Tooth decay. From the Cambridge journal Public Health Nutrition:
Dental diseases, particularly dental caries, are the most expensive part of the body to treat. Caries is indeed the most expensive human disease in terms of direct costs. For example, the direct costs of caries treatment in Germany was 20.2 billion, CVD 15.4 billion DM, diabetes 2.3 billion DM.4. In West Germany, the cost of dental care was 10.3% of the health budget in 19945.
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And if that didn't blow your mind, this will.
Globe and Mail: Group of U.S. conservatives rewrite the Bible
After all these years, one could assume the Bible has held up pretty well, but a group of conservatives in the United States thinks it needs a rewrite.
The folks behind Conservapedia, a right-leaning version of Wikipedia, have launched the Conservative Bible Project, aimed at getting rid of what they call liberal bias, wordiness, emasculation and a general dumbing down of the Old and New Testaments.
A dozen or so users, led by Conservapedia founder Andy Schlafly – the son of conservative political activist Phyllis Schlafly – are tackling the 27 books of the New Testament and 39 books of the Old Testament. Anyone can offer suggested changes.
Just read the article. I could quote all of it.
Poe's Law: "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing." [1]
That article is PROOF.
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Conservapedia's own project page is, if possible, even more hilarious. Here's some excerpts, retrieved 20091012. All boldface in the original.
Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations. There are three sources of errors in conveying biblical meaning are, in increasing amount:
* lack of precision in the original language, such as terms underdeveloped to convey new concepts introduced by Christ
* lack of precision in modern language
* translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one.
Experts in ancient languages are helpful in reducing the first type of error above, which is a vanishing source of error as scholarship advances understanding. English language linguists are helpful in reducing the second type of error, which also decreases due to an increasing vocabulary. But the third -- and largest -- source of translation error requires conservative principles to reduce and eliminate.
So there you have it. According to Conservapedia, not only is the media biased toward liberals, and Wikipedia, but even the Bible is contaminated by liberal bias. Here's some of the "ten commandments" they suggest for rescuing the Word of God from liberals:
Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop; defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle".
Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God."
There you go! The Bible isn't conservative and free market oriented enough. This must change.
Also, "liberal wordiness"?
Here's one of their own examples:
Third Example - Socialism
Socialistic terminology permeates English translations of the Bible, without justification. This improperly encourages the "social justice" movement among Christians.
For example, the conservative word "volunteer" is mentioned only once in the ESV, yet the socialistic word "comrade" is used three times, "laborer(s)" is used 13 times, "labored" 15 times, and "fellow" (as in "fellow worker") is used 55 times.
As a translator myself, I don't know how to start explaining how wrong this is. Their problem isn't how a given Greek or Hebrew word is translated, but whether the word it is translated into is "liberal" or "conservative". Astonishing.
Father
Yes, you can't beat wood ... Gorn!
Mother
What's gorn dear?
Father
Nothing, nothing, I just like the word. It gives me confidence. Gorn ... gorn. It's got a sort of conservative quality about it. Gorn. Gorn. Much better than `newspaper' or `litterbin'.
Daughter
Frightful words.
Mother
Perfectly dreadful.
Father
Ugh! Newspaper! ... litterbin ... dreadful liberal sort of words. Lib, lib, lib.
The daughter bursts into tears.
Mother
Oh, dear, don't say `lib' to Rebecca, you know how it upsets her.
Father
(to the daughter) Sorry old horse.
Mother
Sausage!
Father
Sausage ... there's a good conservative sort of word, `sausage' ... gorn.
Daughter
Antelope.
Father
Where? On the lawn? (he picks up a rifle)
Daughter
No, no, daddy ... just the word.
Father
Don't want an antelope nibbling the hoops.
Daughter
No, antelope ... sort of nice and conservative type of thing.
Mother
Don't think so, Becky old chap.
Father
No, no, `antelope', `antelope' -- liberal sort of word (the daughter bursts into tears) Oh! Sorry old man ...
"We'll have him in our Bible."
[2]
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The staggering fact is that Poe's Law works here. I know this is an actual Conservapedia page, and I've read the article in the Globe and Mail where they actually interview Schlafly about the project. So I know this isn't a parody.
But still, when I read the actual project page, the whole thing is so incredibly preposterous that I can't quite convince myself it isn't a parody. They're really proposing creating a "new translation" of the Bible, not by retranslating it, but by rewriting the English text to conform to their ideology.
You really can't make fun of these people at all.
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