (and here we're getting to the point of the story) my mom bought a miniture poodle which had been kept in a cage the first 3 years of its life and was a bit... nervous to say the least. This poodle had been bought after the death of the standard poodle, which I had never liked as it had the tendency to eat all my books. I took an immediate non-liking to the new poodle and, unfortunately poodles being like the 2nd smartest race of dog in the world, it immediately picked up on this and took an immediate non-liking to me. Here's where the problem starts. The miniture poodle had a voice of the old standard poodle times 10. If it was barking in the room, two people literally couldn't hear each other if screaming. This Voice of the Lapdog God was thus directed at me pretty much the entire time I was in the house. For example, one of its favorite things to do was to sit outside my room at 6 in the morning and bark at me until I woke up. Now, I'm not saying I couldn't have handle the situation better, as my solution was to hit or kick the dog whenever I had the chance outside of eyeshot from my mom or my step-dad (who looooooved the thing like it was his only baby). However, I began to notice an interesting trend. First, whenever I was unable to speak with my mother because the dog was barking so loudly, my mother would blame me for inciting the dog (by just standing there, I guess), then usually follow by coddling it. Second, if my mom and step-dad weren't home, the dog didn't say a peep. When I would walk into the house it was rather routine that the dog would run excitedly to the door to see who it was, see it was me, freak the fuck out and bark at me aggressively, piss me off to the point where I came close to kick it, then run behind my mom or my step-dad to continue barking - neither of which would make any attempt to stop it and it would usually receive coddling, and often in the case of my step-dad a treat to "shut her up". It was obvious as day to me that the dog considered my parents the alpha dogs and me the omega dogs, and there was absolutely nothing in the world I could do to change the dog's behavior if my parents, the alpha dogs, did nothing about it. Fast forward several years and the story repeats itself over and over. Almost unfailingly, whenever there was a "contest" between me and the dog, my mom and my step-dad chose the side of the dog. To be fair my mom eventually attempted to put the dog in a crate when I came around (this was after something resembling a deFOOing experience when I was 19 and I didn't stay there anymore), but my step-dad would usually come home and let her out and the situation would continue. The picture is probably clear by now: in the hierarchy of the family, I was well below the dog. However, my childhood training went deep and I still said nothing. I wasn't allowed to. I would just keep everything inside and respond by not showing up to my mom's house so often. An interesting illustration with this point came from my best friend from childhood when I was 20. We didn't see each other very much by then and we were at a birthday party of a friend in Seattle. While we were drinking we someone got on the topic of my mom, whom he had seen enough to be well-acquainted with what I've told so far, and he looked me straight in the face and said, "I can't believe you're even able to go out in public today and interact with people." Fast forward again: I'm 26 years old now originally from Washington State. A little over three years ago I bought a one-way plane ticket out of the state without telling anyone and haven't been back since. I moved first to Vermont and then to Europe. I've received much pleading from family and friends to come back because they "miss me and love me so much" (yet always manage to come up with something more important to do when I suggest they come visit me -- side issue), most of all from my mother. I've ignored it for the most of three years, giving her indirect and vague answers. However, in my travels I've made a lot of self-discovery and self-empowerment, and the other day during this Skype call I finally had enough. A friend of mine did something similar a few months after I left Washington. However, instead of doing Vermont/Europe he did Hawaii/Asia (somehow I've managed to go to nothing but cold places and him to nothing but hot places -- alas, another sidenote ). He met a Fillipino girl and is taking her home to now to get married, and I'm planning on coming back for the wedding. This news is relatively recent during this Skype call with my mom I finally announced that yes, I intend to come back, and I even have a rough date. To conversation went then something like this: Mom: "Oh... where you gonna stay?" Me: "Probably Anthony's." (That's the friend getting married.) Mom: "You know, you're welcome to stay here if you want. Well, if you can get along with the dog at least." At this point there was no problem. She said it in a considerate way - just letting me know that the "dog problem" was still there (poodles are also one of the longest-living races of dogs, as well. Ungh). No, what got me is the following: Mom: "You know, Calvin (my cousin, roughly 19) comes over and has the same reaction with the dog. He does the same thing you used to do and gets her all worked up." One could say this is about when the blood rushed to my face and my eyes went wide. I felt myself dumping my whole previous life of shutting up and keeping everything inside into the dumpster and I erupted at her. Out of the absolute hell she had brought on me during my time in that house, the dog being one of the prime tools for doing so, she had the audacity to not only casually bring it up, but to bring it up in such a way that I was the singular antagonist of the story. I let her know this in a rapidly accelerating amount of anger. At first she remained calm and seemed to try to treat me as a child throwing a "brat attack" (her word for temper tantrum), but I think some of my words started hitting home and she tried to finaggle her way out of it. She kept attempting to throw the blame back on me or change the subject, but I kept bringing her back and eventually got her into a corner. She tried to accuse me of guilting her and a couple other things, before finally giving up and asking me what exactly it was that I wanted. She said she felt guilty about a lot of things regarding me and that she didn't know what to do. I told her that I wanted "some fucking consideration" and that I didn't appreciate being the butt-end of every childhood story whenever it suited her fancy. This calmed her down and I got the surprising answer of, "Okay. Yea. I can see that. I'm sorry." At this point this was enough for me and I would have forgotten it and been merrily on my way. But as I mentioned at the beginning, my mom then asked me, "Do you love me?" with that wonderful hint of "there is a bucketful of guilt waiting for you if you say no". I looked at her as square in the face as one can over a videochat and told her that I wasn't going to answer that question. I was ready to explain that it's not real love if you have to intimidate someone to get it, but before I could she hit me with one of her classics. When I was young and she wanted me to do something trivial and usually servant like, if I "coughed up an attitude" she would often say to me, "Do I have show you my Caesarian section scar?" This of course translates to: "Do I have to show you the contract of your obligation to me?" She would then always pull up her shirt and point to the big scar on her belly and come up with some story about how much she's done for me until I went and did whatever she wanted. My response: "YES! Show it to me so I can still NOT ANSWER." She stopped lifting her shirt halfway through the action. The conversation cooled off from here and ended on a weird note. I spent a few more minutes in a minor huff before eventually letting it go and putting my attention on other things. It was pretty much out of my mind before I got the email a few hours later. The subject of the email was "The Anatomy of the Spirit by Carolyn Myss" and simply contained a link. Here it is: http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=carolyn+myss+youtube&view=detail&mid=DAD18F7A9CE5BAD62AE3DAD18F7A9CE5BAD62AE3&first=0&FORM=NVPFVR If you're like me, you'll probably make it through about a minute of the video before you need to puke. The message my mom was sending to me was obvious: "YOU need to forgive ME or else you will never be able to get your spirit back." Whatever that means. Now, if I was ticked off during the conversation, I was enraged now. A typical answer for someone trying to avoid responsibility - as soon as she's called on the shit she did to me as a child, the topic turns to "forgiveness". With burning eyes and fingertips, I sat down and wrote her the following email: The link I included is of Elliott Hulse explaining the importance of the word NO. Despite being rather scathing, I thought I was clear in this email and expected a semi-intelligible response at least. Here's what I got: (Note: Remember this "Namaste" is coming from the old wannabe fundamentalist Christian.) I have yet to respond to this because I simply don't know what to say. I feel like I just asked for directions downtown and got a response about the moon being made of cheese. Thanks if you've read this far. My question now is... what do you do when a parent simply chants "forgiveness forgiveness forgiveness" whenever you try to bring up a real issue? Obviously she can avoid what I'm saying easier in an email as I can't demand her to stay on topic mid-sentence, but I'm also not sure what I could even say in a conversation. Constructive feedback is most appreciated! -Dylan

Your "see here" link didn't work. I want to read whatever it was you were trying to source.

Not that this is proving of anything or anything beyond anecdotal, but I remember when I was in Istanbul, Turkey in January and February of 2012, I did not see one single line in the sky resembling what is commonly referred to as "chemtrails". Not a one. Zip. Zero. This is with two major airports on both sides of the city. In the other places I have lived during my life, Washington state, Vermont state, and Austria (especially in Vienna), the skies would often look like checkerboards from perfectly parallel and perpendicular white lines from planes. I would be interested in an explanation on what is so radically different about the immediate atmosphere above Turkey as opposed to the other places I've lived that would account for this. -Dylan

Okay Stef, in the effort to make sure you're getting optimal financing, I'd like to ask this in order to clear it up for me. I am currently a $5/month donator. I would wholeheartedly agree that this is a measly amount considering the amount of media I watch from you, and I'm giving the age-old "I'm a broke bastard" as my defense for doing so. Despite your mention that you don't want having to donate be financially difficult for anyone, I still manage to have a place to live, to have a computer, to have access to the internet, and I somehow manage to buy myself things like beer and coffee occasionally throughout the month. Thus although $5/month represents enough beer to drink comfortably for an evening, month-wise it's not like I'm going to have to face the fear of going sober. I had originally donated nothing, as I felt I didn't have anything worth giving (I felt five bucks a month was more like a slap in the face than anything else). I then heard you describing as a side note in another podcast about how something like 1-2% of listeners donate anything at all. I re-thought my feelings on the $5/month thing and came to the idea that if you were able to get 5 (hell, even 1) dollar a month from 10% of your listeners, it might not rocket you into the land of riches, but at least it could provide some level of monthly security knowing "okay, at least I know this much is coming in". Thus I tossed some money on my Paypal account, and clicked on the $5/month donation button. My beer budget cried a little, but I just yelled at it to get a job. So then the question is: is a $5/month donation worth it? Would it be better to get a $50 in one chunk or $5 reoccuring in ten months (I know small individual transactions eat the money up, but does this occur for reoccuring transactions as well)? Would it not be a good a idea to try to get a baseline of people donating a small amount of money on a monthly basis, especially if you can get it up to double digits? I'm just shooting in the dark here and I'd like to know the most effective way of helping out without slap-in-the-face-sized donations. -Dylan

This reads like an Aleister Crowley incantation of deliberate contradictions, recited for the explicit purpose of destroying the reason of the invoker. Oof. -Dylan

I would lump taxation and license fees into the same category, as they've both been spun as "paying for services". Borrowing is equivalent to selling bonds, which I mentioned before is simply the promise of the country to collect taxes later. Inflation I would still see as taxation, as a government can use its powers of money creation (or as we all know better, borrow the powers from its central bank), they can "buy up" things from the private sector before the effects of the inflation hit everyone else. Thus they can move wealth and resources from the private sector (using the magic money-printer dance) without having produced anything of value themselves, which still sums up to me as taxation, albeit quite a bit more sneaky. As for donations I... can't really take that seriously. I wonder if the U.S. Treasury actually publishes the amount of donations they receive? Can you go into that a little bit more? Why would a efficiently-run government business not be taxation whereas a poorly-run government business (excuse my redundancy) would be taxation? Wouldn't an effeciently-run government business still remove competitors from the market, even if didn't need the normal methods of taxation mentioned above as a crutch to keep it up and running? More specifically, considering the arguments my friend was making about the salt mines and lumber, how is it suddenly not taxation when the "government already owned it in the first place"? -Dylan

I was in a conversation with a friend of mine over the internet last night over various topics (it's hard to keep him nailed down to one) and we drifted into the topic of how a state can acquire money. He's Austrian and a member of the Austrian red/socialist party and thus tends to espouse standard statist rhetoric. So we got into this discussion over how a state gets money, my argument being that a state has only ONE fundamental way of getting money, and that is to collect taxes. This fundamental method has two faces: direct taxation and bonds. Direct taxation being taking the money now and bonds a promise that the country will take the money later. He countered that there were more methods than that. A government also had resources at its disposal, as well as government-owned businesses, which can make money via "normal" business transactions. The two examples he gave were Austria selling salt from its government-owned salt mines to Germany, or cutting trees in government-owned woods. I said that's still taxation. The fact that it's not money being taken doesn't magically not make it tax--the salt mines and forests still had to be taken from somebody at some point, even if it was by Lord or King Bumfuck 800 years ago. He responded to that saying that these resources were never owned privately (they had ALWAYS been owned by Austria--something I scratched my head at), thus they had never been taken/stolen/taxed from anyone. After this another subject was jumped to and I had a similar discussion with it until another subject was jumped to. Eventually I became irritated and stopped the conversation. So my question to everyone is, what other way can a state acquire wealth other than through taxation (direct or in bond form)? If a government owns a business (and actually makes more money than it costs. har har.), does this somehow fall outside the realm of taxation? Do government-owned resources, which somehow were never stolen, constitute as wealth generation outside the realm of taxation? I feel like there's a very important point I'm missing here that's required to make more sense of this. -Dylan

My knowledge of biochemistry is pretty shaky. Would you mind explaining (or providing a decent explanation of another source if you have one on hand) why spikes in amino acids are particularly dangerous? Are the spikes in aspartic acid (or glutamic acid) and phenylalanine particularly bad, or is it bad in general to have any amino acid spike? From what I understood before, the reason why eating meat isn't dangerous (and this may be the same as what you already said) is that a.) you're getting a well-balanced "mix" of all the amino acids and b.) they're being delivered in chain-form (i.e. proteins), which your body then has to metabolize down into the "raw resource" of the amino acids themselves, which takes some time and prevents the spike. Aspartame, on the other hand, gives you not only the instantaneous amino acid spike, but it does so with only two amino acids. Is this more or less the way you understand the situation or is there something I'm missing/got wrong? -Dylan

I am of the white race in a serious relationship with a girl of Japanese and Korean descent with plans to have children in the future. Are you in support of this? -Dylan

I appear to be a little late on the draw here, but upon reading this remark I went into a trance and began channeling a conversation from approximately 1790-1810 AD (according to my I Ching calculations). The part of the conversation I was able to catch was: "....by 1840, if demographic trends continue, America's red population will be the minority. We need immigration control!" Nyuk nyuk. -Dylan

Then want to get in a scene with her. -Dylan

Just took a look at the link and found: There's a radical difference between a bonded methoxy group and a free methanol molecule. A quick stumble around the internet has led me to find that the source of methanol in these "healthy foods" is a methoxy group which is bound to certain galacturonic acids in pectin chains. Pectin molecules can undergo hydrolysis via the enzyme pectinesterase to create pectic acid and methanol. According to Wikipedia, pectinesterase "is found in all higher plants as well as in some bacteria and fungi" (i.e. not humans). Thus when eating pectin, the methoxy groups usually remain bound and pass through before anything has a chance to pop them off into free methanol. Aspartame, on the other hand, readily converts to free methanol via digestion. I'm not quite sure what you mean by healthy foods, as the primary concern for methanol in foods is from giving fruits and vegetables, which contain pectinesterase, the chance to break down their pectins into pectic acid and methanol. Particularly in things like canned fruits and vegetables or orange juice, which appear to eventually break down their own pectins and let free methanol loose. So no, methanol is not in most healthy foods. Methoxy groups are in most healthy foods, some of which can become dangerous through hydrolysis into methanol if not stored correctly. And if the danger of methanol at low levels isn't clear enough, I took another piece out of the toxicity summary you provided: So to repeat what I said before, I don't really understand what argument anyone has for something that readily metabolizes into methanol. That's like having a child's toy that explodes into firey, sticky goo and people arguing over which studies show that it's safe or not. -Dylan

Maybe my last post was missed. Again raising the question, what is the fundamental argument someone can come up with the claim that a food additive that readily metabolizes into methanol is safe? -Dylan

Cool stuff. Do you know which type of atomic energy states? Electrical, rotational, translational, spin, all of the above? Just curious. -Dylan

I found this a little more enlightening than the Wikipedia article: As well as just reading over the general history (and general hellacious fury) of the element fluorine itself. Isaac Asimov wrote a pretty cool article about it in this book. It doesn't prove anything about the uses of fluoride ions (Asimov even mentions how "it's now used to prevent tooth decay"), but it definitely gives one a new outlook on the element. Also, fluorine's (or for this case, fluoride's) valence electron structure is really similar to iodine. From research and scraping around I did on the internet some years ago, I came to understand that fluoride ions (as well as bromide ions--although I have no idea why chloride doesn't do this) are very effective at blocking iodide-receptors in the thyroid, which can lead to hypothyroidism. As for aspartame, do you have any of these university studies handy? I don't really understand what argument anyone has for something that readily metabolizes into methanol. -Dylan

Just curious: and what about fluoride? -Dylan

Yea, I wanted to imply that these points should be ignored. Constitutional literacy, in relation to itself. -Dylan

Can someone check my Constitutional literacy here? Isn't the second amendment simply redundant emphasis of what is already stated in the previous articles, as shown through the ninth amendment? I always scratch my head at the lack of absolute basic understanding of constitutional principles that people going around screaming about the constitution appear to possess. -Dylan