my answer to all of the "in the wild" comments is that cows are imported. left to their own devices, they would never have migrated here and would never have been bred into the weight-gaining machines they have been turned into by "modern" agriculture. so, by "left to their own devices," i don't simply mean opening the stalls of farms and leaving them alone. i mean what would have happened without any human interference. as for pigs, they seem to be be thriving in the wild, much to the chagrin of people who have to deal with them (see, for instance, "hogs gone wild" on discovery).
i do appreciate the fact that you took such good care of the animals. from everything i've seen and read about how most of the animals being fed to the public today are treated, what you did is no longer typical and hasn't been for quite some time. all of the new ag-gag bills being proposed are just further evidence (albeit circumstantial) that the agriculture industry has much to hide.
yes, we do live in an interconnected world, but by the logic of your last paragraph, we're all war profiteers too since the resources secured by such wars (mainly oil) are essential to pretty much everything. i do take issue with the idea that all the people who provided all those essential functions you list would not have been able to do it without eating meat. there are lots of vegetarians and vegans performing each of those functions just as well as their meat-eating counterparts.
allow me to reply without name-calling. that is, quite simply, a very low standard for consent. again, we're comparing milking cows to breast-feeding, at least that's where this started. there is no comparison between the levels of consent given. there is no definition of "consent" i know of that would exclude a mother breast-feeding her own child. there are many definitions of "consent" that would exclude cows being milked. even with your logic, i would argue that "this situation" is one where their objections do not affect whether they get milked or not. when one's only choice has no effect, the lack of objection becomes a very, very low bar for consent. if you're comfortable with it, that's fine. i'm not.
this is a very nice post. i enjoyed reading it and thank you for sharing because i think many vegans don't see this side of things and get unnecessarily righteous because of it.
nonetheless, i hope you're not offended that i will continue to not patronize your livelihood (or at least the one you grew up in) because i don't equate lack of objection with consent. and certainly the lack of an objection does not mean that the animals would do what you're trying to get them to do if left on their own.
You ever been to a dairy farm? You should see what happens when to cows are not milked. Imagine a barn full of dairy cows that can raise the dead with the noise because their udders are swollen and they are in a lot of pain. They are happy to be milked. Or should we exterminate all dairy cows so they don't have to produce milk anymore? Dairy cows make milk that is what they were breed to do and all they can do. Dairy cow are better fed and like in clean barns compared to most cattle.
i have indeed been to a dairy farm. everything you describe is exactly why i don't consume dairy anymore. it's as artificial than a chip manufacturing plant.
well, one easy standard to apply is "would they do were it not forced on them?"
I don't think that's the standard that most strict vegans use. Most strict vegans I know don't eat honey, but the bees will keep making it, regardless of what is "forced" upon them. The bees are "free" to leave. (I'm aware that they stay due to the presence of the queen, but the queen could theoretically leave too... but the bees just like making honey in that environment.)
and cows will continue to reproduce even if it isn't "forced" upon them. the question is whether these bees will simply make honey and leave it there or whether they would do something with it, not whether they will continue making it at all or not.
Anyhow, I think the real vegan rationale is more like some sort of perceived "exploitation." That's a subjective term, but I think that's really what's going on in vegan philosophy. The animals might make the food anyway, but we are exploiting them to make food for us.
Of course, we also exploit plants too when we harvest parts of them like leaves or roots, which they have to regrow (or perhaps they even die or are completely consumed). Even by eating the fruit and not letting the seeds be dispersed naturally, we often interfere with reproduction.
The problem with all of these arguments is that you can keep going and going until you can't eat anything because you're exploiting it. I've even heard some vegans have arguments about whether we can eat leavened bread -- aren't you "exploiting" the yeast??
The question is just where you stop, because you have to eat something, and generally speaking, you'll end up exploiting or killing something else in the process... no matter what it is.
the slippery slope argument again. if you view veganism as a philosophy or moral code, it's simply one of taking humans off the pedestal. we are not the end-all, be-all where everything must serve us. that is all. once you understand that, all you have to do is say, well, humans are important in some respects, so we get some resources, but everything else in the world has importance too so they deserve resources. drawing the line at animals is as much about practical convenience (ie we can just as easily get what we "need" without them) as it is a rule.
well, one easy standard to apply is "would they do were it not forced on them?" i have yet to read about or see any animal in the wild stockpile their milk outside their bodies, let alone for consumption by another species.
So a mother feeding her child directly is vegan, but a mother stockpiling bottles of her milk (so the father can feed as well) is not?
um, simply, no. the mother can stockpile without it being forced on her.
well, perhaps that's the moral. or perhaps it should be that a vegan that won't eat carrots doesn't represent the vegan community at all.
Or perhaps the moral is that we generally eat food that was previously alive. Where we draw lines about exploiting that "life" is usually based on arbitrary divisions projecting human feelings and morals onto things that have a very different experience of the world.
For most of the vegans I know who have a problem eating honey, I think the carrot really represents a conundrum. It is really a greater problem to exploit the work of bees than it is to rip a living organism out of the ground and kill it completely to consume it? Some people say that the bees still have a nervous system that can feel pain or something and harming or exploiting them is a problem... but have you never had a garden and stepped on a plant, or tore a leaf, or made some sort of other damage or barrier or whatever to the plant's growth? The plant will respond (albeit more slowly). It is a living thing, and it has systems designed to react to the environment, as all animals do.
The line is always arbitrary. For most people in my experience, it's primarily about "cute and cuddly" things more than anything else... and I'm not sure that's a good thing to build a moral philosophy on.
yes, indeed, the line is arbitrary. i have yet to come across a philosophy where the placement of that line lower on the food chain is less moral. perhaps the carrot presents a conundrum to those who need absolutes in their philosophy. but to those who simply want to shift that line, it's not a conundrum at all.
My lady was once a raw food vegan fascist. One day she had the revelation that a carrot was alive and she couldn't bring herself to kill it. This led directly to the concept that all the food is alive, so fucking eat it. (or as I like to put it, THIS IS NECESSARY. LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON...) A few years ago we were in the habit of eating a lot of chicken sausage. One day she asked me "Why is this sausage so good?" The answer was "because it's made out of pork". The moral is, people can change.
well, perhaps that's the moral. or perhaps it should be that a vegan that won't eat carrots doesn't represent the vegan community at all.
Because people are happier using anecdote to support their opinions than they are changing their opinions when confronted by facts.
It's all about feelings.
totally agree. vegans are faced with the opinion that they and their children can not be healthy, pretty much daily. yet when the omnivores expressing this opinion are confronted by the fact that healthy vegans exist, it's very rare that said opinion changes.
well, if you must have scientific study, you can start with this list. or, if you want to go beyond just the "family and children" category into general veganism, you can go up a level. the articles seem to focus on how a plant-based diet avoids many of the common childhood health problems, particularly obesity.
there's also this series of blog posts by a physician who is trying to evaluate all the scientific publications on the topic of vegan pregnancy out there. the basic takeaway in 10 different categories reviewed so far is that a well-planned vegan pregnancy is safe. while it does rely on supplements, a quick googling seems to indicate taking supplements is recommended for non-vegan pregnancies as well.
there's also this, which also relies on supplements, but the same source recommends all pregnant women take supplements and, again, i don't think they're unique in this regard.
But since non-human animals can't give us consent to take the milk they produced for their own offspring, that stolen cows' or goats' milk is not vegan.
Well, if you go into that, plants cannot give consent either. It seems like the only way out for vegans is starving to death.
"Giving consent" assumes being aware of the implications of what is happening. Unless you assume animals have the mental capability of understanding the abstract notion of property and the difference between stealing and buying, the act of giving consent has no meaning for them.
please remember this topic started with breast-feeding. there is a huge leap from a mother "consenting" to give her own child her own breast milk and attempts at interpreting cow behavior as "consenting" the being treated in the industrialized way by which milk is largely obtained (in the u.s. anyway).
also, isn't it a bit absurd to think property has anything to do with consent? i suppose if you want to drape the term "property" over an animal's desired treatments of their own body, i'd have to believe any animal is mentally capable.
Milk is vegan, if the animal you obtain it from, consents to give it to you [...]
But since non-human animals can't give us consent to take the milk they produced for their own offspring, that stolen cows' or goats' milk is not vegan.
That's highly subjective -- How do you define "consent" when it comes to animals without speech? Modern cows certainly don't look like they're objecting to that part of their treatment (it even saves their lives, actually). If you're saying they only do that because they were bred that way (which is correct)... Well, the same can be said for human females.
well, one easy standard to apply is "would they do were it not forced on them?" i have yet to read about or see any animal in the wild stockpile their milk outside their bodies, let alone for consumption by another species.
how do you know what you do is superior? do you trust the "organic" label still? are the people who provide you with grass-fed beef and insect-fed eggs trustworthy, all the way back to the source? is there something in the final product that you can inspect to instantly distinguish, aside from the profit-seeking label attached by some human?
unfortunately, what we do about climate change is a scientific question. the predicted climate consequences of anything we decide to do needs to be known. it just happens that what we do is also an economic question. and a geopolitical question. and, well, you get the picture.
we must also ask what are the direct and indirect monetary damages and human life costs of the status quo. if you look only at the cost of implementing something new, you'll get a terribly pessimistic view of what can be accomplished and when. let's say hansen gets nothing and we continue to drill, baby, drill. what indeed is the butcher's bill? can we already count both iraq wars and all the ripple they've caused? nigerian strife? gulf coast fishing consequences of deepwater horizon? cancer alley, louisiana? it's not like "business as usual" is without its ill effects.
also, china may indeed be building a new coal plant every week. however, i believe their non-fossil-fuel energy portfolio is quite substantial (yes, citation needed, but you have google) and may even make the u.s. or u.k. blush, never mind them actually taking steps to curb population growth. your question on the issue of enforcement is, of course, valid. i just want to point out that realistically china is not the biggest bogeyman.
once again, i must disclaim that i am a directv employee. you can guess which side of the argument i'm going to be on.
much of this thread seems to say two basic things
1) scheduling and ads suck
2) prices suck
i don't really understand 1 since any dvr will get around both of these issues. there are some esoteric cases where it won't, but it's certainly not the predominant way people watch tv/video.
on 2, there are several things to consider. i think internet video (netflix, hulu, youtube, etc) is awesome and if that's the right choice for you, by all means cut the cord. the thing i hate about this argument is everyone assumes everyone else is just like them. once you start talking about millions of people, you have to cater to the 80% that do things a particular way and i get the feeling most of slashdot is the other 20%.
the reason cable/sat survives is because it is very hard to do what the cable/sat companies do. if hbo tries to go streaming only with their content, good luck to them. however, they'll realize at some point that content creation is a completely different animal than content distribution. they've had a great string of success with their programming, but do they want to start distracting themselves from those creative endeavors with technical ones? what happens when some of their programming gambles don't pay off? i'm not saying any of this is insurmountable, but hbo (and all content providers really) need to ask themselves if they really want to be distributors and it should come as no surprise that many answer "no."
internet video is definitely growing and directv at least is trying to answer the call. for my own personal job security, i hope directv does. if it does, it will be in large part thanks to all the critics providing feedback.
also remember that att often is the dsl or cable internet and they can bundle things. part of this sales pitch is saying, though not necessarily providing, an overall discount. another part is offering a microcell for free as long as you stay for 2 years. i'm sure there's more, but you get the idea.
interesting, a strict interpretation of wikipedia makes cannibalism is ok if you're an omnivore too.
Omnivores (from Latin: omni, meaning "all, everything"; vorare, "to devour") are species that eat both plants and animal material as their primary food source. omnivore
last i checked (and it was a long time ago, so i could be wrong now), the costs of producing millions of plastic discs was a very low on the riaa expense list. most of their "waste" is in talent development, which is not what it used to be, but still requires resources. basically, if they find some talent worthy of a deal, they have to record the artist (cheaper with digital technology, but still very expensive) and promote the artist. the problem is they only make their money back on a small percentage of artists (i think roughly 10%, but like i said, it's been a while).
this is not to say the riaa doesn't do evil. many of those up-front costs are carried by the artists all the way to (in some cases) bankruptcy, so even after a new artist's single goes platinum, he/she/they may still owe the label money. and everything you said about suing their consumers is, of course, well documented. i guess all i'm saying is even if labels weren't evil, it always appears that they are wasteful and taking advantage simply because they sink so much money into artists that go nowhere (eg daniel johnston, great as he is, was a commercial flop for the label that signed him first).
Exactly. Those who say the US can use mass transit have never been here.
San Francisco is not like Denton, is not like New York City, is not like Kansas City, is not like Conshohoken, is not like Phoenix, is not like Columbus, etc.....
You also can't use mass transit in farming communities.
umm...i live here. i live in los angeles, capital of sprawl. i've used mass transit for over 10 years to commute (normally, i don't like shameless self-promotion, but if you want proof of at least the last year and a half or so, check my blog.). i say we could use more.
you can always find places where it won't work (sorry, can't speak to whether denton and conshohoken actually fit the bill). but are we making the most of where it can work?
. beardo's point was simply that you can be healthy as a vegan, not that you can not be healthy without being vegan.
I'm not sure that your reading of it is correct. You seem to argue that he's saying that he's healthy DESPITE being vegan.
that's not at all what i'm arguing. actually, that's what i think you're arguing. if neither of us are actually arguing that, then let's drop it.
I guess you can interpret his post like that.
His argument, as I read it, was that he is vegan, healthy, and that being vegan is in part a foundation of that health.
right. to which you replied "a diet need not be vegan to be healthy." well, he never contended the opposite or even close. he just said you CAN be vegan and perfectly healthy, not that you MUST be vegan to be healthy. from my understanding of the term "straw man" (take something someone didn't say and refute it easily), this is a perfect example.
Seeing as HIS own follow up response didn't accuse me of straw men or other gross mischaracterizations of his argument, I'm not sure your reading is correct.
just because he didn't call you out on it doesn't mean you didn't do it.
maybe you're making the point that diet doesn't affect health?
You do realize I explicitly wrote that "a healthy diet is important." in the post you are accusing me of making the point that diet doesn't affect health right? I'm pretty sure your going to have a tough time reconciling that without some pretty irrational leaps of logic.
well, you did write "a healthy diet is important," of course, but you also pretty plainly said a vegan diet did not contribute to his health ("not this"). i'm not sure i'm the one that needs to do any reconciling here.
nice straw man. beardo's point was simply that you can be healthy as a vegan, not that you can not be healthy without being vegan. of course, maybe you're making the point that diet doesn't affect health?
Slashdot Mirror
my answer to all of the "in the wild" comments is that cows are imported. left to their own devices, they would never have migrated here and would never have been bred into the weight-gaining machines they have been turned into by "modern" agriculture. so, by "left to their own devices," i don't simply mean opening the stalls of farms and leaving them alone. i mean what would have happened without any human interference. as for pigs, they seem to be be thriving in the wild, much to the chagrin of people who have to deal with them (see, for instance, "hogs gone wild" on discovery).
i do appreciate the fact that you took such good care of the animals. from everything i've seen and read about how most of the animals being fed to the public today are treated, what you did is no longer typical and hasn't been for quite some time. all of the new ag-gag bills being proposed are just further evidence (albeit circumstantial) that the agriculture industry has much to hide.
yes, we do live in an interconnected world, but by the logic of your last paragraph, we're all war profiteers too since the resources secured by such wars (mainly oil) are essential to pretty much everything. i do take issue with the idea that all the people who provided all those essential functions you list would not have been able to do it without eating meat. there are lots of vegetarians and vegans performing each of those functions just as well as their meat-eating counterparts.
allow me to reply without name-calling. that is, quite simply, a very low standard for consent. again, we're comparing milking cows to breast-feeding, at least that's where this started. there is no comparison between the levels of consent given. there is no definition of "consent" i know of that would exclude a mother breast-feeding her own child. there are many definitions of "consent" that would exclude cows being milked. even with your logic, i would argue that "this situation" is one where their objections do not affect whether they get milked or not. when one's only choice has no effect, the lack of objection becomes a very, very low bar for consent. if you're comfortable with it, that's fine. i'm not.
this is a very nice post. i enjoyed reading it and thank you for sharing because i think many vegans don't see this side of things and get unnecessarily righteous because of it.
nonetheless, i hope you're not offended that i will continue to not patronize your livelihood (or at least the one you grew up in) because i don't equate lack of objection with consent. and certainly the lack of an objection does not mean that the animals would do what you're trying to get them to do if left on their own.
You ever been to a dairy farm? You should see what happens when to cows are not milked. Imagine a barn full of dairy cows that can raise the dead with the noise because their udders are swollen and they are in a lot of pain. They are happy to be milked. Or should we exterminate all dairy cows so they don't have to produce milk anymore? Dairy cows make milk that is what they were breed to do and all they can do. Dairy cow are better fed and like in clean barns compared to most cattle.
i have indeed been to a dairy farm. everything you describe is exactly why i don't consume dairy anymore. it's as artificial than a chip manufacturing plant.
well, one easy standard to apply is "would they do were it not forced on them?"
I don't think that's the standard that most strict vegans use. Most strict vegans I know don't eat honey, but the bees will keep making it, regardless of what is "forced" upon them. The bees are "free" to leave. (I'm aware that they stay due to the presence of the queen, but the queen could theoretically leave too... but the bees just like making honey in that environment.)
and cows will continue to reproduce even if it isn't "forced" upon them. the question is whether these bees will simply make honey and leave it there or whether they would do something with it, not whether they will continue making it at all or not.
Anyhow, I think the real vegan rationale is more like some sort of perceived "exploitation." That's a subjective term, but I think that's really what's going on in vegan philosophy. The animals might make the food anyway, but we are exploiting them to make food for us.
Of course, we also exploit plants too when we harvest parts of them like leaves or roots, which they have to regrow (or perhaps they even die or are completely consumed). Even by eating the fruit and not letting the seeds be dispersed naturally, we often interfere with reproduction.
The problem with all of these arguments is that you can keep going and going until you can't eat anything because you're exploiting it. I've even heard some vegans have arguments about whether we can eat leavened bread -- aren't you "exploiting" the yeast??
The question is just where you stop, because you have to eat something, and generally speaking, you'll end up exploiting or killing something else in the process... no matter what it is.
the slippery slope argument again. if you view veganism as a philosophy or moral code, it's simply one of taking humans off the pedestal. we are not the end-all, be-all where everything must serve us. that is all. once you understand that, all you have to do is say, well, humans are important in some respects, so we get some resources, but everything else in the world has importance too so they deserve resources. drawing the line at animals is as much about practical convenience (ie we can just as easily get what we "need" without them) as it is a rule.
well, one easy standard to apply is "would they do were it not forced on them?" i have yet to read about or see any animal in the wild stockpile their milk outside their bodies, let alone for consumption by another species.
So a mother feeding her child directly is vegan, but a mother stockpiling bottles of her milk (so the father can feed as well) is not?
um, simply, no. the mother can stockpile without it being forced on her.
well, perhaps that's the moral. or perhaps it should be that a vegan that won't eat carrots doesn't represent the vegan community at all.
You're right - she was being philosophically rigorous.
then her philosophy really is too simple, as i suspect your understanding of the vegan community is.
well, perhaps that's the moral. or perhaps it should be that a vegan that won't eat carrots doesn't represent the vegan community at all.
Or perhaps the moral is that we generally eat food that was previously alive. Where we draw lines about exploiting that "life" is usually based on arbitrary divisions projecting human feelings and morals onto things that have a very different experience of the world.
For most of the vegans I know who have a problem eating honey, I think the carrot really represents a conundrum. It is really a greater problem to exploit the work of bees than it is to rip a living organism out of the ground and kill it completely to consume it? Some people say that the bees still have a nervous system that can feel pain or something and harming or exploiting them is a problem... but have you never had a garden and stepped on a plant, or tore a leaf, or made some sort of other damage or barrier or whatever to the plant's growth? The plant will respond (albeit more slowly). It is a living thing, and it has systems designed to react to the environment, as all animals do.
The line is always arbitrary. For most people in my experience, it's primarily about "cute and cuddly" things more than anything else... and I'm not sure that's a good thing to build a moral philosophy on.
yes, indeed, the line is arbitrary. i have yet to come across a philosophy where the placement of that line lower on the food chain is less moral. perhaps the carrot presents a conundrum to those who need absolutes in their philosophy. but to those who simply want to shift that line, it's not a conundrum at all.
No, in fact, it has been actually validated.
http://nutrition.stanford.edu/projects/az.html
how is this validation exactly? sure, atkins provided the greatest weight loss, but there are lots of unhealthy ways to lose weight.
My lady was once a raw food vegan fascist. One day she had the revelation that a carrot was alive and she couldn't bring herself to kill it. This led directly to the concept that all the food is alive, so fucking eat it. (or as I like to put it, THIS IS NECESSARY. LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON...) A few years ago we were in the habit of eating a lot of chicken sausage. One day she asked me "Why is this sausage so good?" The answer was "because it's made out of pork". The moral is, people can change.
well, perhaps that's the moral. or perhaps it should be that a vegan that won't eat carrots doesn't represent the vegan community at all.
Because people are happier using anecdote to support their opinions than they are changing their opinions when confronted by facts.
It's all about feelings.
totally agree. vegans are faced with the opinion that they and their children can not be healthy, pretty much daily. yet when the omnivores expressing this opinion are confronted by the fact that healthy vegans exist, it's very rare that said opinion changes.
well, if you must have scientific study, you can start with this list. or, if you want to go beyond just the "family and children" category into general veganism, you can go up a level. the articles seem to focus on how a plant-based diet avoids many of the common childhood health problems, particularly obesity.
there's also this series of blog posts by a physician who is trying to evaluate all the scientific publications on the topic of vegan pregnancy out there. the basic takeaway in 10 different categories reviewed so far is that a well-planned vegan pregnancy is safe. while it does rely on supplements, a quick googling seems to indicate taking supplements is recommended for non-vegan pregnancies as well.
there's also this, which also relies on supplements, but the same source recommends all pregnant women take supplements and, again, i don't think they're unique in this regard.
there's also this already-quoted-and-bashed-below article from the american dietetic association.
quinoa is also a complete protein, in addition to soy.
But since non-human animals can't give us consent to take the milk they produced for their own offspring, that stolen cows' or goats' milk is not vegan.
Well, if you go into that, plants cannot give consent either. It seems like the only way out for vegans is starving to death.
"Giving consent" assumes being aware of the implications of what is happening. Unless you assume animals have the mental capability of understanding the abstract notion of property and the difference between stealing and buying, the act of giving consent has no meaning for them.
please remember this topic started with breast-feeding. there is a huge leap from a mother "consenting" to give her own child her own breast milk and attempts at interpreting cow behavior as "consenting" the being treated in the industrialized way by which milk is largely obtained (in the u.s. anyway).
also, isn't it a bit absurd to think property has anything to do with consent? i suppose if you want to drape the term "property" over an animal's desired treatments of their own body, i'd have to believe any animal is mentally capable.
Milk is vegan, if the animal you obtain it from, consents to give it to you [...]
But since non-human animals can't give us consent to take the milk they produced for their own offspring, that stolen cows' or goats' milk is not vegan.
That's highly subjective -- How do you define "consent" when it comes to animals without speech? Modern cows certainly don't look like they're objecting to that part of their treatment (it even saves their lives, actually). If you're saying they only do that because they were bred that way (which is correct)... Well, the same can be said for human females.
well, one easy standard to apply is "would they do were it not forced on them?" i have yet to read about or see any animal in the wild stockpile their milk outside their bodies, let alone for consumption by another species.
how do you know what you do is superior? do you trust the "organic" label still? are the people who provide you with grass-fed beef and insect-fed eggs trustworthy, all the way back to the source? is there something in the final product that you can inspect to instantly distinguish, aside from the profit-seeking label attached by some human?
unfortunately, what we do about climate change is a scientific question. the predicted climate consequences of anything we decide to do needs to be known. it just happens that what we do is also an economic question. and a geopolitical question. and, well, you get the picture.
we must also ask what are the direct and indirect monetary damages and human life costs of the status quo. if you look only at the cost of implementing something new, you'll get a terribly pessimistic view of what can be accomplished and when. let's say hansen gets nothing and we continue to drill, baby, drill. what indeed is the butcher's bill? can we already count both iraq wars and all the ripple they've caused? nigerian strife? gulf coast fishing consequences of deepwater horizon? cancer alley, louisiana? it's not like "business as usual" is without its ill effects.
also, china may indeed be building a new coal plant every week. however, i believe their non-fossil-fuel energy portfolio is quite substantial (yes, citation needed, but you have google) and may even make the u.s. or u.k. blush, never mind them actually taking steps to curb population growth. your question on the issue of enforcement is, of course, valid. i just want to point out that realistically china is not the biggest bogeyman.
once again, i must disclaim that i am a directv employee. you can guess which side of the argument i'm going to be on.
much of this thread seems to say two basic things
1) scheduling and ads suck
2) prices suck
i don't really understand 1 since any dvr will get around both of these issues. there are some esoteric cases where it won't, but it's certainly not the predominant way people watch tv/video.
on 2, there are several things to consider. i think internet video (netflix, hulu, youtube, etc) is awesome and if that's the right choice for you, by all means cut the cord. the thing i hate about this argument is everyone assumes everyone else is just like them. once you start talking about millions of people, you have to cater to the 80% that do things a particular way and i get the feeling most of slashdot is the other 20%.
the reason cable/sat survives is because it is very hard to do what the cable/sat companies do. if hbo tries to go streaming only with their content, good luck to them. however, they'll realize at some point that content creation is a completely different animal than content distribution. they've had a great string of success with their programming, but do they want to start distracting themselves from those creative endeavors with technical ones? what happens when some of their programming gambles don't pay off? i'm not saying any of this is insurmountable, but hbo (and all content providers really) need to ask themselves if they really want to be distributors and it should come as no surprise that many answer "no."
internet video is definitely growing and directv at least is trying to answer the call. for my own personal job security, i hope directv does. if it does, it will be in large part thanks to all the critics providing feedback.
also remember that att often is the dsl or cable internet and they can bundle things. part of this sales pitch is saying, though not necessarily providing, an overall discount. another part is offering a microcell for free as long as you stay for 2 years. i'm sure there's more, but you get the idea.
interesting, a strict interpretation of wikipedia makes cannibalism is ok if you're an omnivore too.
Omnivores (from Latin: omni, meaning "all, everything"; vorare, "to devour") are species that eat both plants and animal material as their primary food source. omnivore
of course vegans breast-feed.
if this answer does not grok, i can only ask "do you google?"
last i checked (and it was a long time ago, so i could be wrong now), the costs of producing millions of plastic discs was a very low on the riaa expense list. most of their "waste" is in talent development, which is not what it used to be, but still requires resources. basically, if they find some talent worthy of a deal, they have to record the artist (cheaper with digital technology, but still very expensive) and promote the artist. the problem is they only make their money back on a small percentage of artists (i think roughly 10%, but like i said, it's been a while).
this is not to say the riaa doesn't do evil. many of those up-front costs are carried by the artists all the way to (in some cases) bankruptcy, so even after a new artist's single goes platinum, he/she/they may still owe the label money. and everything you said about suing their consumers is, of course, well documented. i guess all i'm saying is even if labels weren't evil, it always appears that they are wasteful and taking advantage simply because they sink so much money into artists that go nowhere (eg daniel johnston, great as he is, was a commercial flop for the label that signed him first).
Exactly. Those who say the US can use mass transit have never been here.
San Francisco is not like Denton, is not like New York City, is not like Kansas City, is not like Conshohoken, is not like Phoenix, is not like Columbus, etc.....
You also can't use mass transit in farming communities.
umm...i live here. i live in los angeles, capital of sprawl. i've used mass transit for over 10 years to commute (normally, i don't like shameless self-promotion, but if you want proof of at least the last year and a half or so, check my blog.). i say we could use more.
you can always find places where it won't work (sorry, can't speak to whether denton and conshohoken actually fit the bill). but are we making the most of where it can work?
. beardo's point was simply that you can be healthy as a vegan, not that you can not be healthy without being vegan.
I'm not sure that your reading of it is correct. You seem to argue that he's saying that he's healthy DESPITE being vegan.
that's not at all what i'm arguing. actually, that's what i think you're arguing. if neither of us are actually arguing that, then let's drop it.
I guess you can interpret his post like that.
His argument, as I read it, was that he is vegan, healthy, and that being vegan is in part a foundation of that health.
right. to which you replied "a diet need not be vegan to be healthy." well, he never contended the opposite or even close. he just said you CAN be vegan and perfectly healthy, not that you MUST be vegan to be healthy. from my understanding of the term "straw man" (take something someone didn't say and refute it easily), this is a perfect example.
Seeing as HIS own follow up response didn't accuse me of straw men or other gross mischaracterizations of his argument, I'm not sure your reading is correct.
just because he didn't call you out on it doesn't mean you didn't do it.
maybe you're making the point that diet doesn't affect health?
You do realize I explicitly wrote that "a healthy diet is important." in the post you are accusing me of making the point that diet doesn't affect health right? I'm pretty sure your going to have a tough time reconciling that without some pretty irrational leaps of logic.
well, you did write "a healthy diet is important," of course, but you also pretty plainly said a vegan diet did not contribute to his health ("not this"). i'm not sure i'm the one that needs to do any reconciling here.
I eat a vegan diet
Not this.
nice straw man. beardo's point was simply that you can be healthy as a vegan, not that you can not be healthy without being vegan. of course, maybe you're making the point that diet doesn't affect health?