The Gaming Den

American courts cost more, but damages awarded in them are not higher than in other countries.

And yes, there are often caps. And in other countries, the idea that you personally need to pay for your medical treatment isn't even a factor. So why would that be part of the reward, for instance, in France? In France you won't be thrown out in the middle of learning to walk again to have only half your skin reattached because you have no more funds or have to choose between your right or left hands to have fixed, as you would in the United States.

And heck, SCOTUS just ruled that if a company or government department isn't sued, they need not take actions to follow laws set down by congress!

It's not like they want us not to be litigious. They just want us not to get any benefit from it or the laws as written.

-Crissa

Capped damages have been shown to not affect insurance rates, just for giggles.

TX tried it, passed it... got nothing to show for it. Of course, the math was there all along but why bother?

Koumei wrote:that term being a racial slur was before my time, and not an Australian thing, so if someone called someone else a coon around me, I'd probably be like Forest Gump and assume they're talking about raccoons.

It actually IS a term that was used in Australia. And if you think it isn't current you probably just haven't traveled deep enough into Queensland. Or rural NSW. Or the coal fields. The thing about ethnic slurs and the people who use them is that an obscure slur in any given period or place is never a dead one, it's an even better one, because you can be a shit and use it to insult some minority and there is more chance that only the minority will no what the fuck you are talking about and feel insulted, while other chumps will be all like "What? It's just cheese!".

Oh, also I hear after years of fighting it Queenslanders have finally complied with a UN ruling and renamed the "[EDITED] Brown" grandstand and are even going to demolish it. You ever hear about that case? It was pretty ridiculous.

edit: wow, Queensland can name a grandstand with that word but some forum on the internet knows it's really bad. Well. Gaming den 1, Queensland 0, I suppose.

Well, Coon is used in the US without it being racist, as it's a surname and slang for an animal. So as long as it's clear you're not using it as a racist slur, it's fine.

Basically, as long as the cheese doesn't put racist caricatures on their boxes or advertising, I doubt anyone will have a real complaint. If you notice, many of these complaints come from someone outside the target group, in order to make a PC point score instead of actual change.

-Crissa

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There are no Raccoons in Australia.

The surname excuse is apparently historically questionable as well.

Not to mention much rarer than the use of the word as a racial slur.

Are you saying the guy doesn't exist? How could the name of a cheese company be racist, without a racist context?

-Crissa

Apparently the guy who it is now claimed to be named after was possibly just a minor factory worker co-opted some time after the emergence of the brand name.

The original product called "Coon" came in a black wrapper, and there was also a red wrapper variety called "Red Coon". Of course that was nearly a hundred years ago so it's kind of hazy.

But more importantly it has become somewhat of an embarrassment for Australia's already tarnished image on racism.

We are a racist nation. A very racist one. We have race riots, and we have black poverty that is on the level of a third world nation (very third world) and getting worse in the middle of our first world white nation. Blacks are beaten and imprisoned by our police, run over repeatedly in cars by Queenslanders without consequences, and worse.

Within living memory white people were kidnapping black children and shipping them off to shady religious schools. Racial violence and skin head groups are on the rise in our major cities. The Indian government is increasingly (and justifiably) concerned about the safety of it's citizens, in Melbourne arguably our most metropolitan and culturally enlightened city! The Queensland AND Federal government fought openly against the removal of the word "N I G G E R" from a sports grand stand. FOR TEN YEARS. Ultimately defying a UN request to remove it!

Coon cheese is just yet another embarrassment we could REALLY do without right now.

BUT lets pretend none of that is true. Lets pretend Australia has a, ahem, lily white reputation. Let's pretend the cheese is genuinely named after the unfortunately titled "Edward Coon" and no one ever thought that might be offensive back in 1916 when they created the brand, and no one has used it offensively since.

I'd like to use the line presented by a certain black British comedian on the subject.

If you Crissa genuinely believe it is not racist, why not pop down to your local super market and find a black shop attendant. And, in all innocence, ask them where you might find a block of "Coon Cheese".

I love New Scientist.

In PL's defense (Jesus Christ, I'm saying a lot of weird things), I've known several people from Australia, and all but 1 of them basically said blacks were animals and were to be treated as such.

Count_Arioch_the_28th wrote:In PL's defense (Jesus Christ, I'm saying a lot of weird things), I've known several people from Australia, and all but 1 of them basically said blacks were animals and were to be treated as such.

It's pretty bad when you make the American South look good!

Ganbare Gincun wrote:

Count_Arioch_the_28th wrote:In PL's defense (Jesus Christ, I'm saying a lot of weird things), I've known several people from Australia, and all but 1 of them basically said blacks were animals and were to be treated as such.

It's pretty bad when you make the American South look good!

Oh yeah, there are tons of places worse than the American south. That's not an apology, you don't get to suck just because someone else sucks more, but there are worse places.

Carrion Crawlers discovered.



-Username17

Sea worms can get pretty crazy. I'm a fan of proboscis worms, which can grow to over 100' in length.

Do water filters actually work for purifying liquids like, say, moonshine?

Well, a lot of vodka is tun through charcoal and shit. There were some experiments online about running dirt cheap vodka through a series of Brita filters in a tube, to see if it'd taste as smooth as high-end.

I see, to remember the results being inconclusive or false, though.

This is actually one where the Mythbusters guys really came through. They brought out Anthony Dias Blue, executive director San Francisco World Spirits Competition to blind taste judge a number of vodkas, including top shelf vodka and crap vodka and crap vodka that had been passed various numbers of times through a filter. He was able to clearly line them up in quality with the cheaper vodkas going up in quality directly proportionally to how many times they had been filtered and the top shelf vodka being the best.

So yeah, Bozkov will become better if you pass it through a water filter, but it seems to take more than that to make it really match the expensive stuff.

-Username17

That reminds me of an old odd habit of my father; he doesn't like the "top shelf" vodka because he claims it has no taste.

However, when mythbusters did that with steaks, they totally placed all over the map, only vaguely coming in order, but nearly hardly at all.

It wasn't exactly scientific, but it was interesting.

Crissa wrote:However, when mythbusters did that with steaks, they totally placed all over the map, only vaguely coming in order, but nearly hardly at all.

It wasn't exactly scientific, but it was interesting.

They ran steak through a Brita filter?

They subjected tough meat to explosives and then had a top chef taste test them. The meats got tenderized, but the degree of tenderization was incredibly random.

-Username17

While we're on the subject, how the hell do you tenderize porkchops enough so that when you broil or fry them they're tender as hell without tearing the meat?

Lago PARANOIA wrote:While we're on the subject, how the hell do you tenderize porkchops enough so that when you broil or fry them they're tender as hell without tearing the meat?

Marination. Soak them in lemon juice or coca cola for a while and then grill them up. The sugars caramelize on the outside of the chops and the acids soften the meat.

-Username17

Wow. That sounds...very good. I'm going to try that, the next time porkchops are available...

violence in the media wrote:

Crissa wrote:However, when mythbusters did that with steaks, they totally placed all over the map, only vaguely coming in order, but nearly hardly at all.

It wasn't exactly scientific, but it was interesting.

They ran steak through a Brita filter?

That was my question.

I totally tried running vodka through a Brita (I didn't do any research about the subject; I just saw "charcoal filtered" on a bottle and figured what the hell). It tasted much better, but still not good enough to drink. It maintained its superlative use as an additive to the water of cut flowers.