Excuse me, but I am NOT a troll (reacting to how my post got modded). My point about cooked food is an important one. I've not seen any serious (scientific) argument that we evolved as we did because meat has magical properties, but there are scientific papers arguing that cooked food allowed us to extract more nutrients from our food. This is the main argument against eating a 100% raw diet. As to my point about healthy vegan children, its factual basis is surely self-evident.
Yes, vegans NEED to take a vitamin B12 supplement. It's very important and is well worth re-stating for anyone who reads this and is thinking of going vegan.
You can tell your inquisitive minds that vegan B12 is industrially produced by bacteria. In particular, Propionibacterium shermanii and Pseudomonas denitrificans are commonly used to make vitamin B12 in manufacturing. Many animals get their B12 from bacteria in their gut so the source is actually very similar (except that no animals need to be harmed for the industrially manufactured B12).
So, the moral is that animals need to die for homo sapien sapiens to survive in our modern bodies as they evolved.
The moral is nothing of the kind. We need protein in order to live, and if a group chooses to go back to living as hunter-gatherers, clearly they need to catch animals to eat. But most of us do not live in that way. And, as there are more and more of us on the planet, we have to resort to increasingly desperate factory farming techniques in order to allow people to eat large quantities of meat. The solution is to find a different source of protein. TFA suggests insects and algae. But we could achieve the goal equally well by eating plant proteins, which can be cultivated using about one-tenth the amount of land required for animal proteins. In other words, it's far more efficient to eat the plant proteins ourselves than the feed them to animals and then eat the animals. The large number of healthy vegans shows a healthy diet can be modern and plant-based.
Veggies may be more efficient to grow but they are less efficient as fuel for the human body and mind. It was meat that enabled our brains to grow and to become the species we are today.
There is a strong argument that it was cooked food that allowed us to develop into what we are today. But, while meat was an important source of protein when we were hunter-gatherers, most human societies don't need meat as a protein source these days. The evidence for this is that plenty of vegetarians and vegans have healthy, intelligent children.
To be fair to Wikileaks, they recognize that there are legitimate secrets. They are an organization for publishing information supplied by whistle-blowers.
Monsanto prevailed in that litigation even though it had no contract with the farmer. The farmer lost the case on the basis of having planted seeds containing genes from Monsanto's product. Monsanto says on its web site that it will not sue farmers who, in its opinion, have unknowingly sown seeds contaminated with genes on which it holds a patent, as opposed to this farmer (and others) who, in Monsanto's opinion, deliberately used seeds containing Monsanto's genes. Do you trust Monsanto to stick to that policy in the future?
In the not too distant future the earth will reach its carrying capacity with regard to non-GMO food production
This assumes that GMO crop yields are (or will be) higher than those of non-GMO crops. So far, the evidence seems to suggest that the opposite is the case.
Create plants with sterile seeds, so Monsanto can then grab all of the farmer's money? Sue farmer's whose fields are next to Monsanto seed fields, alongside the blowing winds, and get the courts and government's to side with them against small farmers?
So which is it, are they sterile or spreading everywhere? Second, this is publicly funded research. As in, not Monsanto. The only antiquated ideas I see here are placing superstition & conspiracies over science in the name of politics & anti-corporatism.
It's both. Most GMO seeds are NOT currently sterile and Monsanto has successfully pursued litigation where a non-Monsanto crop has been contaminated with genes from a Monsanto GMO crop grown nearby. Monsanto owns a patent on those genes and courts ruled that this is a violation of Monsanto's patents, even if the contamination is accidental. Monsanto also holds patents on "terminator" technology that will allow some seeds to be sterile in the future, so that Monsanto no longer needs to sue any of their customers who illegally save seeds from this year's crop for planting next year.
Doesn't the 5th amendment to the constitution require laws to be clear and fair?
Indirectly, this is true. The 5th amendment to the US constitution guarantees the right to due process of law. And there is plenty of case law from the US Supreme Court making it clear that due process requires laws to be interpreted according to the language they contain. For example, "In deciding a question of statutory construction, we begin of course with the language of the statute." [Demarest v. Manspeaker, 1991].
The problem is when there is disagreement about what that language means. But that's for the courts to adjudicate, not the executive. So it's very good that this case is being brought. Kudos to Senators Wyden and Udall, who have been trying to raise awareness of this abuse of power for several months.
That's fine, so long as you personally pay for that on every package of food sold in the US. I have no interest in seeing my food bill go up even $0.01 per year to fund that sort of wacko agenda.
There's nothing wacko about labeling foods. Would you like to see your food bill go DOWN by $0.01 per year by having the existing labeling of ingredients removed?
Labeling is a good thing. It lets us all make informed choices based on our personal preferences.
That's an excellent letter. Thank you for posting it. I just called my bank (Wells Fargo) and asked some of those questions with regard to my debit/credit card that has a Visa symbol on it. It turns out that if I use my card as a debit card, Visa does not benefit from the transaction. And if I put the card into a Wells Fargo ATM machine, Visa does not benefit. The person I spoke to was not sure about non-Wells Fargo ATM machines.
So, from now on, I will be using cash and American Express a lot more, and using my Wells Fargo card as a debit card when necessary (subject to the usual caveats about caution when using a debit card).
I should be able to reduce my monthly Visa transactions from around $800 to close to zero.
Legally, Wikileaks' action is likely protected under the First Amendment. In 1971, the Supreme Court ruled (New York Times v. U.S) that the First Amendment barred the Nixon administration from keeping the New York Times and Washington Post from publishing illegally leaked information related to the Vietnam War. Two other cases (Landmark Communications v. Virginia and Bartnicki v. Vopper) support the view that it is not illegal to publish leaked information, even if the original leaking of that information was illegal.
Of course Amazon is free to as it sees fit, just as we are free to choose whether to buy from Amazon. But let's not add support to Amazon's decision by pretending that this was about "stolen property".
How can somebody be biased against an objective fact with proper authoritive references supporting it?
As your sig's reference to shades of gray suggests, the choice of which objective facts to include and which to leave out or delete can be a political choice.
In the early 90s (pre-web), I worked on two of the technologies mentioned in the article. First, thin clients. I worked on a system where we had a thin user interface layer (two versions: Windows and OS/2 Presentation Manager) talking to a powerful server backend that was doing database lookups and heavy number crunching. It worked well, but this type of architecture morphed into web applications in the mid-90s, and people stopped talking about "thin clients". However, a browser talking to an e-commerce backend or pretty much any other type of web app is precisely that: a thin client. The article is quite foolish to say that thin clients are "making a bit of a comeback". In fact, they have quietly taken over.
Secondly, AI. I worked on an expert system in the late 80s and early 90s that worked very well (and had modest commercial success). To this day, there are plenty of rule-based systems and neural networks in use in real-world situations such as decision support. But the term "artificial intelligence" made non-technical people overestimate what was possible at the time. Looking back, it was a term that encouraged people to overestimate what was possible. However, the set of technologies that were commonly referred to as AI have not generally failed -- only the term itself, "artifical intelligence", has fallen out of favour.
"we will no longer have newspapers that offer independent coverage of international news stories, "
yes we will, much like we can get that news from people on the ground, for free.
"I value independent news stories and I'm willing to pay for them."
fine, but there are a lot of people who put that information online for free. Meaning they don't get paid for it.
I don't want to be limited to news from local bloggers who don't get paid for their work (though I am interested in reading their perspective too). I want (and am willing to pay for) the perspective of insightful foreign correspondents who have reported from many places and have an international perspective. I agree with the poster below (hairyfeet) that such people are few and far between in the USA, and that reinforces my decision to read more widely.
"The Independent (of London), is in financial trouble and needs precisely this type of cash injection."
Clearly not enough people share your view to cover there expenses.*
Some news sites are making money, not just as big as a profit margin then the use to ahve, and that's what there talking about. For exampl News.com and a couple of other Murdoch owned papers are making money.
Although I like to read newspapers whose editorial line I disagree with, I find the reporting in the Murdoch press to rather unintelligent (the Times -- London -- is sometimes an exception to this, and I do read it, especially the Sunday edition).
I think the problem that newspapers such as The Independent have is that they have not yet found a business model that works for them. Micropayments look promising to me. The newspaper has a large number of people who read it on the web. Some (perhaps many) of those people would continue reading if they had to pay. I would never subscribe to a dozen newspapers, but if my micropayments to that many newspapers cost the same as a single full subscription to one newspaper, I would be happy to pay, especially if the alternative is watching some of them go out of business.
If we do not start paying for our online news, we will no longer have newspapers that offer independent coverage of international news stories, with their own foreign correspondents. Instead, we will only have coverage that republishes newswire articles. I value independent news stories and I'm willing to pay for them. I like the idea of micropayments because it will allow people to read multiple newspapers without paying a costly subscription to each.
For example, one of the newspapers whose international reporting I most enjoy, The Independent (of London), is in financial trouble and needs precisely this type of cash injection. I used to have a subscription (for premium content) several years ago but that model did not work for the newspaper and now all their content is free.
As others have noted, it would be very difficult for just a handful of newspapers to introduce this. However, the news business is somewhat atypical in the sense that most readers do not regard newspapers as interchangeable because they usually have their own editorial line. For that reason, it would not be necessary for ALL newspapers to do this. I try to read politically diverse newspapers, and if one of my main news sources folded I would not be able to arbitrarily plug in another newspaper to replace it. And some of the less mainstream ones are truly unique.
Finally, I would be prepared to tolerate some advertising even if I pay. Some print newspapers have advertising now and one can regard advertising as a way to keep down the price of the paper. The challenge is getting the balance right (both in terms of price and ad intrusiveness).
Slashdot Mirror
Excuse me, but I am NOT a troll (reacting to how my post got modded). My point about cooked food is an important one. I've not seen any serious (scientific) argument that we evolved as we did because meat has magical properties, but there are scientific papers arguing that cooked food allowed us to extract more nutrients from our food. This is the main argument against eating a 100% raw diet. As to my point about healthy vegan children, its factual basis is surely self-evident.
Yes, vegans NEED to take a vitamin B12 supplement. It's very important and is well worth re-stating for anyone who reads this and is thinking of going vegan.
You can tell your inquisitive minds that vegan B12 is industrially produced by bacteria. In particular, Propionibacterium shermanii and Pseudomonas denitrificans are commonly used to make vitamin B12 in manufacturing. Many animals get their B12 from bacteria in their gut so the source is actually very similar (except that no animals need to be harmed for the industrially manufactured B12).
So, the moral is that animals need to die for homo sapien sapiens to survive in our modern bodies as they evolved.
The moral is nothing of the kind. We need protein in order to live, and if a group chooses to go back to living as hunter-gatherers, clearly they need to catch animals to eat. But most of us do not live in that way. And, as there are more and more of us on the planet, we have to resort to increasingly desperate factory farming techniques in order to allow people to eat large quantities of meat. The solution is to find a different source of protein. TFA suggests insects and algae. But we could achieve the goal equally well by eating plant proteins, which can be cultivated using about one-tenth the amount of land required for animal proteins. In other words, it's far more efficient to eat the plant proteins ourselves than the feed them to animals and then eat the animals. The large number of healthy vegans shows a healthy diet can be modern and plant-based.
Veggies may be more efficient to grow but they are less efficient as fuel for the human body and mind. It was meat that enabled our brains to grow and to become the species we are today.
There is a strong argument that it was cooked food that allowed us to develop into what we are today. But, while meat was an important source of protein when we were hunter-gatherers, most human societies don't need meat as a protein source these days. The evidence for this is that plenty of vegetarians and vegans have healthy, intelligent children.
To be fair to Wikileaks, they recognize that there are legitimate secrets. They are an organization for publishing information supplied by whistle-blowers.
I'd be interested to see a link to some evidence backing up your claim. Would you post one, please?
Monsanto prevailed in that litigation even though it had no contract with the farmer. The farmer lost the case on the basis of having planted seeds containing genes from Monsanto's product. Monsanto says on its web site that it will not sue farmers who, in its opinion, have unknowingly sown seeds contaminated with genes on which it holds a patent, as opposed to this farmer (and others) who, in Monsanto's opinion, deliberately used seeds containing Monsanto's genes. Do you trust Monsanto to stick to that policy in the future?
In the not too distant future the earth will reach its carrying capacity with regard to non-GMO food production
This assumes that GMO crop yields are (or will be) higher than those of non-GMO crops. So far, the evidence seems to suggest that the opposite is the case.
Create plants with sterile seeds, so Monsanto can then grab all of the farmer's money? Sue farmer's whose fields are next to Monsanto seed fields, alongside the blowing winds, and get the courts and government's to side with them against small farmers?
So which is it, are they sterile or spreading everywhere? Second, this is publicly funded research. As in, not Monsanto. The only antiquated ideas I see here are placing superstition & conspiracies over science in the name of politics & anti-corporatism.
It's both. Most GMO seeds are NOT currently sterile and Monsanto has successfully pursued litigation where a non-Monsanto crop has been contaminated with genes from a Monsanto GMO crop grown nearby. Monsanto owns a patent on those genes and courts ruled that this is a violation of Monsanto's patents, even if the contamination is accidental. Monsanto also holds patents on "terminator" technology that will allow some seeds to be sterile in the future, so that Monsanto no longer needs to sue any of their customers who illegally save seeds from this year's crop for planting next year.
How about: does it suffer?
If that's the criterion, we will all have to become vegetarian.
Doesn't the 5th amendment to the constitution require laws to be clear and fair?
Indirectly, this is true. The 5th amendment to the US constitution guarantees the right to due process of law. And there is plenty of case law from the US Supreme Court making it clear that due process requires laws to be interpreted according to the language they contain. For example, "In deciding a question of statutory construction, we begin of course with the language of the statute." [Demarest v. Manspeaker, 1991].
The problem is when there is disagreement about what that language means. But that's for the courts to adjudicate, not the executive. So it's very good that this case is being brought. Kudos to Senators Wyden and Udall, who have been trying to raise awareness of this abuse of power for several months.
The algorithm is:
1: Enter infinite loop
2. Invoke Jolt to escape from infinite loop.
3: GOTO 1
That's fine, so long as you personally pay for that on every package of food sold in the US. I have no interest in seeing my food bill go up even $0.01 per year to fund that sort of wacko agenda.
There's nothing wacko about labeling foods. Would you like to see your food bill go DOWN by $0.01 per year by having the existing labeling of ingredients removed?
Labeling is a good thing. It lets us all make informed choices based on our personal preferences.
That's an excellent letter. Thank you for posting it. I just called my bank (Wells Fargo) and asked some of those questions with regard to my debit/credit card that has a Visa symbol on it. It turns out that if I use my card as a debit card, Visa does not benefit from the transaction. And if I put the card into a Wells Fargo ATM machine, Visa does not benefit. The person I spoke to was not sure about non-Wells Fargo ATM machines.
So, from now on, I will be using cash and American Express a lot more, and using my Wells Fargo card as a debit card when necessary (subject to the usual caveats about caution when using a debit card).
I should be able to reduce my monthly Visa transactions from around $800 to close to zero.
It's a must-read for people who think US intelligence agencies are somehow behind this.
The Daily Mail story neglects to mention that one of Mr Assange's accusers may indeed have links to the CIA.
Legally, Wikileaks' action is likely protected under the First Amendment. In 1971, the Supreme Court ruled (New York Times v. U.S) that the First Amendment barred the Nixon administration from keeping the New York Times and Washington Post from publishing illegally leaked information related to the Vietnam War. Two other cases (Landmark Communications v. Virginia and Bartnicki v. Vopper) support the view that it is not illegal to publish leaked information, even if the original leaking of that information was illegal.
Of course Amazon is free to as it sees fit, just as we are free to choose whether to buy from Amazon. But let's not add support to Amazon's decision by pretending that this was about "stolen property".
How can somebody be biased against an objective fact with proper authoritive references supporting it?
As your sig's reference to shades of gray suggests, the choice of which objective facts to include and which to leave out or delete can be a political choice.
I just hope it won't be David Bowie's 'Memory of a Free Festival': "Sun machine is going down and we're gonna have a party..."
It's also appropriate for SPARC servers that are preparing for shutdown.
In the early 90s (pre-web), I worked on two of the technologies mentioned in the article. First, thin clients. I worked on a system where we had a thin user interface layer (two versions: Windows and OS/2 Presentation Manager) talking to a powerful server backend that was doing database lookups and heavy number crunching. It worked well, but this type of architecture morphed into web applications in the mid-90s, and people stopped talking about "thin clients". However, a browser talking to an e-commerce backend or pretty much any other type of web app is precisely that: a thin client. The article is quite foolish to say that thin clients are "making a bit of a comeback". In fact, they have quietly taken over.
Secondly, AI. I worked on an expert system in the late 80s and early 90s that worked very well (and had modest commercial success). To this day, there are plenty of rule-based systems and neural networks in use in real-world situations such as decision support. But the term "artificial intelligence" made non-technical people overestimate what was possible at the time. Looking back, it was a term that encouraged people to overestimate what was possible. However, the set of technologies that were commonly referred to as AI have not generally failed -- only the term itself, "artifical intelligence", has fallen out of favour.
"we will no longer have newspapers that offer independent coverage of international news stories, " yes we will, much like we can get that news from people on the ground, for free.
"I value independent news stories and I'm willing to pay for them." fine, but there are a lot of people who put that information online for free. Meaning they don't get paid for it.
I don't want to be limited to news from local bloggers who don't get paid for their work (though I am interested in reading their perspective too). I want (and am willing to pay for) the perspective of insightful foreign correspondents who have reported from many places and have an international perspective. I agree with the poster below (hairyfeet) that such people are few and far between in the USA, and that reinforces my decision to read more widely.
"The Independent (of London), is in financial trouble and needs precisely this type of cash injection."
Clearly not enough people share your view to cover there expenses.* Some news sites are making money, not just as big as a profit margin then the use to ahve, and that's what there talking about. For exampl News.com and a couple of other Murdoch owned papers are making money.
Although I like to read newspapers whose editorial line I disagree with, I find the reporting in the Murdoch press to rather unintelligent (the Times -- London -- is sometimes an exception to this, and I do read it, especially the Sunday edition).
I think the problem that newspapers such as The Independent have is that they have not yet found a business model that works for them. Micropayments look promising to me. The newspaper has a large number of people who read it on the web. Some (perhaps many) of those people would continue reading if they had to pay. I would never subscribe to a dozen newspapers, but if my micropayments to that many newspapers cost the same as a single full subscription to one newspaper, I would be happy to pay, especially if the alternative is watching some of them go out of business.
If we do not start paying for our online news, we will no longer have newspapers that offer independent coverage of international news stories, with their own foreign correspondents. Instead, we will only have coverage that republishes newswire articles. I value independent news stories and I'm willing to pay for them. I like the idea of micropayments because it will allow people to read multiple newspapers without paying a costly subscription to each. For example, one of the newspapers whose international reporting I most enjoy, The Independent (of London), is in financial trouble and needs precisely this type of cash injection. I used to have a subscription (for premium content) several years ago but that model did not work for the newspaper and now all their content is free. As others have noted, it would be very difficult for just a handful of newspapers to introduce this. However, the news business is somewhat atypical in the sense that most readers do not regard newspapers as interchangeable because they usually have their own editorial line. For that reason, it would not be necessary for ALL newspapers to do this. I try to read politically diverse newspapers, and if one of my main news sources folded I would not be able to arbitrarily plug in another newspaper to replace it. And some of the less mainstream ones are truly unique. Finally, I would be prepared to tolerate some advertising even if I pay. Some print newspapers have advertising now and one can regard advertising as a way to keep down the price of the paper. The challenge is getting the balance right (both in terms of price and ad intrusiveness).