It's a niche adaptation... and like all niche adaptations, it's useful for as long as the niche exists.
But the truly useful thing to being a tasty and easily domesticated animal is the fact that human beings will fling you to all corners of the planet so when the niche ceases to exist, there are cows all over the planet to test out their ability to adapt in a bunch of new niches.
Being widespread is a huge evolutionary advantage whether the niche ceases to exist or not.
Just look at apples, no longer confined to merely kajz... um, kadajeek... um, the middle of asia.
And that is the point of evolution. Out of those billions of cows there will be some that won't "get a fresh udder infection every other week" and they'll win the evolutionary lottery.
Don't kid yourself: the 1.53 billion cows quoted above is a very large number of cows; not only will some survive, but lots will survive in lots of areas -- enough to interact and to continue to survive generation to generation. (Though I try not to imagine the stench of 1.5299 billion dead cows!)
But that's not even taking into account breeds of cattle that are not as greatly "overbred" as other breeds -- since we're talking about cattle, and not any one particular breed (like "dairy cows") anyway. There are plenty of near feral breeds of cattle to begin with.
I don't think that is as much of a disadvantage as most people think.
I provide, as an example, feral dogs and feral pigs.
Dogs that go feral start from one of the many breeds that we have of dogs, yet once they interbreed in "the wild," they breed back true to form. All pigs that go feral, in a very short few generations, regain hair and dark pigmentation.
If humans ceased to exist tomorrow, the cattle, chickens and pigs that survive "the fall of man" will breed true to form and diversify quite easily. Humanity is only a recent, and probably short-lived, blight upon the planet. In spite of the intensive breeding that has gone on, it's still only a tiny change relative to what has happened before and will happen in the future.
I agree: TS3 is the most buggy game out there. And EA is rushing to release new expansions instead of fixing what's already out. (Because new expansions are a revenue stream but fixing already purchased software is only an expense... someone needs to explain the terms "short-term" and "long-term" to EA.)
You can fix the fireman though. Open the "cheat" console ([control][shift]-c) and type: RESETSIM simfirstname simlastname (make sure the names are exactly right -- if it doesn't work try putting a space between "RESET" and "SIM").
I did some math tutoring for adult high-school students myself (I didn't go the usual route for my high school). The mental gymnastics I had to go through to get some (to me) simple concepts explained were amazing. But each time there was that "ah-ha" moment, and you could see the student actually get it, it made it all worth while.
I get what you're saying... smart enough to keep up a pace that maintains an average speed nearly as fast as the kudu, but without exhausting the pursuing human.
Still impresses the shit out of me. Smart or not, the persistence hunter still keeps an average pace as fast as a kudu running all out then resting then running all out again for 3-5 hours. There's still some stamina involved.
As a very proud (almost jingoistic) canadian, I was ready to say that myself, but Alert, while being the northern-most permanent settlement can hardly be called a "town".
I mean, some people run 10 miles or more a day; surely that can't be normal...
Actually, humans are evolved for just that--persistence hunting is basically constantly running after an animal until it's too exhausted to get away.
Okay, wow. That just impressed the shit out of me. Humans are not just smarter than other animals? It turns out that we are physically fitter than herd grazers too? Wow.
Will the wonders of this amazing creature never cease?
... but on the other side of the argument, if the number were, say... 1035, dropping a zero would not get you ten percent... so um, yeah, dropping a zero needs a bit more explanation.
Oddly enough, I took "dropping a zero" as meaning removing the lowest digit (but not if it was non-zero) in a number, like say: 10,000. If you drop a zero, you get 1,000; ten percent of 10,000. Or 350 becomes 35; ten percent of 350.
"Dropping a zero" is a special case of "moving the decimal point one place to the left".
Sure the wording sucks, but the method is sound. If eleuthero explained what he meant by "dropping a zero" even just a little bit, I can see how frustrating it would be that someone wouldn't get that.
No no, hors d'oeuvres... horse eggs. Of course, horses don't lay eggs. The only thing egg shaped a horse lays... I don't want to think about this anymore.
Even after getting that it was about the National Science Foundation providing funding for a research grant, I was still reading (for a while) to see what it had to do with kiting cheques.:-/ "You can take the nerd out of the trailer park..."
So now it's "right-wing radicalism" to change the constitution? The very thing it was set up to allow for? Interesting point of view, I guess. Was it left-wing radicalism that added the amendments (in question) in the first place?
Huh.
Yes. In the simplest terms, conservative means to seek to maintain the status quo, while liberal means to allow change. There are all sorts of nuances, but the root of conservative is "conserve" and the root of the word liberal, "libra", is related to "balance".
Gold, maybe. XP, never. XP loss is the most frustrating mechanic ever to get introduced to an RPG, and I refuse to play games which punish the player that badly. Once I get XP it is mine forever. There ARE ways to punish the player for death, like, you know, the old-fashioned save game load. Fable just refuses to do that for whatever reason, so it has no good way to punish players.
Save game load doesn't work in a multi-player and JonySuede's "and the rest on the corpse" doesn't work in single player games.
Though for single player games, I think the save game load is generally good, but then you get save game munchkins. (And save points tend to go too far without protecting from save game munchkins who just run back to a save point before doing something difficult.)
Some XP loss (but very limited) and some carried goods loss is probably the best way to do it in multi-player games. I hate the games that allow full looting of corpses since then you have to give up everything you've worked for and you tend to have the UO problem of gankers in robes wandering around.
That's the biggest problem I find with FPS and RTS myself. People who aren't there to have fun; only to make someone else suffer (or to whom fun means making someone else suffer). I don't mind competition, but when the only thing that matters is winning regardless of uneven odds or cheats, then it's gone too far.
I've enjoyed FO3 myself, but I'm assuming you're talking about New Vegas: how is it? (I don't have the power myself to run it.)
But how does one make death have a meaningful penalty without making the game unplayable (or at least too frustrating for all but the most hc players)?
Let's assume that "global warming" isn't totally bad. Most of the great plains region of NA is one good drought away from becoming a desert.
A lot of my fellow canadians think that a warmer world is to benefit Canada, but I imagine that with more arable land, a more welcoming climate, and lots of unused resources, a starving population ten times our size fleeing desertification of their once great plains would be quite the threat.
Even if Canada becomes an Eden, who says canadians will be the ones to enjoy it?
Or that Russia will hold Siberia from a billion or more chinese fleeing an expanding Gobi?
This increased incentive for warfare makes all the gains of global warming a loss.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a niche adaptation... and like all niche adaptations, it's useful for as long as the niche exists.
But the truly useful thing to being a tasty and easily domesticated animal is the fact that human beings will fling you to all corners of the planet so when the niche ceases to exist, there are cows all over the planet to test out their ability to adapt in a bunch of new niches.
Being widespread is a huge evolutionary advantage whether the niche ceases to exist or not.
Just look at apples, no longer confined to merely kajz... um, kadajeek... um, the middle of asia.
Patient orange mint?
If you'd watched Firefly, you'd be all over this, including the stripping the amygdala thing to eliminate fear and create monsters...
Isn't it amazing how science fiction can be used to investigate the dilemas of human existence?
And that is the point of evolution. Out of those billions of cows there will be some that won't "get a fresh udder infection every other week" and they'll win the evolutionary lottery.
Don't kid yourself: the 1.53 billion cows quoted above is a very large number of cows; not only will some survive, but lots will survive in lots of areas -- enough to interact and to continue to survive generation to generation. (Though I try not to imagine the stench of 1.5299 billion dead cows!)
But that's not even taking into account breeds of cattle that are not as greatly "overbred" as other breeds -- since we're talking about cattle, and not any one particular breed (like "dairy cows") anyway. There are plenty of near feral breeds of cattle to begin with.
I have more fear for the bananas.
I don't think that is as much of a disadvantage as most people think.
I provide, as an example, feral dogs and feral pigs.
Dogs that go feral start from one of the many breeds that we have of dogs, yet once they interbreed in "the wild," they breed back true to form. All pigs that go feral, in a very short few generations, regain hair and dark pigmentation.
If humans ceased to exist tomorrow, the cattle, chickens and pigs that survive "the fall of man" will breed true to form and diversify quite easily. Humanity is only a recent, and probably short-lived, blight upon the planet. In spite of the intensive breeding that has gone on, it's still only a tiny change relative to what has happened before and will happen in the future.
I agree: TS3 is the most buggy game out there. And EA is rushing to release new expansions instead of fixing what's already out. (Because new expansions are a revenue stream but fixing already purchased software is only an expense... someone needs to explain the terms "short-term" and "long-term" to EA.)
You can fix the fireman though. Open the "cheat" console ([control][shift]-c) and type: RESETSIM simfirstname simlastname (make sure the names are exactly right -- if it doesn't work try putting a space between "RESET" and "SIM").
I did some math tutoring for adult high-school students myself (I didn't go the usual route for my high school). The mental gymnastics I had to go through to get some (to me) simple concepts explained were amazing. But each time there was that "ah-ha" moment, and you could see the student actually get it, it made it all worth while.
I get what you're saying... smart enough to keep up a pace that maintains an average speed nearly as fast as the kudu, but without exhausting the pursuing human.
Still impresses the shit out of me. Smart or not, the persistence hunter still keeps an average pace as fast as a kudu running all out then resting then running all out again for 3-5 hours. There's still some stamina involved.
As a very proud (almost jingoistic) canadian, I was ready to say that myself, but Alert, while being the northern-most permanent settlement can hardly be called a "town".
Consider, most of what Google does, it does... as an experiment/long term investment.
Hmmm... I wonder what the percentage is in having two nations go to war? ("Don't be evil"?)
(KIDDING! Google has no plans to control the world and is NOT part of the Illuminati global conspiracy. Really.)
Actually, humans are evolved for just that--persistence hunting is basically constantly running after an animal until it's too exhausted to get away.
Okay, wow. That just impressed the shit out of me. Humans are not just smarter than other animals? It turns out that we are physically fitter than herd grazers too? Wow.
Will the wonders of this amazing creature never cease?
... but on the other side of the argument, if the number were, say... 1035, dropping a zero would not get you ten percent... so um, yeah, dropping a zero needs a bit more explanation.
Oddly enough, I took "dropping a zero" as meaning removing the lowest digit (but not if it was non-zero) in a number, like say: 10,000. If you drop a zero, you get 1,000; ten percent of 10,000. Or 350 becomes 35; ten percent of 350.
"Dropping a zero" is a special case of "moving the decimal point one place to the left".
Sure the wording sucks, but the method is sound. If eleuthero explained what he meant by "dropping a zero" even just a little bit, I can see how frustrating it would be that someone wouldn't get that.
No no, hors d'oeuvres... horse eggs. Of course, horses don't lay eggs. The only thing egg shaped a horse lays... I don't want to think about this anymore.
Even after getting that it was about the National Science Foundation providing funding for a research grant, I was still reading (for a while) to see what it had to do with kiting cheques. :-/ "You can take the nerd out of the trailer park..."
Apparently Sam Raimi in Evil Dead. It was used "forever" but he made it cool.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaky_camera#History
It's not dead; it's pining for the fjords
So now it's "right-wing radicalism" to change the constitution? The very thing it was set up to allow for? Interesting point of view, I guess. Was it left-wing radicalism that added the amendments (in question) in the first place?
Huh.
Yes. In the simplest terms, conservative means to seek to maintain the status quo, while liberal means to allow change. There are all sorts of nuances, but the root of conservative is "conserve" and the root of the word liberal, "libra", is related to "balance".
Gold, maybe. XP, never. XP loss is the most frustrating mechanic ever to get introduced to an RPG, and I refuse to play games which punish the player that badly. Once I get XP it is mine forever. There ARE ways to punish the player for death, like, you know, the old-fashioned save game load. Fable just refuses to do that for whatever reason, so it has no good way to punish players.
Save game load doesn't work in a multi-player and JonySuede's "and the rest on the corpse" doesn't work in single player games.
Though for single player games, I think the save game load is generally good, but then you get save game munchkins. (And save points tend to go too far without protecting from save game munchkins who just run back to a save point before doing something difficult.)
Some XP loss (but very limited) and some carried goods loss is probably the best way to do it in multi-player games. I hate the games that allow full looting of corpses since then you have to give up everything you've worked for and you tend to have the UO problem of gankers in robes wandering around.
That's the biggest problem I find with FPS and RTS myself. People who aren't there to have fun; only to make someone else suffer (or to whom fun means making someone else suffer). I don't mind competition, but when the only thing that matters is winning regardless of uneven odds or cheats, then it's gone too far.
I've enjoyed FO3 myself, but I'm assuming you're talking about New Vegas: how is it? (I don't have the power myself to run it.)
That I agree with...
But how does one make death have a meaningful penalty without making the game unplayable (or at least too frustrating for all but the most hc players)?
I wouldn't call WoW a role playing game. It has a lot more in common with a FPS than a RPG.
Let's assume that "global warming" isn't totally bad. Most of the great plains region of NA is one good drought away from becoming a desert.
A lot of my fellow canadians think that a warmer world is to benefit Canada, but I imagine that with more arable land, a more welcoming climate, and lots of unused resources, a starving population ten times our size fleeing desertification of their once great plains would be quite the threat.
Even if Canada becomes an Eden, who says canadians will be the ones to enjoy it?
Or that Russia will hold Siberia from a billion or more chinese fleeing an expanding Gobi?
This increased incentive for warfare makes all the gains of global warming a loss.
This is why I don't play RTS or FPS.
That my nation would "want to establish a sort of deniability" about ethnic cleansing bugs me even more.