While making my daily round at Slashdot today I was intrigued by a comment made in one of the stories. To quote:

Thanks to an agreement between Lindows and Seagate, from October you will be able to choose a hard drive with or without Lindows. Michael Robertson, in his usual marketing speak, compares this to adding "Fluoride in the water", because now you get for free something you used to need to go after (people used to go to dentist to get their fluoride).

What the fuck is he talking about? I don’t want fluoride in my water. Does Mr. Robertson know anything about fluoride? Well, probably as much as the general public, which isn’t a whole lot.

Being the curious type, I clicked open the comments and checked to see if anyone had mentioned this incredible stupid analogy. Once again, to quote a user (Sago):

Fluoride... is a poison.... What are you trying to tell us?

Good, at least some of us are informed… but listen to the response:

Anything in quantity is a poison. Hell you can die from drinking too much water. Yes fluoride is a poison, but it is also good for you in small doses, the kind of dose that they put in drinking water.

So what the fuck does that mean? What, should we start adding cyanide to water, I mean, everything is poisonous anyway! So I decided to add my two cents:

Actually, you're quite uninformed. Fluoride is allegedly only good for you if taken outside the body (i.e. just on your teeth.) There is no evidence that swallowing fluoride is good for you in any dose. In fact, it can cause fluorosis which causes teeth to become discolored and eroded. One of the biggest misconceptions the public has is that fluoride is "good" for you when in fact it's just another way for Alcoa and other companies that produce large quantities of it as byproduct of their processes to dump it somewhere and make money at the same time. Before fluoride became "good" for you, it was classified as toxic waste and had to be treated as such. Furthermore, shouldn't people have the choice as to whether or not they want the "enhancement" of fluoride in their water supply?

To which I received the reply:

Just grow up and accept the fact that the government and large corporations know what's best for you.

At which point Brian came up to my room and I began venting at him about how people are so uninformed about these things and started listing off points as to why fluoride was not so good for you to which he quoted Mark McGwire from an episode of the Simpsons:

Do you want to know the God-awful truth, or do you just want to see me hit some dingers?

And the crowd responded in unison:

Dingers! Dingers!

I rest my case.