when I was in high school, a bunch of us started referring to ourselves as freaks. It became a badge of pride to be a freak. If real freaks were offended by that, well, that's just too bad.
Something similar has happened in nerd circles since the rise of the internet and mainstreaming of video games. You can be offended by it, or you can wear the badge with pride. How you handle it is up to you, but many of us out here are quite proud to call ourselves nerds, and have better things to do with our time than worry about closet cases crying themselves to sleep at night.
If you want to stand up for morals, do so. But please eat as your body needs to. That includes animal products. Choose them for moral principles if you like (free range eggs, perhaps).
I have come to the conclusion that while you can stand up and walk around and survive without meat, it's *not* good for you. And until I meet people that have passed the "twelve year wall" as vegetarians, or a much shorter span for vegans, and done so in good health, then I have to say the evidence in my own experience is conclusive. We need meat.
Actually, I know many vegetarians. I don't know any that have made it past the "twelve year wall" though. They get to that point, and suddenly food isn't interesting to them, they start feeling like crap, and they end up eating meat again.
The fact is (well, I believe it is, anyway), we *do* need to eat meat. Maybe not all the time, maybe not a lot, but we are built to be omnivores, not carnivores, and not herbivores.
Though if you eat eggs, you are ahead of the game a bit. Veganism is the worst. Seems like every vegan I know ends up with crazy intestinal problems before long.
I applaud moral convictions. But if you want to be in tune with nature, I suggest being in tune with your own nature first. There is nothing immoral about eating food we are built to eat, just like it's not immoral for a Tiger to eat a Gazelle.
However, if you want to take a stand against factory farming, which I whole heartedly applaud, that's great. Eat free range.
Re:The awesome power of Pykrete!
on
How Ice Melts
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· Score: 1
My old home in maine used to have a shingle mill behind it, so when we moved in, there was several feet of sawdust covering the ground for part of our large backyard.
One July a year or two after we moved in, I was digging around amusing myself, and to my surprise, there was a chunk of ice about six inches down. Apparently a little "stream" (more like a seasonal rivulet) had frozen the previous winter and hadn't gotten around to melting yet.
Since we had been solidly above freezing for more than 3 months, I was pretty impressed.
he stated very few people believe in chi. I put forth an example of a relatively popular form of alternative medicine as a counter arguement.
All I'm saying is, his statement makes it sound like the entire eastern martial art and spiritual community has abandoned thousands of years of tradition and whole heartedly embraced western scientific explanations for all of their formerly "mystical" powers. While I definitely agree that the vast majority of martial arts features can be explained by "mere" physical means, not all can (yet), and there are still plenty of practitioners of all ability levels that DO believe in a more spiritual aspect to martial arts and Qigong. Not "very few".
I never said he was wrong for believing what he believes.. to be perfectly frank, it sounds like he and I think exactly the same way about the matter. I just don't pretend that everyone else sees it like me.
I don't want to come off as unsympathetic to what you are saying... I'm very sympathetic, and my own tai chi teacher was very good at incorporating the physical aspects of tai chi into our lessons for us.. he was a student of Chen's, so it stands to reason.
However, your belief does not explain reikki. Maybe reikki doesn't work, but to those who believe it does, and there are a lot of them, your personal belief doesn't hold water.
I wouldn't be so sure. I would wager the primary heat loss method is acheived via condensation on the pipe being evaporated continually. Simply blowing air over a dry coil at a low Delta T to room temp and at a relatively low air velocity isn't going to do much unless it's blowing right on you, and that would be only marginally more effective than the fan itself.
I'll admit I'm speculating, but that's how it seems to me.
evaporative cooling is great, as long as you aren't jacking up your indoor humidity levels which can cause all kinds of nastiness like mold that can kill you or get your building condemned.
If you do this in a non-arid climate, you're asking for trouble, IMHO.
First off, there is nothing relative about standard of living. You can take a relativistic stance, but I'm sorry, if you are starving in africa or living in a slum in america, those are two very, very different things. A good size chunk of the population of this world would chop off their right arm to have the slum standard of living. That is what I consider to be unsustainable.
Secondly, none of this is "for" the betterment of man. I just think it will tend to work out that way, regardless of what this is "for".
Thirdly, you hit exactly on how the mechanism works in my mind; when china's people grow their economy to a point where they exceed a level that other large populations are living at, then transference will occur again. But if this happens, that means that china's standard of living has increased, and the business is moving on to "greener pastures" for their perspective, for the cycle to start all over again; this is *GOOD*.
In my mind, it's kind of like seeding a field. business moves into an area to exploit cheap labor. In doing so, they bring some money and developement to the area. Eventually those wages rise, workers get organized, politicians want a bigger slice of the pie.. more wealth is directed at the workers over time, through one mechanism or another. When too much is going to the workers, then the business moves elsewhere.
however, the wealth has already been siphoned and used to build up from poverty. Now it could just crash again, but I think in at least some proportion of this cycle, it's the leg up a populace needs to then move ahead on their own steam.
I am ABSOLUTELY NOT saying it's all sunshine and roses. There are lots of problems with how it actually works and those do need to be watched and addressed. However, ultimately I do think it works out better for the poor, and the world as a whole.
If want to compete,, really, there are only a few options:
1. make stuff better, at a comparable price. 2. make stuff cheaper. 3. artificially raise the price of everything else, so our stuff can compete
3 is a band aid on a sucking chest wound, and also creates smuggling markets. 1 would be really, really nice, but the only way I see to do that is reducing labor through automation, which doesn't address the job problem (unless you work in robotics;)) 2 is the easiest, but hardest to swallow. You want jobs to come back to america? Then we need to work for less. We need to downgrade our standard of living. It's really the only way it works long term, unless we can consistently pioneer methods of making stuff better at a comparable price to cheap labor.
We don't have to live like africans to make it work, but we can't just live like we are entitled to wages that amount to a king's ransom worldwide and expect it to be sustainable. We are not "entitled" to live like kings. We were lucky enough to do so for quite awhile, but eventually, the swing goes back the other way and all of our whining isn't going to change it.. so I'd be prepared, if possible.
I agree, and in no way do I think corporations are doing anything out of a sense of social justice or the like. I just think that as economic benefit becomes more balanced, than the world becomes more stable.
Simply put, inequity causes conflict and revolution. Prosperity, on the other hand, can propel change of quite a different kind. The prosperity china is shooting for will not be sustained by sweat shops. it requires highly educated, motivated people. I don't think such people will remain under tyranny for long, or tyranny that allows such growth will remain tyranny for long.
In basic terms, I don't think a top heavy world power structure such as we see now with the USA at the top of the heap and everyone else far below can last long. We've enjoy such a position for quite awhile now, but it's not sustainable in the long run. I am concerned with our poor.. but it's nothing like it is in Africa, or in parts of China even.
So I guess I'm not as concerned with us having to downgrade our standard of living a bit in the long run, if it means a more stable world, and I think it does. It's not nice, or fun, but neither is going to war to defend a standard of living that is relatively unnecessary, and I do think things will head in that direction if something doesn't give.
Corporations can do what they will, and they will, but it doesn't affect the way things work. People start at point Y and want more from there. When they finally want too much, business shifts to other people more hungry or desperate. Ultimately, the only way to fight this is for the world to be on relatively equal footing, and things like outsourcing are the mechanism that will eventually bring that to bear.
But it does mean that we cannot live like kings while substantial populations starve. I personally think that's good, even if there are downsides involved, such as workers being horribly exploited in the name of profits by being "allowed" to work in unnecesarily dangerous environments. There needs to be some policing of such things, IMHO, but the basic mechanism I think is sound. And I'm not afraid to live more frugally for it.
I personally think it's important to note that the chinese government is changing. It's certainly not the same beast it was twenty years ago, it's slowly opening up, and I personally think this is due to its embracing of a role that is more of a player in the world at large. In this case, via capitalistic practices involving trade with other countries.
I think that china will find with time, that educated people make better assets, but unfortunately for them, educated people will also eventually change their system. They are on a one-way ride away from their roots, for the better, in my opinion.
Once they have something to lose, economic pressure can be used. Also, people with something to lose are less likely to fall in line behind bloodthirsty tyrants who promise something better.. they already have something pretty decent.
I'm not a sociologist or an economist or anything of the sort.. but in short, I think that helping china achieve prosperity is the surest way to make sure it changes for the better over time. And I think that's good for us here in the US, as well. Maybe not this year, but ultimately it will be good for world stability and things will balance out.
But keeping a country poor and desperate has never changed anything. See Castro, Hussein, Iran, North Korea for the most recent examples.
that's funny, cause I think that completely ignoring context in order to slur someone you don't agree with is more indicative of zombielike behaviour than calling someone on it would be.
1. Used "groupthink" in a sentence. 2. Thinks Gore bragging about having voted to fund the growth of the internet is somehow "damning" or "Gore having claimed to invented the internet".
At the town level, it happens all the time. If it doesn't, then your town is not very active. I don't know if you live in a rural area or not, but out here people give a shit, and they go to town meetings, and they make choices for their community. Choices like, "we want broadband and no one is bringing it to us".
I'm not saying this is perfectly scalable to larger populations. but on the scale the article was discussing, it works great.
at this level, substitute "community" for government. Sound better?
At larger scales, the debatability of all this goes up. But for a small community? Direct involvement of the community in question? Democratic decisionmaking about what is in the best interest of said community? That is freedom, my friend, and nothing else.
I would think communities of people banding together to decide what is in their own best interest and implementing it, if private offerrings are not currently adequate for their needs, would be the absolute hallmark of free market economics.
"If you don't do it or offer it for us for terms we can accept, we'll do it ourselves and screw you."
This is grassroots economic activism man, you should be applauding.
actually, you can't make a statement like that at all. Heart disease is a major killer here in a america, and car accidents are big too. Exactly how big do you think unapproved drug problems would really be? Cause it would have to be HUGE to compare.
I agree with everything you said except the motor vehicle deal. You can label drugs as FDA approved or not and let people make choices that affect them, or let people choose doctors to make educated choices about them.
However, labelling cars is not helpful and it is a serious public health risk to have unqualified drivers on the road.
Because one viewpoint, that government should not restrict adult's private behaviour unless they are harming someone else, still allows people with more rigid moral doctrines to live their lives unaffected; they simply can't have the government prefilter reality for them, they have to actually do it themselves, for themselves and their families, which is possible.
The other viewpoint is not at all tolerant of the previous, because if government does prefilter ideas and content for adults, I no longer have a choice.
That is the basis of superiority for the get the government out of the action arguement. I can watch porn in my bedroom without it affecting you, but you can't have porn banned without it affecting me.
well I don't know what happened to your iMac, but I have to say while upgrading might be hard on this new mac mini, judging by what I've seen from Mac it will run seamlessly until long after it's too weak to run any current program or OS and long after the ports on it no longer fit whatever cables and protocols are in use in the future. In short, hardware failure is nearly impossible on macs from what I've seen, and I've owned more than a few.
Now 3-4 years from now when you really need to upgrade just to run OS11, or you really need something with an ethernet 3 port, yeah, you can't upgrade easily and that's a problem. However, I'm in the market right now for a cheap, reliable, secure first computer for my grandmother to use and you know what I'm going for? Mac Mini, all the way, just as soon as I hear some feedback saying it's not going t succumb to the problems the cube did.
Why? Because I know she'll be able to do what she wants without fear of viruses, the price point is right for a starter computer, and she'll be able to do anything she wants on OSX on it for at least a few years to come. Her needs aren't high. Email, web surfing, word processing, chat, maybe some geneological research. And that's who the mini is trying to reach, not a computer professional, but all the common users out there tired of hearing about viruses and who want a cheap entry to the computing world.
Frankly, for those users I don't see a more attractive package. I'm certainly not going to be very successful teaching my grandmother how to use a firewall and anti virus program effectively, downloading critical updates on a 56k modem.. she'd throw it out the window.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe the judge specified he would have to serve at least 70% of his jail term.
when I was in high school, a bunch of us started referring to ourselves as freaks. It became a badge of pride to be a freak. If real freaks were offended by that, well, that's just too bad.
Something similar has happened in nerd circles since the rise of the internet and mainstreaming of video games. You can be offended by it, or you can wear the badge with pride. How you handle it is up to you, but many of us out here are quite proud to call ourselves nerds, and have better things to do with our time than worry about closet cases crying themselves to sleep at night.
before you hurt yourself.
Every Vegan I've met.. without exception.. ends up with serious intenstinal and food allergy problems.
http://chetday.com/vegetarianarticles.htm
If you want to stand up for morals, do so. But please eat as your body needs to. That includes animal products. Choose them for moral principles if you like (free range eggs, perhaps).
I have come to the conclusion that while you can stand up and walk around and survive without meat, it's *not* good for you. And until I meet people that have passed the "twelve year wall" as vegetarians, or a much shorter span for vegans, and done so in good health, then I have to say the evidence in my own experience is conclusive. We need meat.
Actually, I know many vegetarians. I don't know any that have made it past the "twelve year wall" though. They get to that point, and suddenly food isn't interesting to them, they start feeling like crap, and they end up eating meat again.
The fact is (well, I believe it is, anyway), we *do* need to eat meat. Maybe not all the time, maybe not a lot, but we are built to be omnivores, not carnivores, and not herbivores.
Though if you eat eggs, you are ahead of the game a bit. Veganism is the worst. Seems like every vegan I know ends up with crazy intestinal problems before long.
I applaud moral convictions. But if you want to be in tune with nature, I suggest being in tune with your own nature first. There is nothing immoral about eating food we are built to eat, just like it's not immoral for a Tiger to eat a Gazelle.
However, if you want to take a stand against factory farming, which I whole heartedly applaud, that's great. Eat free range.
My old home in maine used to have a shingle mill behind it, so when we moved in, there was several feet of sawdust covering the ground for part of our large backyard.
One July a year or two after we moved in, I was digging around amusing myself, and to my surprise, there was a chunk of ice about six inches down. Apparently a little "stream" (more like a seasonal rivulet) had frozen the previous winter and hadn't gotten around to melting yet.
Since we had been solidly above freezing for more than 3 months, I was pretty impressed.
you're right, I wasn't very clear. I meant to post that in the last response but I had already hit "submit" lol..
he stated very few people believe in chi. I put forth an example of a relatively popular form of alternative medicine as a counter arguement.
All I'm saying is, his statement makes it sound like the entire eastern martial art and spiritual community has abandoned thousands of years of tradition and whole heartedly embraced western scientific explanations for all of their formerly "mystical" powers. While I definitely agree that the vast majority of martial arts features can be explained by "mere" physical means, not all can (yet), and there are still plenty of practitioners of all ability levels that DO believe in a more spiritual aspect to martial arts and Qigong. Not "very few".
I never said he was wrong for believing what he believes.. to be perfectly frank, it sounds like he and I think exactly the same way about the matter. I just don't pretend that everyone else sees it like me.
I don't want to come off as unsympathetic to what you are saying... I'm very sympathetic, and my own tai chi teacher was very good at incorporating the physical aspects of tai chi into our lessons for us.. he was a student of Chen's, so it stands to reason.
However, your belief does not explain reikki. Maybe reikki doesn't work, but to those who believe it does, and there are a lot of them, your personal belief doesn't hold water.
I wouldn't be so sure. I would wager the primary heat loss method is acheived via condensation on the pipe being evaporated continually. Simply blowing air over a dry coil at a low Delta T to room temp and at a relatively low air velocity isn't going to do much unless it's blowing right on you, and that would be only marginally more effective than the fan itself.
I'll admit I'm speculating, but that's how it seems to me.
evaporative cooling is great, as long as you aren't jacking up your indoor humidity levels which can cause all kinds of nastiness like mold that can kill you or get your building condemned.
If you do this in a non-arid climate, you're asking for trouble, IMHO.
First off, there is nothing relative about standard of living. You can take a relativistic stance, but I'm sorry, if you are starving in africa or living in a slum in america, those are two very, very different things. A good size chunk of the population of this world would chop off their right arm to have the slum standard of living. That is what I consider to be unsustainable.
;))
Secondly, none of this is "for" the betterment of man. I just think it will tend to work out that way, regardless of what this is "for".
Thirdly, you hit exactly on how the mechanism works in my mind; when china's people grow their economy to a point where they exceed a level that other large populations are living at, then transference will occur again. But if this happens, that means that china's standard of living has increased, and the business is moving on to "greener pastures" for their perspective, for the cycle to start all over again; this is *GOOD*.
In my mind, it's kind of like seeding a field. business moves into an area to exploit cheap labor. In doing so, they bring some money and developement to the area. Eventually those wages rise, workers get organized, politicians want a bigger slice of the pie.. more wealth is directed at the workers over time, through one mechanism or another. When too much is going to the workers, then the business moves elsewhere.
however, the wealth has already been siphoned and used to build up from poverty. Now it could just crash again, but I think in at least some proportion of this cycle, it's the leg up a populace needs to then move ahead on their own steam.
I am ABSOLUTELY NOT saying it's all sunshine and roses. There are lots of problems with how it actually works and those do need to be watched and addressed. However, ultimately I do think it works out better for the poor, and the world as a whole.
If want to compete,, really, there are only a few options:
1. make stuff better, at a comparable price.
2. make stuff cheaper.
3. artificially raise the price of everything else, so our stuff can compete
3 is a band aid on a sucking chest wound, and also creates smuggling markets.
1 would be really, really nice, but the only way I see to do that is reducing labor through automation, which doesn't address the job problem (unless you work in robotics
2 is the easiest, but hardest to swallow. You want jobs to come back to america? Then we need to work for less. We need to downgrade our standard of living. It's really the only way it works long term, unless we can consistently pioneer methods of making stuff better at a comparable price to cheap labor.
We don't have to live like africans to make it work, but we can't just live like we are entitled to wages that amount to a king's ransom worldwide and expect it to be sustainable. We are not "entitled" to live like kings. We were lucky enough to do so for quite awhile, but eventually, the swing goes back the other way and all of our whining isn't going to change it.. so I'd be prepared, if possible.
I agree, and in no way do I think corporations are doing anything out of a sense of social justice or the like. I just think that as economic benefit becomes more balanced, than the world becomes more stable.
Simply put, inequity causes conflict and revolution. Prosperity, on the other hand, can propel change of quite a different kind. The prosperity china is shooting for will not be sustained by sweat shops. it requires highly educated, motivated people. I don't think such people will remain under tyranny for long, or tyranny that allows such growth will remain tyranny for long.
In basic terms, I don't think a top heavy world power structure such as we see now with the USA at the top of the heap and everyone else far below can last long. We've enjoy such a position for quite awhile now, but it's not sustainable in the long run. I am concerned with our poor.. but it's nothing like it is in Africa, or in parts of China even.
So I guess I'm not as concerned with us having to downgrade our standard of living a bit in the long run, if it means a more stable world, and I think it does. It's not nice, or fun, but neither is going to war to defend a standard of living that is relatively unnecessary, and I do think things will head in that direction if something doesn't give.
Corporations can do what they will, and they will, but it doesn't affect the way things work. People start at point Y and want more from there. When they finally want too much, business shifts to other people more hungry or desperate. Ultimately, the only way to fight this is for the world to be on relatively equal footing, and things like outsourcing are the mechanism that will eventually bring that to bear.
But it does mean that we cannot live like kings while substantial populations starve. I personally think that's good, even if there are downsides involved, such as workers being horribly exploited in the name of profits by being "allowed" to work in unnecesarily dangerous environments. There needs to be some policing of such things, IMHO, but the basic mechanism I think is sound. And I'm not afraid to live more frugally for it.
I personally think it's important to note that the chinese government is changing. It's certainly not the same beast it was twenty years ago, it's slowly opening up, and I personally think this is due to its embracing of a role that is more of a player in the world at large. In this case, via capitalistic practices involving trade with other countries.
I think that china will find with time, that educated people make better assets, but unfortunately for them, educated people will also eventually change their system. They are on a one-way ride away from their roots, for the better, in my opinion.
Once they have something to lose, economic pressure can be used. Also, people with something to lose are less likely to fall in line behind bloodthirsty tyrants who promise something better.. they already have something pretty decent.
I'm not a sociologist or an economist or anything of the sort.. but in short, I think that helping china achieve prosperity is the surest way to make sure it changes for the better over time. And I think that's good for us here in the US, as well. Maybe not this year, but ultimately it will be good for world stability and things will balance out.
But keeping a country poor and desperate has never changed anything. See Castro, Hussein, Iran, North Korea for the most recent examples.
that's funny, cause I think that completely ignoring context in order to slur someone you don't agree with is more indicative of zombielike behaviour than calling someone on it would be.
1. Used "groupthink" in a sentence.
2. Thinks Gore bragging about having voted to fund the growth of the internet is somehow "damning" or "Gore having claimed to invented the internet".
We have ourselves a Fox News Zombie!
At the town level, it happens all the time. If it doesn't, then your town is not very active. I don't know if you live in a rural area or not, but out here people give a shit, and they go to town meetings, and they make choices for their community. Choices like, "we want broadband and no one is bringing it to us".
I'm not saying this is perfectly scalable to larger populations. but on the scale the article was discussing, it works great.
at this level, substitute "community" for government. Sound better?
At larger scales, the debatability of all this goes up. But for a small community? Direct involvement of the community in question? Democratic decisionmaking about what is in the best interest of said community? That is freedom, my friend, and nothing else.
I would think communities of people banding together to decide what is in their own best interest and implementing it, if private offerrings are not currently adequate for their needs, would be the absolute hallmark of free market economics.
"If you don't do it or offer it for us for terms we can accept, we'll do it ourselves and screw you."
This is grassroots economic activism man, you should be applauding.
really? eye tests aren't a good idea? basic understanding of traffic laws isn't useful?
Obviously it's something that can be abused. Address the abuse, don't throw out a very necessary component for public safety.
actually, you can't make a statement like that at all. Heart disease is a major killer here in a america, and car accidents are big too. Exactly how big do you think unapproved drug problems would really be? Cause it would have to be HUGE to compare.
The civil rights movement trampled on state's rights too. Sometimes state's rights are not sacrosanct.
I agree with everything you said except the motor vehicle deal. You can label drugs as FDA approved or not and let people make choices that affect them, or let people choose doctors to make educated choices about them.
However, labelling cars is not helpful and it is a serious public health risk to have unqualified drivers on the road.
Because one viewpoint, that government should not restrict adult's private behaviour unless they are harming someone else, still allows people with more rigid moral doctrines to live their lives unaffected; they simply can't have the government prefilter reality for them, they have to actually do it themselves, for themselves and their families, which is possible.
The other viewpoint is not at all tolerant of the previous, because if government does prefilter ideas and content for adults, I no longer have a choice.
That is the basis of superiority for the get the government out of the action arguement. I can watch porn in my bedroom without it affecting you, but you can't have porn banned without it affecting me.
well I don't know what happened to your iMac, but I have to say while upgrading might be hard on this new mac mini, judging by what I've seen from Mac it will run seamlessly until long after it's too weak to run any current program or OS and long after the ports on it no longer fit whatever cables and protocols are in use in the future. In short, hardware failure is nearly impossible on macs from what I've seen, and I've owned more than a few.
Now 3-4 years from now when you really need to upgrade just to run OS11, or you really need something with an ethernet 3 port, yeah, you can't upgrade easily and that's a problem. However, I'm in the market right now for a cheap, reliable, secure first computer for my grandmother to use and you know what I'm going for? Mac Mini, all the way, just as soon as I hear some feedback saying it's not going t succumb to the problems the cube did.
Why? Because I know she'll be able to do what she wants without fear of viruses, the price point is right for a starter computer, and she'll be able to do anything she wants on OSX on it for at least a few years to come. Her needs aren't high. Email, web surfing, word processing, chat, maybe some geneological research. And that's who the mini is trying to reach, not a computer professional, but all the common users out there tired of hearing about viruses and who want a cheap entry to the computing world.
Frankly, for those users I don't see a more attractive package. I'm certainly not going to be very successful teaching my grandmother how to use a firewall and anti virus program effectively, downloading critical updates on a 56k modem.. she'd throw it out the window.
actually, in your example it would. All that insurance money would flow into actual usage in things that actually benefit regular people.