Many people for financial and other reasons want to scare people away from using soy foods. A common false statement they make is that Americans can’t look to Asia to see that soy consumption is safe. Asians only use amounts of soy small enough to be condiments and that Americans eat far more soy than Asians ever did.
Well, not according to this Beverage Industry web site:
Asia continues to dominate soy milk consumption
Eight of the top 12 soy drink consuming countries are Asian with Hong Kong residents consuming the most at 17 litres per year each, according to TetraPak data.
Next were Singapore (almost 12l/day), Thailand (just over 10l/day), China (9.5l/day) and Malaysia (9l/day). The data were presented at a soy conference in Taiwan recently by Michael Loh, the business development director at supplier, London Agricultural Commodities.
The highest level of soy drink consumption among non-Asian nations were Australia, Canada and Spain all at about 3l/day.
US consumption, which market researcher Mintel has noted is falling for all soy foods and beverages, was lower at about 1.5l/day.
According to this infotainment video the reading I did as a child that told me that Levi Strauss invented blue jeans is not true. The story about gold rush miners needing tougher pants is true, but it was Jacob Davis who came up with the idea of riveting pants together. Davis didn’t have the money to develop his idea so he teamed up with Strauss to pay for the patent.
What is interesting is that the original jeans sold in 1886 for $1.50.
I found this neat, depressing and addictive tool to convert historic prices into contemporary prices. On the positive side of things $1.50 from 1886 is about $35 dollars in 2010 money. You can still buy a pair of Levi’s for about that much if you look around a little.
The price comparison tool can be a lot of fun if you read old books, watch old movies or have heard enough from older relatives about how little they have paid for things. This tool will help you put all of those prices into perspective:
In todays prices, the six million dollar man would be the 29 million, 400 hundred thousand dollar man. I think “The 30 Million Dollar Man” sounds catchier :).
In arguments one side is correct, but not right
– Ajahn Chah
You can be right or you can be happy
– Dr. Phil
I enjoyed this talk by Ajahn Brahm, a former British scientist with a salty sense of humor and now a Buddhist monk in Australia. He had a number of interesting things to say about about heated arguments, which can be applied to discussions off and on the internet.
He went into some interesting diversions during the video. The first was a piece of graffiti he found in a bathroom at a British university:
The eminence of scientist is measured by how long he can forestall progress in his field.
Love it! I think anyone who has been to graduate school for any length of time can appreciate that quote.
The other diversion he mentioned was a comment about how he noticed people react to death in Thailand. A country with a strong Buddhist culture, far less influenced by the West than other countries. Ajahn Brahm stated that when people die in Thailand they tend to feel loss, but not grieve as much as people in other countries do. I’ve always noticed religious people grieving after the death of someone they value, which is logically inconsistent with a conviction ( a belief you actually believe instead of wanting to believe ) that their loved ones are going to a better place. The situation would not be unlike in another century when someone moved to a distant country and would not be able to communicate anymore.
Back to arguing.
Ajahn Brahm had a lot to say about what psychologists call comfirmation bias or what ordinary people call “filters”, but in plain language, in a way that really hits home. He advised people to be on their guard for wrapping themselves up in a cocoon with friends who only think like they do. It is so easy to do that these days with very biased news outlets, web sites that will reinforce any viewpoint and the paucity of free time in an adult life.
He also mentioned how many arguments are not really arguments, but ego contests where only one person can be right and the other person has to self declare themselves as being a “loser” ( worthless ). According to Ajahn Brahm this kind of thing turns arguments from potentially enriching experiences into time wasting, relationship damaging pissing contests.
Ajahn Brahm reminisced about the time he spent in pubs during his college days arguing passionately with his friends, with the understanding that the person who won the argument bought the next round of drinks. That is one of the things I miss about my days as a philosophy student as well. An argument was a true argument. A chance for discovering new things, where the discussion was about the subject, never about the people and never about their personal worth ( unless it was in graduate school when professors were involved 🙂 ).
I had a friend at a job who had the extreme opposite of all of my political and social views. However, he was a gentleman to the core and I had one of those kinds of friendships with him. We could passionately argue, be friends before the argument, be friends during the argument and be friends after the argument. I learned how people very different my ilk saw the world, which I found fascinating. I miss this coworker more than I miss some friends who I have fallen out of touch with who share all of my values.
