Yeah, and wolves are so much bigger than all of their prey too.
I'm not sure that the idea that they prey on the whales is valid. It could just as easily be territorialism or sheer stupidity.
The whales, however, are not likely to be doing the preying on something that big though. Most whales are filter feeders...and basically toothless. There's no way they could do anything with something that large. Frankly if there's any predatory relationship between the two, the squid doing the preying makes more sense to me.
Re:I doubt even TV ads work anymore...
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Spam Doesn't Work?
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· Score: 1
If TV ads did work there would not be such a drive to develop new advertising gimmicks such as the 'pop-up' ads beind devised for network television. When people can afford things and they want specific items, they research and buy them. I am truly of the opinion that even those lacking the most basic common sense are learning to become smart consumers; and advertising cannot attract the attention of smart, cost- (and yes maybe even brand-) conscious consumers.
I so very much wish you were right, but I seriously doubt that you are. 40 years ago, if you asked americans what they thought "comfort" food was, they'd answer things like mashed potatoes and gravy, "mom's" casserole, PB&J sandwiches, etc. Now they answer with things like Kraft macaroni and cheese, Burger King burger and fries, etc. Watch beverage consumption trends in response to advertising campaigns. Sprite was not a real big seller 15 years ago. Do you really think people's tastes have changed, or just the associations that they have with the product brand?
Victoria's Secret doesn't have great clothing or lingerie. Many many designer brands are much nicer and higher quality, yet VS has a virtual monopoly on the mindshare of the term lingerie. I don't believe for a second that's for any reason other than very sexy advertising. Their catalogs, by the way, are nothing more than highly specialized ads. Notice that the models and their poses are much more integral to the layout than the clothing itself. They aren't posed to maximize the view of the clothing; they're posed to maximize your ability to imagine the wearer in your bed or to at least imagine the wearer without the piece of clothing on. Ordering the piece of lingerie isn't an act of ordering the clothing item, it's a bid at the opportunity to have something as sexy as what you saw in your own posession. If you're "lucky" enough to be dating or married to a model who's prone to striking physically improbable and uncomfortable poses, it might even work...
I suspect that advertising is an order of magnitude more powerful than any other business tool in terms of maximizing sales...except of course the use of the government to bypass the market and obtain a mandated monopoly or regulatory competitive advantage.
4. Some of the substantiations, such as that claiming that one's body sees all carbohydrates as sugars (page 5), is imprecise
Umm, so what? There's a world of difference between being imprecise and being fundamentally incorrect. Sure insoluble fiber is a carb and doesn't get seen by the body as anything. Oligosacharrides and some other carb molecules are digested very slowly, only with the help of bacteria or not at all. Ordinary dietary carbs (the ones ordinary people think of as carbs) are, in fact, all seen by the body as sugars. The article's in the NYT for chrissakes not in the AJCN!
6. This quote is especially choice: "...the public-health authorities may indeed have a problem on their hands. Once they took their leap of faith and settled on the low-fat dietary dogma 25 years ago, they left little room for contradictory evidence or a change of opinion, should such a change be necessary to keep up with the science" (page 7). It only seems like "contradictory evidence or a change of opinion" if you're outside the research community. This is one research community that is not monolithic
That's not even a point. The author wasn't referring to the research community so it doesn't matter that the research community isn't monolithic. The author specifically referred to "public-health authorities." If that were the same as the research community, there probably wouldn't be a problem. As it stands however, public-health authorities refers to the decidedly non-scientific people making public-health policy choices in a non-scientific fashion.
So while calorie balance is the ultimate arbiter, it is far from the whole story. Possible issues include:
One big issue that I think you missed is nutrient starvation. Most food in the standard american diet is really only a good source of calories and sodium. The food is processed until there's virtually nothing left. Hybridization, genetic engineering, shipping, and declining soil fertility are also combining to make the raw material foods less nutritious than they used to be. I'm convinced that we crave food after our caloric needs have ben met partly because our other needs have not been met.
-personal differences. If you are a Pima Indian, you have a 50% chance of diabetes by age 30 if you eat a typical American diet.
You're completely right. Unfortunately, the Pima aren't unique...they're only the most shocking example. The numbers are slightly lower but the epidemic is the same for the rest of the population of the US too...especially among certain ethnic populations.
Unfortunately none of this should be particularly mysterious. Much of what we're seeing was predicted and explained by a scientist in the 1930s. His work had many many shortcomings, but the evidence and conclusions should have been compelling enough to drive much more research than it ultimately did. Sad but true.
I'm sorry, but you're simply wrong. The only tissue in the body which requires either glucose or ketones for fuel is the brain. The muscles and other organs are all fully capable of directly burning short-chain fatty acids. That's also what all the rage about MCTs (medium-chain triglycerides) is. They burn as readily as carbohydrates do.
As for the ketones, they're hardly nasty. During ketosis, when the body is starved for glucose, ketones are able to supply most of the energy needs of the brain. The remaining energy needs still need to be supplied by glucose. That glucose can be supplied (even in the complete absence of dietary carbohydrates) by a combination of the glycerin backbone of the fatty acid molecules being converted to glucose as well as conversion of certain amino acids to glucose.
You're right that ketosis is a fairly inefficient method of creating glucose. You're wrong, however, that fat is an inefficient muscle fuel. You're also wrong that glycogen is the only muscle fuel.
I'm no meteorologist, but it seems to me that there's a world of difference between conditions that produce clouds and conditions that cause clouds to precipitate out. Rising warm air may build a cloud, but without a coincident drop in temperature or air pressure, I don't see how that could translate to more rain in the cities. In fact, I'd suspect the heat island would reduce rain in the cities and increase rain outside of the cities.
Their model seems primarily to be: we noticed that this condition exists and this other condition exists too; perhaps through some mysterious not-precisely-known interaction of the one is causing the other.
The fact that rainfall is presumably (I'm not sure the observation is meaningful without comparative historical data) greater in the cities as well as downwind from the cities suggests another causative factor to me. The already posited airborn particulate output of cities seems to be a much stronger explanation in my opinion.
The actual innovator of a concept or technology is almost never credited for it. Rather, it's the second-tier opportunist that takes the work and creativity of the innovator and reinvigorates it by repositioning it within the market or refining it in some way.
Sometimes it's because of the lack of savvy or capital posessed by the true innovator; other times it's that the innovator was operating just outside the realm of either technical practicality or social acceptability.
The true genius of Microsoft was building a business model around that oft-missed truth.
Regardless, this is clearly fascinating. Although in my mind it raises the question of why that species has not advanced significantly more in all this time. I realize the article states that the researchers will look for differences in modern behavior, but my guess is that their methods are still basically the same.
Evolution doesn't just happen. Life doesn't move inexorably toward "higher" forms. Life forms only evolve when there is environmental pressure to do so. If there weren't any huge challenges to the chimps' survival in that time that would have required intellectual adaptation, there's no reason that they would evolve. We, however, presumably had certain survival pressures that favored complex social interaction and abstract communication...like LAN gaming parties and slashdot comments.
If I could mod either of you up, I would. Excellent insights.
Nutrition and medicine are excellent examples of "science" ruled by faith rather than by reason. Even a relatively cursory check into the actual study results on the subject of cholesterol and heart disease reveals radically different experimental results than the conclusions that are generally stated by the researchers. Study after study has shown no evidence of a causal relationship (between cholesterol and heart disease), but since that goes directly against the assumptions of the scientific community, the authors invariably summarize with conclusions that don't match the study at all.
It's nothing short of amazing...
Global warming impact?
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Lunar Power
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· Score: 1
I don't get too worked up about global warming from fossil fuel burning because it seems to me that the worst case scenario is that we return the earth to a state similar to what it once was...much more tropical than now. However, if we begin piping additional energy into this closed system, I would think we would get some serious global warming. We would be increasing the earth's absorptive surface area while leaving it's radiative surface area the same. That doesn't strike anybody else as a generally bad idea?
This isn't just a phenomenon created by the institutions of the web (i.e. the link based search engine rankings, cross-linking, contextual linking, and purchased ad and link real-estate).
I believe there is also a deeply psychological phenomenon that is exacerbated by the anonymity of the web. Specifically, in the real world we can go into a shop and see the merchandise, look into the eyes of the staff, see the condition of the store, etc. These things foster an ability to trust both the product and the business because we've exprerienced it firsthand and have taken in clues as to the quality and trustworthiness of the products and the people. On the web, however, that function is limited to the professionalism of the interface and the name recognition/popularity/pervasiveness of the company.
Perhaps the answer for companies that aren't in the forefront on the web is to develop relationships with online communities that might be related to their products, make greater use of customer testimonials and provide better descriptions and actual quality photographs of merchandise.
It has to do with cloning because it suggests that animals raised in captivity can still exhibit instinctive behaviors...like successful rearing of young.
So if we use cloning to bring back species that are currently extinct, this suggests we may also be successful in re-introducing the cloned individuals to the wild. Otherwise they could only ever be zoo curiosities.
What happened to all the hit counters?!? You wouldn't believe how often I visit a website and wonder, "How many people have come here before me?" It used to be that all I had to do was scroll down... Now, however, I'm stymied!
I wasn't saying that sugar was linked to osteoporosis rates, although, in re-reading my post, I guess I can see where you might have interpreted it that way. I meant to link the osteoporosis rate to the nutrient density of the current standard american diet. While sugar may indirectly play a role in that by increasing dietary calories without increasing other nutrients, I would in no way try to claim that sugar is directly responsible for osteoporosis.
While sodium may indeed play a role in osteoporosis as well, I don't think that the effects of the significant decline in the consumption of certain vitamins and minerals can be discounted. For instance, vitamin D was much more commonly consumed via dietary animal fats and supplemental cod liver oil. People were also much more regularly exposed to the sun resulting in greater vitamin D synthesis. Their diets were generally much richer in calcium (although its role in osteoporosis is greatly exaggerated) as well as other bone building minerals like magnesium and boron supplied by rustic greens, dairy, bone broths, nuts, whole grains etc.
On the issue of salt too, its also worth noting that the amounts of salt that people used to consume are, I think, sometimes underestimated. While our consumption of processed foods is indeed shamefully high, the foods of 100 or more years ago often used salt both as one of the only means of preservation as well as one of the only economical ways of making food taste better. Spices, herbs and various other condiments were not as readily available to many as they are today.
Of course, it's not all diet either. People used to have a much greater degree of physical activity than most people do these days. Multiple studies have shown that excercise helps to minimize bone loss...whether you're in space or the nursing home.
Hope that clears up what I was trying to communicate in my first post.
supernova87a commented: Given these choices, in the absence of information, isn't it more logical to bet on the second? Isn't it safer to assume the worst case scenario? I.e. let's stop doing the things that people suggest may be harming the environment, because if they actually do, we'll be screwed in 50 years? And if they're not harming the environment, we did no harm anyway?
Do some people not understand this logic??
I understand the logic, but I think your assumptions ignore a significant point: making emissions lowering changes is not a neutral proposition as you assume. It costs money and diverts productivity away from other things. It increases the cost of energy which has a net depressive effect on all sectors of every economy.
It's like saving money for an imagined eventuality when you have actual bills to pay. If the eventuality never materializes, you could reassure yourself that it doesn't matter since you've managed to save some money and maybe earn some interest. However, it ignores the fact that in the meantime you've accrued late fees on your bills, shot your credit rating to hell and had your utilities shut off.
You're right. The arrogance of those who choose to make proxied value judgements of others circumstances is only matched by those who choose to make world altering changes whose long-term impact they can barely glimpse.
The issue isn't that they are choosing to do something like this. The issue is that we apply the frenzied pace of our ridiculously brief lives to the impact analysis of potentially huge alterations of nature. Something as radical as attempting to eradicate an entire species should be studied intensively for a generation or more before being considered. It's particularly disconcerting when the reason for doing so is the admittedly large impact of the fly on the social and natural ecosystems of an entire region. Hello? If the fly's presence has an impact of that magnitude, how can we presume to guess the impact of its sudden disappearance?
Messing with things at the level of mammals and reptiles isn't as dangerous as messing with insects and microbes or keystone food plants such as grasses and algaes. These things form the very foundations of ecosystems. Changing them or eliminating them has unavoidable consequences, both direct and indirect, that are not knowable given the current or any forseeable state of human science.
We are not omniscient. We just choose to behave as if we are...
Not to mention that in 1900 our diets contained much more concentrated sources of the nutrients that help our bodies to both modulate infections and re-mineralize dental caries. Neither of these phenomena is really recognized by the current medical or dental establishment, yet both exist. This is also tightly coupled to the exploding rates of osteoporosis...it's not as simple as chewing a nummy viactive calcium chew or popping a pill...
We also have less well-developed teeth now than we once did for the same reasons mentioned above. This also contributes to decay since we have poorer enamel and crooked, crowded teeth that are predisposed to harboring food and bacteria.
Get a copy of the somewhat dated but still invaluable "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" by Dr Weston A. Price...but check your biases at the front cover if you're a vegetarian...
Just FYI, people play around with "explosive hydrogen gas" for lots of reasons in lots of places. You'll find people playing with hydrogen in every plant which manufactures vegetable shortening from oil, because hydrogenating the oil is part of the process to allow it to solidify at room temperature. Ditto every plant which manufactures nitrogen fertilizers (which starts with fixation via the Haber process, N2 + 3 H2 -> 2 NH3).
Wow! I'm sure there are some legitimate uses of hydrogen, but as a short list it looks like when people play around with hydrogen, bad things happen. There is hardly a more toxic foodstuff foisted on the unsuspecting public than hydrogenated vegetable oils. There is hardly an agricultural innovation that can match the nutritionally, economically, and environmentally destructive impact of the advent of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. (no sarcasm intended)
I'd never thought about it before, but maybe hydrogen IS scary. (full sarcasm intended)
I don't understand how getting a license from "labels" screws the artist. This is really fuzzy thinking, IMO.
If the artist used a major label, one of three things happened: they were savvy and negotiated a very nice deal when they CHOSE to sell all or most of the rights to their music to the label OR they were naive and will hopefully chose better next time OR the artists' work has no inherent value and is only valuable due to the marketing muscle of the label (see NSync, 98 Degrees, Jessica Simpson, etc, etc, etc).
If the artist used an independent label, they are probably getting their fair share already. If not, they were probably really really naive and will hopefully chose better next time.
Finally, don't ask me to feel sorry for instant multi-millionaire teens and barely adults who are being prevented from becoming bigger instant multi-millionaires by the oppressive music industry. The real artists are doing their work in the independent arena where they retain control. When and if they've proven their appeal there, they can and do exercise the deserved clout when and if they decide to sell themselves and their work to a major label. Ani DiFranco has not only showed how well this can be done when there's truly golden talent involved, but she has also created the machinery to help others with less ambition, savvy or talent to do the same.
Funny thing since this review is actually from Roger Ebert: I didn't imagine hobbits at all like he imagined them. In fact I pretty much imagined hobbits as him!
All that tells me is that either you don't know how to admin it very well or your developers don't know how to develop very well. Both are common problems on any platform, but it seems especially prevalent on the AS/400 because so few people care to take the time to learn the ins and outs of a machine that's overwhelmingly used for relatively mundane tasks.
I highly suggest you take another look at the AS/400 and why they were reluctant to leave it. It is not from the dark ages; in fact the modern high-end AS/400 will outperform most any Intel, Sun, HP, etc on a variety of tasks including Java and http.
The problem is one of PR. IBM doesn't use glitzy ad campaigns for it despite the fact that it has the most technically advanced architecture of *any* enterprise level server OS. Besides, most of us geeks are guilty of the same reaction to the "dreaded 5250 green-screen" that most non-techies have when faced with a unix command prompt.
...it's uptime ratings are unparalleled outside the mainframe world (which by the way it is not part of; AS/400s are "mid-range" computers not "mainframe" computers).
Most very large businesses with a clue run the business fundamentals on AS/400s. Even Microsoft still runs their business on the AS/400; they were going to try to move off of it once, but the cost of providing equivalent functionality and reliability using any other system stopped them dead in their tracks.
Haley Joel Osment bashing reveals reviewer limits
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Review: Harry Potter
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· Score: 1
Haley Joel Osment:
1) Delivers dialog well
2) More importantly can communicate in the absence of dialog
3) Is best appreciated by people who are adept at reading people. In other words, many geeks [apprently including CmdrTaco] could probably be considered somewhat Haley-impaired
Despite all that...the real star was the damn teddy bear anyway.
It may be forgotten among the unix/microsoft crowd (micro to midrange arena) it is still pretty front and center in the midrange to mainframe arena.
It's still being actively developed; it has modularization features; it's moving toward a free-form syntax; it handles text munching, formatting and record based processing very well.
True, it wasn't shock from the impact that made the towers fall, but it was shock that did it. Heat only caused the levels near the impact sites to collapse. It was shock from that occurring that caused the entire buildings to collapse... and it was exclusively the shock of the two main towers collapsing that caused the neighboring lesser towers to collapse and/or sustain varying amounts of damage.
So in an extremely theoretical world, phenomenally efficient shock absorption could have either prevented the total collapse or slowed it to the rate at which the fire could spread from top to bottom (which would have been quite slow since fire moves upward much more easily than it moves downward).
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, and wolves are so much bigger than all of their prey too.
I'm not sure that the idea that they prey on the whales is valid. It could just as easily be territorialism or sheer stupidity.
The whales, however, are not likely to be doing the preying on something that big though. Most whales are filter feeders...and basically toothless. There's no way they could do anything with something that large. Frankly if there's any predatory relationship between the two, the squid doing the preying makes more sense to me.
If TV ads did work there would not be such a drive to develop new advertising gimmicks such as the 'pop-up' ads beind devised for network television. When people can afford things and they want specific items, they research and buy them. I am truly of the opinion that even those lacking the most basic common sense are learning to become smart consumers; and advertising cannot attract the attention of smart, cost- (and yes maybe even brand-) conscious consumers.
I so very much wish you were right, but I seriously doubt that you are. 40 years ago, if you asked americans what they thought "comfort" food was, they'd answer things like mashed potatoes and gravy, "mom's" casserole, PB&J sandwiches, etc. Now they answer with things like Kraft macaroni and cheese, Burger King burger and fries, etc. Watch beverage consumption trends in response to advertising campaigns. Sprite was not a real big seller 15 years ago. Do you really think people's tastes have changed, or just the associations that they have with the product brand?
Victoria's Secret doesn't have great clothing or lingerie. Many many designer brands are much nicer and higher quality, yet VS has a virtual monopoly on the mindshare of the term lingerie. I don't believe for a second that's for any reason other than very sexy advertising. Their catalogs, by the way, are nothing more than highly specialized ads. Notice that the models and their poses are much more integral to the layout than the clothing itself. They aren't posed to maximize the view of the clothing; they're posed to maximize your ability to imagine the wearer in your bed or to at least imagine the wearer without the piece of clothing on. Ordering the piece of lingerie isn't an act of ordering the clothing item, it's a bid at the opportunity to have something as sexy as what you saw in your own posession. If you're "lucky" enough to be dating or married to a model who's prone to striking physically improbable and uncomfortable poses, it might even work...
I suspect that advertising is an order of magnitude more powerful than any other business tool in terms of maximizing sales...except of course the use of the government to bypass the market and obtain a mandated monopoly or regulatory competitive advantage.
4. Some of the substantiations, such as that claiming that one's body sees all carbohydrates as sugars (page 5), is imprecise
Umm, so what? There's a world of difference between being imprecise and being fundamentally incorrect. Sure insoluble fiber is a carb and doesn't get seen by the body as anything. Oligosacharrides and some other carb molecules are digested very slowly, only with the help of bacteria or not at all. Ordinary dietary carbs (the ones ordinary people think of as carbs) are, in fact, all seen by the body as sugars. The article's in the NYT for chrissakes not in the AJCN!
6. This quote is especially choice: "...the public-health authorities may indeed have a problem on their hands. Once they took their leap of faith and settled on the low-fat dietary dogma 25 years ago, they left little room for contradictory evidence or a change of opinion, should such a change be necessary to keep up with the science" (page 7). It only seems like "contradictory evidence or a change of opinion" if you're outside the research community. This is one research community that is not monolithic
That's not even a point. The author wasn't referring to the research community so it doesn't matter that the research community isn't monolithic. The author specifically referred to "public-health authorities." If that were the same as the research community, there probably wouldn't be a problem. As it stands however, public-health authorities refers to the decidedly non-scientific people making public-health policy choices in a non-scientific fashion.
So while calorie balance is the ultimate arbiter, it is far from the whole story. Possible issues include:
One big issue that I think you missed is nutrient starvation. Most food in the standard american diet is really only a good source of calories and sodium. The food is processed until there's virtually nothing left. Hybridization, genetic engineering, shipping, and declining soil fertility are also combining to make the raw material foods less nutritious than they used to be. I'm convinced that we crave food after our caloric needs have ben met partly because our other needs have not been met.
-personal differences. If you are a Pima Indian, you have a 50% chance of diabetes by age 30 if you eat a typical American diet.
You're completely right. Unfortunately, the Pima aren't unique...they're only the most shocking example. The numbers are slightly lower but the epidemic is the same for the rest of the population of the US too...especially among certain ethnic populations.
Unfortunately none of this should be particularly mysterious. Much of what we're seeing was predicted and explained by a scientist in the 1930s. His work had many many shortcomings, but the evidence and conclusions should have been compelling enough to drive much more research than it ultimately did. Sad but true.
I'm sorry, but you're simply wrong. The only tissue in the body which requires either glucose or ketones for fuel is the brain. The muscles and other organs are all fully capable of directly burning short-chain fatty acids. That's also what all the rage about MCTs (medium-chain triglycerides) is. They burn as readily as carbohydrates do.
As for the ketones, they're hardly nasty. During ketosis, when the body is starved for glucose, ketones are able to supply most of the energy needs of the brain. The remaining energy needs still need to be supplied by glucose. That glucose can be supplied (even in the complete absence of dietary carbohydrates) by a combination of the glycerin backbone of the fatty acid molecules being converted to glucose as well as conversion of certain amino acids to glucose.
You're right that ketosis is a fairly inefficient method of creating glucose. You're wrong, however, that fat is an inefficient muscle fuel. You're also wrong that glycogen is the only muscle fuel.
I'm no meteorologist, but it seems to me that there's a world of difference between conditions that produce clouds and conditions that cause clouds to precipitate out. Rising warm air may build a cloud, but without a coincident drop in temperature or air pressure, I don't see how that could translate to more rain in the cities. In fact, I'd suspect the heat island would reduce rain in the cities and increase rain outside of the cities.
Their model seems primarily to be: we noticed that this condition exists and this other condition exists too; perhaps through some mysterious not-precisely-known interaction of the one is causing the other.
The fact that rainfall is presumably (I'm not sure the observation is meaningful without comparative historical data) greater in the cities as well as downwind from the cities suggests another causative factor to me. The already posited airborn particulate output of cities seems to be a much stronger explanation in my opinion.
The actual innovator of a concept or technology is almost never credited for it. Rather, it's the second-tier opportunist that takes the work and creativity of the innovator and reinvigorates it by repositioning it within the market or refining it in some way.
Sometimes it's because of the lack of savvy or capital posessed by the true innovator; other times it's that the innovator was operating just outside the realm of either technical practicality or social acceptability.
The true genius of Microsoft was building a business model around that oft-missed truth.
Regardless, this is clearly fascinating. Although in my mind it raises the question of why that species has not advanced significantly more in all this time. I realize the article states that the researchers will look for differences in modern behavior, but my guess is that their methods are still basically the same.
Evolution doesn't just happen. Life doesn't move inexorably toward "higher" forms. Life forms only evolve when there is environmental pressure to do so. If there weren't any huge challenges to the chimps' survival in that time that would have required intellectual adaptation, there's no reason that they would evolve. We, however, presumably had certain survival pressures that favored complex social interaction and abstract communication...like LAN gaming parties and slashdot comments.
If I could mod either of you up, I would. Excellent insights.
Nutrition and medicine are excellent examples of "science" ruled by faith rather than by reason. Even a relatively cursory check into the actual study results on the subject of cholesterol and heart disease reveals radically different experimental results than the conclusions that are generally stated by the researchers. Study after study has shown no evidence of a causal relationship (between cholesterol and heart disease), but since that goes directly against the assumptions of the scientific community, the authors invariably summarize with conclusions that don't match the study at all.
It's nothing short of amazing...
I don't get too worked up about global warming from fossil fuel burning because it seems to me that the worst case scenario is that we return the earth to a state similar to what it once was...much more tropical than now. However, if we begin piping additional energy into this closed system, I would think we would get some serious global warming. We would be increasing the earth's absorptive surface area while leaving it's radiative surface area the same. That doesn't strike anybody else as a generally bad idea?
This isn't just a phenomenon created by the institutions of the web (i.e. the link based search engine rankings, cross-linking, contextual linking, and purchased ad and link real-estate).
I believe there is also a deeply psychological phenomenon that is exacerbated by the anonymity of the web. Specifically, in the real world we can go into a shop and see the merchandise, look into the eyes of the staff, see the condition of the store, etc. These things foster an ability to trust both the product and the business because we've exprerienced it firsthand and have taken in clues as to the quality and trustworthiness of the products and the people. On the web, however, that function is limited to the professionalism of the interface and the name recognition/popularity/pervasiveness of the company.
Perhaps the answer for companies that aren't in the forefront on the web is to develop relationships with online communities that might be related to their products, make greater use of customer testimonials and provide better descriptions and actual quality photographs of merchandise.
It has to do with cloning because it suggests that animals raised in captivity can still exhibit instinctive behaviors...like successful rearing of young.
So if we use cloning to bring back species that are currently extinct, this suggests we may also be successful in re-introducing the cloned individuals to the wild. Otherwise they could only ever be zoo curiosities.
What happened to all the hit counters?!? You wouldn't believe how often I visit a website and wonder, "How many people have come here before me?" It used to be that all I had to do was scroll down... Now, however, I'm stymied!
Save the hit counters!
I wasn't saying that sugar was linked to osteoporosis rates, although, in re-reading my post, I guess I can see where you might have interpreted it that way. I meant to link the osteoporosis rate to the nutrient density of the current standard american diet. While sugar may indirectly play a role in that by increasing dietary calories without increasing other nutrients, I would in no way try to claim that sugar is directly responsible for osteoporosis.
While sodium may indeed play a role in osteoporosis as well, I don't think that the effects of the significant decline in the consumption of certain vitamins and minerals can be discounted. For instance, vitamin D was much more commonly consumed via dietary animal fats and supplemental cod liver oil. People were also much more regularly exposed to the sun resulting in greater vitamin D synthesis. Their diets were generally much richer in calcium (although its role in osteoporosis is greatly exaggerated) as well as other bone building minerals like magnesium and boron supplied by rustic greens, dairy, bone broths, nuts, whole grains etc.
On the issue of salt too, its also worth noting that the amounts of salt that people used to consume are, I think, sometimes underestimated. While our consumption of processed foods is indeed shamefully high, the foods of 100 or more years ago often used salt both as one of the only means of preservation as well as one of the only economical ways of making food taste better. Spices, herbs and various other condiments were not as readily available to many as they are today.
Of course, it's not all diet either. People used to have a much greater degree of physical activity than most people do these days. Multiple studies have shown that excercise helps to minimize bone loss...whether you're in space or the nursing home.
Hope that clears up what I was trying to communicate in my first post.
supernova87a commented:
Given these choices, in the absence of information, isn't it more logical to bet on the second? Isn't it safer to assume the worst case scenario? I.e. let's stop doing the things that people suggest may be harming the environment, because if they actually do, we'll be screwed in 50 years? And if they're not harming the environment, we did no harm anyway?
Do some people not understand this logic??
I understand the logic, but I think your assumptions ignore a significant point: making emissions lowering changes is not a neutral proposition as you assume. It costs money and diverts productivity away from other things. It increases the cost of energy which has a net depressive effect on all sectors of every economy.
It's like saving money for an imagined eventuality when you have actual bills to pay. If the eventuality never materializes, you could reassure yourself that it doesn't matter since you've managed to save some money and maybe earn some interest. However, it ignores the fact that in the meantime you've accrued late fees on your bills, shot your credit rating to hell and had your utilities shut off.
You're right. The arrogance of those who choose to make proxied value judgements of others circumstances is only matched by those who choose to make world altering changes whose long-term impact they can barely glimpse.
The issue isn't that they are choosing to do something like this. The issue is that we apply the frenzied pace of our ridiculously brief lives to the impact analysis of potentially huge alterations of nature. Something as radical as attempting to eradicate an entire species should be studied intensively for a generation or more before being considered. It's particularly disconcerting when the reason for doing so is the admittedly large impact of the fly on the social and natural ecosystems of an entire region. Hello? If the fly's presence has an impact of that magnitude, how can we presume to guess the impact of its sudden disappearance?
Messing with things at the level of mammals and reptiles isn't as dangerous as messing with insects and microbes or keystone food plants such as grasses and algaes. These things form the very foundations of ecosystems. Changing them or eliminating them has unavoidable consequences, both direct and indirect, that are not knowable given the current or any forseeable state of human science.
We are not omniscient. We just choose to behave as if we are...
Not to mention that in 1900 our diets contained much more concentrated sources of the nutrients that help our bodies to both modulate infections and re-mineralize dental caries. Neither of these phenomena is really recognized by the current medical or dental establishment, yet both exist. This is also tightly coupled to the exploding rates of osteoporosis...it's not as simple as chewing a nummy viactive calcium chew or popping a pill...
We also have less well-developed teeth now than we once did for the same reasons mentioned above. This also contributes to decay since we have poorer enamel and crooked, crowded teeth that are predisposed to harboring food and bacteria.
Get a copy of the somewhat dated but still invaluable "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" by Dr Weston A. Price...but check your biases at the front cover if you're a vegetarian...
Just FYI, people play around with "explosive hydrogen gas" for lots of reasons in lots of places. You'll find people playing with hydrogen in every plant which manufactures vegetable shortening from oil, because hydrogenating the oil is part of the process to allow it to solidify at room temperature. Ditto every plant which manufactures nitrogen fertilizers (which starts with fixation via the Haber process, N2 + 3 H2 -> 2 NH3).
Wow! I'm sure there are some legitimate uses of hydrogen, but as a short list it looks like when people play around with hydrogen, bad things happen. There is hardly a more toxic foodstuff foisted on the unsuspecting public than hydrogenated vegetable oils. There is hardly an agricultural innovation that can match the nutritionally, economically, and environmentally destructive impact of the advent of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. (no sarcasm intended)
I'd never thought about it before, but maybe hydrogen IS scary. (full sarcasm intended)
I don't understand how getting a license from "labels" screws the artist. This is really fuzzy thinking, IMO.
If the artist used a major label, one of three things happened: they were savvy and negotiated a very nice deal when they CHOSE to sell all or most of the rights to their music to the label OR they were naive and will hopefully chose better next time OR the artists' work has no inherent value and is only valuable due to the marketing muscle of the label (see NSync, 98 Degrees, Jessica Simpson, etc, etc, etc).
If the artist used an independent label, they are probably getting their fair share already. If not, they were probably really really naive and will hopefully chose better next time.
Finally, don't ask me to feel sorry for instant multi-millionaire teens and barely adults who are being prevented from becoming bigger instant multi-millionaires by the oppressive music industry. The real artists are doing their work in the independent arena where they retain control. When and if they've proven their appeal there, they can and do exercise the deserved clout when and if they decide to sell themselves and their work to a major label. Ani DiFranco has not only showed how well this can be done when there's truly golden talent involved, but she has also created the machinery to help others with less ambition, savvy or talent to do the same.
Funny thing since this review is actually from Roger Ebert: I didn't imagine hobbits at all like he imagined them. In fact I pretty much imagined hobbits as him!
All that tells me is that either you don't know how to admin it very well or your developers don't know how to develop very well. Both are common problems on any platform, but it seems especially prevalent on the AS/400 because so few people care to take the time to learn the ins and outs of a machine that's overwhelmingly used for relatively mundane tasks.
I highly suggest you take another look at the AS/400 and why they were reluctant to leave it. It is not from the dark ages; in fact the modern high-end AS/400 will outperform most any Intel, Sun, HP, etc on a variety of tasks including Java and http.
The problem is one of PR. IBM doesn't use glitzy ad campaigns for it despite the fact that it has the most technically advanced architecture of *any* enterprise level server OS. Besides, most of us geeks are guilty of the same reaction to the "dreaded 5250 green-screen" that most non-techies have when faced with a unix command prompt.
...it's uptime ratings are unparalleled outside the mainframe world (which by the way it is not part of; AS/400s are "mid-range" computers not "mainframe" computers).
Most very large businesses with a clue run the business fundamentals on AS/400s. Even Microsoft still runs their business on the AS/400; they were going to try to move off of it once, but the cost of providing equivalent functionality and reliability using any other system stopped them dead in their tracks.
Haley Joel Osment:
1) Delivers dialog well
2) More importantly can communicate in the absence of dialog
3) Is best appreciated by people who are adept at reading people. In other words, many geeks [apprently including CmdrTaco] could probably be considered somewhat Haley-impaired
Despite all that...the real star was the damn teddy bear anyway.
It may be forgotten among the unix/microsoft crowd (micro to midrange arena) it is still pretty front and center in the midrange to mainframe arena.
It's still being actively developed; it has modularization features; it's moving toward a free-form syntax; it handles text munching, formatting and record based processing very well.
True, it wasn't shock from the impact that made the towers fall, but it was shock that did it. Heat only caused the levels near the impact sites to collapse. It was shock from that occurring that caused the entire buildings to collapse ... and it was exclusively the shock of the two main towers collapsing that caused the neighboring lesser towers to collapse and/or sustain varying amounts of damage.
So in an extremely theoretical world, phenomenally efficient shock absorption could have either prevented the total collapse or slowed it to the rate at which the fire could spread from top to bottom (which would have been quite slow since fire moves upward much more easily than it moves downward).
Impact ->-> Fire ->-> localized collapse ->-> systemic collapse >> shock waves damage nearby structures