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Comment by hs | Hacker News Reader

yesterday i made a comment in swine flu thread: "can *.flu spread to plant? go vegetarian!"

i got -8 or so, at first i wonder if my post is irrelevant to the flu discussion. none of the replies indicates that.

reality is they don't like the 'go vegetarian' thing: unhelpful, unfeasible, malnutrition, deficiencies and more ridiculously labeling me as 'pusing an agenda'

just about everything like in pg's essay ... i said the taboo -- maybe i should keep the secret and live longer (read 'the china study' for scientific references)

hn, why so afraid? not eating meat won't kill you ... it's definitely legal and non-addictive ... about as harmful as giving up tv

just try it like a month or so, don't you like experimenting, go against the norm? are you not a hacker?

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I've been a vegetarian for 15 years. I would have voted such a comment down, simply because it is irrelevant. It is irrelevant because no one has contracted swine flu from eating pork, to the best of my knowledge.

I'm tempted to vote this comment down because it is complaining about you being voted down in a wholly unrelated thread. (See the site guidelines. Complaining about votes is distinctly uncool.)

And while I'm providing constructive feedback, your erratic use of punctuation, lack of capitalization, aggressive tone, and generally sounding like a self-righteous teenager all leave me feeling a bit negative towards you. I'm sure you're a very fine person in real life, but I'd prefer it if you weren't trying to start arguments in threads that aren't even about the topic you've decided to talk about.

by definition, putting pork meat in mouth puts one in extremely close proximity to swine

no i'm never complain about being voted down, if it's really about karma, i won't say taboo things

my prev post is relevant because i happened to experience what pg described in his essay

sorry about the 'challenge', but really, i'm curious how many will take it

ah right, judging someone from grammar is a very rational thing to do

> by definition, putting pork meat in mouth puts one in extremely close proximity to swine

Dead, cooked 'swine'. Entirely different to getting up close and personal with an infected live pig.

> ah right, judging someone from grammar is a very rational thing to do

I think you just turned "rational" into a label. Apart from your attempt at sarcasm, this statement is probably true. Like it or not, your ability to structure sentences reflects your ability to structure thoughts.

It almost certainly correlates better with how recently you leared English than with your ability to structrue thoughts.

I agree, up to perhaps a log-log scale. My grammar isn't likely to be significantly better in 30 years. However, when comparing among groups with similar English experience, grammar is likely to have a reasonable correlation with well-structured arguments. Also, the amount of time since learning English is not under your control; adherence to the rules of grammar is.

Perhaps more importantly, it wasn't actually grammar that I criticized. It was erratic use of punctuation (which was clearly for effect and to catch attention rather than clarity), lack of appropriate capitalization (which negatively impacts readability, and definitely doesn't require extreme English skills to get right), aggressive tone (which I find annoying pretty much anytime I see it on the Internet, as it provides no value), and sounding like a self-righteous teenager (which everybody older than ~24 finds irritating). Though one could argue that capitalization and punctuation are components of grammar, I used specific terms rather than a general one for a reason. I tend to be quite forgiving of grammatical mistakes that can be attributed to native language differences and different levels of skill with English. But, I'm less forgiving of things that are very easy to control and get right, even for non-native speakers, and that negatively impact my ability to read and understand. When wrapped in negativity and an aggressive tone, I tend to feel negative towards the person. So, I explained why his tone made me feel negative towards him, and why I thought people were voting him down.

I thought I was providing a helpful suggestion for how he could better present himself and his ideas on HN, but one can only do so much to be helpful.

I agree with many of your points (uncool, sloganeering). But I find it interesting that you are saying the original idea is not worthy of consideration ('irrelevant') because you think it MIGHT be incorrect ('to the best of my knowledge'). There are actually a lot of contradictory reports on this but that isn't the point. To me it shows the disadvantages facing unpopular views when even you would so reflexively dismiss and vote this down.

because you think it MIGHT be incorrect ('to the best of my knowledge')

I've heard no indication that eating pork is suspect in the outbreak, or has been indicated as the means of transmission in any case.

There are actually a lot of contradictory reports on this but that isn't the point.

This is entirely new to me; the post I responded to gave no such evidence (however suspect the evidence might be). But I suspect your evidence is also made up.

The fellow I was responding to gave me no reason to believe he wasn't just making stuff up. And, a quick googling reveals that he was, in fact, just making stuff up.

From the CDC:

Can people catch swine flu from eating pork? No. Swine influenza viruses are not transmitted by food. You can not get swine influenza from eating pork or pork products.

Reference: http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/key_facts.htm

what stuff did i make up? it's your interpretation, to justify everything you said

why so quick judging unpopular view as false? and why take what you're told (by govt) as true?

can you be sure that there's no pressure from meat industry to government?

this disease is pretty new, has cdc done large experiments on the effect of eating infected pigs to healty americans? if they have and the conclusion matched then i'm glad.

don't you realize that your action, along with labelling me as self-righteous and teenager mimic what's described in what-you-cant-say?

this is the last time i will say taboo. bye

# echo "127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com" >> /etc/hosts

this is the last time i will say taboo. bye

# echo "127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com" >> /etc/hosts

Somehow, I'm not saddened by your departure.

I looked up the reference you provided and it says

'Eating properly handled and cooked pork and pork products is safe. Cooking pork to an internal temperature of 160°F kills the swine flu virus as it does other bacteria and viruses.'

So you CAN get it from pork if it isn't cooked properly. Why are you twisting the truth? Didn't you notice this?

In other news - 'China, Russia and Ukraine banned imports of pork and pork products from Mexico'

Of course the original mutation that causes the virus to occur could easily have happened differently to the current means of transmission.

I just cannot understand why you are so dismissive of the notion that pork could have something to do with this. Perhaps this subject is more taboo than I thought.

Surely you can see now the the subject is at least worthy of discussion and should not be automatically shut down.

So you CAN get it from pork if it isn't cooked properly. Why are you twisting the truth? Didn't you notice this?

Actually, there is no evidence that you can, and you're twisting the truth by saying the paragraph says the exact opposite of what it actually says.

The "cooked properly" thing is pretty much always included in mentions of pork by the CDC and other government entities, because of trichinosis, e-coli, and salmanella, and it is intended to further make it clear that not only are you not going to get swine flu from pork because it just doesn't work that way, when it is cooked it would kill off the virus, anyway.

If you aren't cooking your pork properly, you're risking your life every time you eat pork, regardless of whether there is a swine flu pandemic underway. Undercooked meat is dangerous, nobody is arguing about that, but I've seen no reputable source say that the flu can be contracted from eating pork or any other meat. And, you have provided none.

I just cannot understand why you are so dismissive of the notion that pork could have something to do with this. Perhaps this subject is more taboo than I thought.

You can't understand that every reliable source I have at my disposal tells me you can't catch swine flu from eating pork. What do you hope to achieve by getting all riled up about something that simply is not a vector of infection for this disease? Take your crazy scaremongering over to twitter where people eat that kind of nonsense up like candy.

Surely you can see now the the subject is at least worthy of discussion and should not be automatically shut down.

Surely you're joking. You've provided no sources. There have been no cases of swine flu that are attributable to eating pork. What is there to discuss? No cases. No connection. Nothing but some random nuts on the Internet with a bone to pick.

As I mentioned, I've been a vegetarian for over 15 years. I have zero interest in defending the meat industry. But, you're talking like a nutcase, and I don't find paranoid fantasies an interesting topic for discussion. Unless there is some evidence of a link between eating pork and the swine flu, it is a subject that is not worthy of discussion.

It's just not interesting to argue about all the things that might (despite lack of evidence) cause someone to get sick. The rays from your monitor might be causing you to get cancer of the eyeball as we speak, and the use of a mouse might cause Parkinson's. There is no evidence...but it could happen. Shall we discuss that, too?

I think you have misinterpreted my perspective. The point is not whether pork is safe to eat here and now. I was more talking about whether it was originally responsible for the zoonotic transfer from pig to human that must have occurred. The handling or eating of pork is one of the limited number ways it could have happened. In that context mere possibility of transfer via this means becomes more important since all of the options have a low 'a priori' likelihood.

If either of us had read the link you provided in more detail we would have noticed that it is written before the current outbreak and is about the swine flu that is endemic to pigs - not the current virus that appears to be endemic to humans. They are related obviously but not the same thing. If the later version can appear in pigs (some say it can't) then this would could easily raise the risk of infection from use of pork products.

The thing I find interesting this is that given the fairly vague statement posed by hs you have consistently chosen the narrowest and most disputable angle. The general interpretation I had was something like 'vegetarian food production doesn't cause flu pandemics'. But you chose something like 'there is a pork contamination'. Then you tell me to 'Take your crazy scaremongering over to twitter' when I am actually speculating about the origin of the disease. I think you should probably take a little more time to look for the good in people rather than assuming the worst. I will also do this.

As a vegetarian I am annoyed at the bad things that happen to the world because of human meat consumption. When something so directly linked to the meat industry such as this occurs, I believe it is only right and proper to remind people that it doesn't have to be this way.

So you CAN get it from pork

Nonsense. This particular flu strain has never been detected in pigs. It's called "swine flu" because the virus itself is similar to previous swine flu viruses. Your quip about pork bans is taken out of context. Every article mentioning the bans goes on to criticize them for being unscientific.

see my reply to the other post in this thread.

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