it may surprise you to discover many who study medicine do not study nutrition (or it may not). these days, the medical curriculum emphasizes drugs and procedures much more heavily than nutrition. in some programs, a single, 8-week class in nutrition is all that's required to get a doctoral degree in medicine.
while gp may be going off the deep end about horrific diseases (or, again, maybe not), the statement about humans not needing to eat meat to sustain life is incontrovertibly true. it only takes one living vegetarian to prove this.
having watched lots of nat geo wild lately (yes, i know, immense qualifications indeed), i've observed that there's nothing about human teeth that would indicate predation. my guess is any aliens that would examine our teeth alongside those of the rest of the animal world would conclude we are herbivores. even the tiniest chihuahuas (chihuahuae?) and domesticated house cats have more imposing, sharper flesh-rippers than homo sapiens.
another observation is that most predators eat their meat raw. a few delicacies aside, this is not how most humans eat their meat.
in direct relation to the article, the argument that humans "evolved" to eat meat boils down to, "well, we're better at it than gorillas." perhaps you can find a more convincing source?
As is, people seem to think that it's either nuclear power or magical maintenance-free reliable windmills, rather than either coal power or de-industrialization.
I think you'd be shocked and disheartened by how many would prefer de-industrialization.
i'm actually shocked and disheartened by how many people consider cell phones a birthright necessary for life on earth.
i don't really know enough about rockets or telescopes to pass judgement on what you've said. however, there are numerous probes exploring our solar system (voyagers, cassini, etc). from what i understand, no level of ground-based observation could obtain the data they're collecting.
i'm not sure how we maintain a space mission that will last over a hundred years (which is what tfa says it would take to get pictures back) or how you deal with command and control with a 44-yr lag, never mind all the other stuff people have posted about. but, i imagine a probe would provide valuable scientific information that couldn't be obtained any other way.
i realize i'm a little late to this by slashdot standards, but i felt compelled to reply anyway since you seem to be one of the more rational people on slashdot who has cut the cord. but, first, a huge, giant disclaimer: i work for directv. second huge, giant disclaimer: i speak for myself and am not representing directv in any official capacity.
i think it's great that there are people like you, cutting the cord. i myself did it for 2 1/2 years. it forces the cable and satellite companies to up their game. what everyone seems to be missing, however, is that they are. this is the principal reason cable and satellite have not died and, in fact, are doing quite well. the overall price range of various packages hasn't changed in 20 years. however, dvr's are practically universal, most of the channels are hd (it's weird to me your monthly charge would have been higher because of it), even remote locations get local channels and, generally speaking, you get more channels than you used to. this simply wasn't the case 10 years ago, or even 5. additionally, the on-demand choices are expanding, movies are becoming available on or before the dvd release date and while adoption hasn't been as rapid as hd, 3d is available. further, it's all the rage to be able to get content distributed throughout your entire home and to take it with you on the go. in retrospect, this all seems like a natural progression, but it isn't. cable and satellite companies had to push for all of it and invest in it.
so, while i applaud your effort to get just what you want and you don't find any of the above compelling enough to pay for, the fact is that in large numbers, choices different than your's are being made. i would venture to guess that it's because people do feel like they're getting more for the same money.
i will blatantly plug directv now and point out that our customer satisfaction numbers are actually increasing, unlike the rest of the industry. we're the only ones with energy star compliant set-top boxes. and, now that the dvr software development is largely in-house, the boxes themselves are quite reliable. as much as i'd like to say this was solely the result of fastidiously conscientious engineering, management demanded it to minimize support costs, which is, of course, closely tied to customer satisfaction.
this is poor problem-solving though. if you force constraints upon yourself that don't exist, you may miss the optimal solution. perhaps the optimal solution in the above analogy is, "this person doesn't actually need a computer. turn it off." if you constrain yourself to "engineering" solutions, you will have missed it entirely.
maybe the right solution is simply, "stop driving and reproducing and flying and eating red (or really any) meat so damn much." such a solution involves no science except that which blames, yet if we could pull it off, we would avert an enormous amount of ecological risk.
i'm not saying stop trying to find the scientific/engineering solutions. just don't stop trying to find political solutions, even if that requires playing some blame games. i know, i know, when have politicians ever solved anything, blah, blah, blah, but we may not have a choice. in the end the scientists and engineers may not be smart enough.
What it boils down to is we have people who are butt-hurt that the majority of Americans don't care about the feelings of a fish or the feelings of the rat they are going to feed to their python. So these people are trying to push their worldview on everyone else - regardless of the fact that "treating animals like commodities" is something that humans have been doing since the first creature was domesticated.
i'm not sure who's doing the boiling, but that's not what it boils down to at all. what it boils down to is animals have feelings, thoughts and emotions. like humans, when treated like a commodity, animals will experience great stress that plainly amount to suffering. the results of common animal-breeding practices include premature death of the animal, premature death of its siblings that didn't make it to the shop and injury and death to the people who come into contact with an animal brought up under such duress.
maybe most americans don't care about the feelings of a fish. but maybe the ones who think an aquarium is an appropriate place for a fish to live should.
i ran like this for about 2 1/2 years. for the first year, i really knew what i wanted to watch and it was great, though it did require patience as some things weren't readily available quickly*. after that, i realized everyone was talking about tv shows i hadn't even heard of, but sounded interesting. i didn't realize just how much of my tv discoveries (and movie discoveries for that matter) were made by watching tv. there are certainly ways around this, but none of them come as naturally as surfing.
* -- i'm the rare slashdotter who refuses to torrent content. as evil as the mpaa/riaa may be, if i don't fork over something at some point, the creative process chokes. luckily, nowadays, most shows are available through itunes, hulu or similar.
you've really hit upon three fully-scalable, widely-deployable solutions here. i can't imagine how any of the daytime-drama-watching, qvc-product-buying masses out there could not figure any of these out on their own. actually, come to think of it, maybe they're already on to "Solution 3."
we (yes, i work for directv) seem to be leading the pack when it comes to energy star stb's and have for at least a couple years now. the usual pros and cons of satellite vs cable and directv-service vs other-services apply of course. all in all, despite the hate directv has drawn from slashdot in the past, i think it's a pretty compelling choice nowadays.
the key here is "animal testing is often not even a good substitute for human testing." the progress of synthetic skin is mildly interesting, but it seems barely relevant to the topic of animal testing. of much more relevance is whether animal testing results are useful in a scientific sense. given that most of the science done in the name of developing correlations to humans, animal testing seems to have a rather poor track record. thalidomide is one of the more prominent examples, though, ironically, also a big factor in the public getting upset and wanting animal testing.
one rogue employee at ford constitutes "chinese culture?"
semantics aside, let's not forget that it wasn't THAT long ago that american cities' skies were choked with pollution (clean air act 1963), its rivers nothing but convenient places to dump lots of industrial waste (sort of still true, albeit not to the levels china is probably doing, but maybe was prior to 1970) and its workforce was abused (8hr workday wasn't generally accepted until 1937). that was with a relatively slow march through industrialization to today, perhaps 120 years or more. china is blasting through the same stages of development in, what, 20 years, maybe less?
more specifically on the issue of ip infringement, however, is that a deeply rooted chinese value is to make maximal use of what you have. in that sense, the very idea of something intellectual being property is relatively new to china. the thinking is something like "if i know how to do something and i'm not hurting anyone, why should i be prevented?" it's sort of a natural extension to the proverb "give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. teach a man to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime." in short, what you call "ip infringement" is, from a different perspective, just putting shared knowledge to use. don't get me wrong, ip infringement does indeed happen in china, but it's certainly not a central tenet of chinese culture. it can't be because the very notion of ip is not central to most chinese people's thinking.
i understand that this rather simple notion of sharing can not be applied to modern-day technological business. it takes tens, hundreds, maybe thousands of person-years to design and make an innovative, modern train. if that cost can't be recuperated, innovation isn't sustainable and use of knowledge actually does hurt the people who originated that knowledge. my point is simply that there is a tendency to characterize china as cesspool where there are no rules and to use trivializing negative language to describe what happens there when, in fact, they're going through a lot of similar growing pains other nations have been through, there is a lot of good, cool stuff happening in china and a deeper understanding of their way of thinking would bring to light the rules that seem so slippery to a different base set of values.
now, if only nasa data could reveal the industrialized nations' industrial air pollution and vilify it enough, the governments of the world will surely act and put a stop to it.
but, seriously, why does every comment that gets modded up anytime china is involved one that treats the country as though it were the borg? "them," "they," and "the nation," as though there's no diversity of thought, opinion or action amongst over a billion people. i think that outlook's never-ending claims about chinese citizens being brainwashed is itself the stronger example of brainwashing.
funny how there's controversy over whether "one" means "at least one" or "exactly one," but "two children" means "exactly two children." to do this properly, you need to know how likely it is that the person has three children, four children, five children, six children,..., 6.7 billion children. after all, this person may consider the all humans his/her children.
well, i might have said "civil engineers" when it comes to bridge-building instead of "mechanical" (please don't hate me, mech e's), but otherwise i agree wholeheartedly.
don't forget the sports book. though you make your bet with the house, you're really betting against everyone on the other side of your bet. as armb said, you do have to clear the house margin and few can, but you're not really playing against the house.
an obvious way to make money then is to not play against the house. the sports book and poker, for example, squarely pit player against player, in which case winning is not necessarily an anomaly.
i'm not sure why initial interest is the ruling factor. i would think retention is more important.
it would be interesting to see the breakdown of women and men at the companies involved in foss (ie, where money is not a determining factor). until someone finds that data, i'm sure we'll be throwing conjecture at each other until neither of us can type any longer. i certainly respect what you're saying about hobbyists, but corporate foss is growing at quite a rapid pace.
okay, but times have changed. when you have such a significant contribution from non-hobbyists, saying that hobbying is the primary factor is rather unlikely.
many people seem to be looking for evidence of sexism. this is the foss world, yes? we can look for the evidence in the source code and documentation. a quick grep through the docs folder for me turned up a few uses of exclusive "he" (though far outnumbered by inclusive "he/she" or "he or she") and no uses of exclusive "she," typically referring to the user. of course, you'll have to filter out legitimate uses of exclusive "he" and "she," such as when referring to an actual person (typically a developer), but everyone here should be able to see how latent the issue is (or not) themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
it may surprise you to discover many who study medicine do not study nutrition (or it may not). these days, the medical curriculum emphasizes drugs and procedures much more heavily than nutrition. in some programs, a single, 8-week class in nutrition is all that's required to get a doctoral degree in medicine.
while gp may be going off the deep end about horrific diseases (or, again, maybe not), the statement about humans not needing to eat meat to sustain life is incontrovertibly true. it only takes one living vegetarian to prove this.
having watched lots of nat geo wild lately (yes, i know, immense qualifications indeed), i've observed that there's nothing about human teeth that would indicate predation. my guess is any aliens that would examine our teeth alongside those of the rest of the animal world would conclude we are herbivores. even the tiniest chihuahuas (chihuahuae?) and domesticated house cats have more imposing, sharper flesh-rippers than homo sapiens.
another observation is that most predators eat their meat raw. a few delicacies aside, this is not how most humans eat their meat.
in direct relation to the article, the argument that humans "evolved" to eat meat boils down to, "well, we're better at it than gorillas." perhaps you can find a more convincing source?
As is, people seem to think that it's either nuclear power or magical maintenance-free reliable windmills, rather than either coal power or de-industrialization.
I think you'd be shocked and disheartened by how many would prefer de-industrialization.
i'm actually shocked and disheartened by how many people consider cell phones a birthright necessary for life on earth.
i don't really know enough about rockets or telescopes to pass judgement on what you've said. however, there are numerous probes exploring our solar system (voyagers, cassini, etc). from what i understand, no level of ground-based observation could obtain the data they're collecting.
i'm not sure how we maintain a space mission that will last over a hundred years (which is what tfa says it would take to get pictures back) or how you deal with command and control with a 44-yr lag, never mind all the other stuff people have posted about. but, i imagine a probe would provide valuable scientific information that couldn't be obtained any other way.
i realize i'm a little late to this by slashdot standards, but i felt compelled to reply anyway since you seem to be one of the more rational people on slashdot who has cut the cord. but, first, a huge, giant disclaimer: i work for directv. second huge, giant disclaimer: i speak for myself and am not representing directv in any official capacity.
i think it's great that there are people like you, cutting the cord. i myself did it for 2 1/2 years. it forces the cable and satellite companies to up their game. what everyone seems to be missing, however, is that they are. this is the principal reason cable and satellite have not died and, in fact, are doing quite well. the overall price range of various packages hasn't changed in 20 years. however, dvr's are practically universal, most of the channels are hd (it's weird to me your monthly charge would have been higher because of it), even remote locations get local channels and, generally speaking, you get more channels than you used to. this simply wasn't the case 10 years ago, or even 5. additionally, the on-demand choices are expanding, movies are becoming available on or before the dvd release date and while adoption hasn't been as rapid as hd, 3d is available. further, it's all the rage to be able to get content distributed throughout your entire home and to take it with you on the go. in retrospect, this all seems like a natural progression, but it isn't. cable and satellite companies had to push for all of it and invest in it.
so, while i applaud your effort to get just what you want and you don't find any of the above compelling enough to pay for, the fact is that in large numbers, choices different than your's are being made. i would venture to guess that it's because people do feel like they're getting more for the same money.
i will blatantly plug directv now and point out that our customer satisfaction numbers are actually increasing, unlike the rest of the industry. we're the only ones with energy star compliant set-top boxes. and, now that the dvr software development is largely in-house, the boxes themselves are quite reliable. as much as i'd like to say this was solely the result of fastidiously conscientious engineering, management demanded it to minimize support costs, which is, of course, closely tied to customer satisfaction.
this is poor problem-solving though. if you force constraints upon yourself that don't exist, you may miss the optimal solution. perhaps the optimal solution in the above analogy is, "this person doesn't actually need a computer. turn it off." if you constrain yourself to "engineering" solutions, you will have missed it entirely.
maybe the right solution is simply, "stop driving and reproducing and flying and eating red (or really any) meat so damn much." such a solution involves no science except that which blames, yet if we could pull it off, we would avert an enormous amount of ecological risk.
i'm not saying stop trying to find the scientific/engineering solutions. just don't stop trying to find political solutions, even if that requires playing some blame games. i know, i know, when have politicians ever solved anything, blah, blah, blah, but we may not have a choice. in the end the scientists and engineers may not be smart enough.
someone please mod this up.
http://www.theonion.com/video/ultrarealistic-modern-warfare-game-features-awaiti,14382/
it doesn't get any more realistic than this. uncharted, eat your heart out.
What it boils down to is we have people who are butt-hurt that the majority of Americans don't care about the feelings of a fish or the feelings of the rat they are going to feed to their python. So these people are trying to push their worldview on everyone else - regardless of the fact that "treating animals like commodities" is something that humans have been doing since the first creature was domesticated.
i'm not sure who's doing the boiling, but that's not what it boils down to at all. what it boils down to is animals have feelings, thoughts and emotions. like humans, when treated like a commodity, animals will experience great stress that plainly amount to suffering. the results of common animal-breeding practices include premature death of the animal, premature death of its siblings that didn't make it to the shop and injury and death to the people who come into contact with an animal brought up under such duress.
maybe most americans don't care about the feelings of a fish. but maybe the ones who think an aquarium is an appropriate place for a fish to live should.
i ran like this for about 2 1/2 years. for the first year, i really knew what i wanted to watch and it was great, though it did require patience as some things weren't readily available quickly*. after that, i realized everyone was talking about tv shows i hadn't even heard of, but sounded interesting. i didn't realize just how much of my tv discoveries (and movie discoveries for that matter) were made by watching tv. there are certainly ways around this, but none of them come as naturally as surfing.
* -- i'm the rare slashdotter who refuses to torrent content. as evil as the mpaa/riaa may be, if i don't fork over something at some point, the creative process chokes. luckily, nowadays, most shows are available through itunes, hulu or similar.
you've really hit upon three fully-scalable, widely-deployable solutions here. i can't imagine how any of the daytime-drama-watching, qvc-product-buying masses out there could not figure any of these out on their own. actually, come to think of it, maybe they're already on to "Solution 3."
we (yes, i work for directv) seem to be leading the pack when it comes to energy star stb's and have for at least a couple years now. the usual pros and cons of satellite vs cable and directv-service vs other-services apply of course. all in all, despite the hate directv has drawn from slashdot in the past, i think it's a pretty compelling choice nowadays.
the key here is "animal testing is often not even a good substitute for human testing." the progress of synthetic skin is mildly interesting, but it seems barely relevant to the topic of animal testing. of much more relevance is whether animal testing results are useful in a scientific sense. given that most of the science done in the name of developing correlations to humans, animal testing seems to have a rather poor track record. thalidomide is one of the more prominent examples, though, ironically, also a big factor in the public getting upset and wanting animal testing.
one rogue employee at ford constitutes "chinese culture?"
semantics aside, let's not forget that it wasn't THAT long ago that american cities' skies were choked with pollution (clean air act 1963), its rivers nothing but convenient places to dump lots of industrial waste (sort of still true, albeit not to the levels china is probably doing, but maybe was prior to 1970) and its workforce was abused (8hr workday wasn't generally accepted until 1937). that was with a relatively slow march through industrialization to today, perhaps 120 years or more. china is blasting through the same stages of development in, what, 20 years, maybe less?
more specifically on the issue of ip infringement, however, is that a deeply rooted chinese value is to make maximal use of what you have. in that sense, the very idea of something intellectual being property is relatively new to china. the thinking is something like "if i know how to do something and i'm not hurting anyone, why should i be prevented?" it's sort of a natural extension to the proverb "give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. teach a man to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime." in short, what you call "ip infringement" is, from a different perspective, just putting shared knowledge to use. don't get me wrong, ip infringement does indeed happen in china, but it's certainly not a central tenet of chinese culture. it can't be because the very notion of ip is not central to most chinese people's thinking.
i understand that this rather simple notion of sharing can not be applied to modern-day technological business. it takes tens, hundreds, maybe thousands of person-years to design and make an innovative, modern train. if that cost can't be recuperated, innovation isn't sustainable and use of knowledge actually does hurt the people who originated that knowledge. my point is simply that there is a tendency to characterize china as cesspool where there are no rules and to use trivializing negative language to describe what happens there when, in fact, they're going through a lot of similar growing pains other nations have been through, there is a lot of good, cool stuff happening in china and a deeper understanding of their way of thinking would bring to light the rules that seem so slippery to a different base set of values.
now, if only nasa data could reveal the industrialized nations' industrial air pollution and vilify it enough, the governments of the world will surely act and put a stop to it.
but, seriously, why does every comment that gets modded up anytime china is involved one that treats the country as though it were the borg? "them," "they," and "the nation," as though there's no diversity of thought, opinion or action amongst over a billion people. i think that outlook's never-ending claims about chinese citizens being brainwashed is itself the stronger example of brainwashing.
funny how there's controversy over whether "one" means "at least one" or "exactly one," but "two children" means "exactly two children." to do this properly, you need to know how likely it is that the person has three children, four children, five children, six children,..., 6.7 billion children. after all, this person may consider the all humans his/her children.
well, i might have said "civil engineers" when it comes to bridge-building instead of "mechanical" (please don't hate me, mech e's), but otherwise i agree wholeheartedly.
We are not going back.
i think the planet may have something to say about this.
uh, doesn't prosperity require an underclass bigger than the prosperous class?
don't forget the sports book. though you make your bet with the house, you're really betting against everyone on the other side of your bet. as armb said, you do have to clear the house margin and few can, but you're not really playing against the house.
an obvious way to make money then is to not play against the house. the sports book and poker, for example, squarely pit player against player, in which case winning is not necessarily an anomaly.
i'm not sure why initial interest is the ruling factor. i would think retention is more important.
it would be interesting to see the breakdown of women and men at the companies involved in foss (ie, where money is not a determining factor). until someone finds that data, i'm sure we'll be throwing conjecture at each other until neither of us can type any longer. i certainly respect what you're saying about hobbyists, but corporate foss is growing at quite a rapid pace.
agreed. when you do that, you will account for those making under 30% of the contributions to linux.
i just think you have to include those making the remaining 70+% too.
okay, but times have changed. when you have such a significant contribution from non-hobbyists, saying that hobbying is the primary factor is rather unlikely.
many people seem to be looking for evidence of sexism. this is the foss world, yes? we can look for the evidence in the source code and documentation. a quick grep through the docs folder for me turned up a few uses of exclusive "he" (though far outnumbered by inclusive "he/she" or "he or she") and no uses of exclusive "she," typically referring to the user. of course, you'll have to filter out legitimate uses of exclusive "he" and "she," such as when referring to an actual person (typically a developer), but everyone here should be able to see how latent the issue is (or not) themselves.