I guess emotions and devotion and attachment are all artificial constructs too. That's a load of crap. Both states are natural to the human species. The defining characteristic is the social structure of the tribe the individuals live within.
Who the hell taught you that? First off, every animal reproduces via sex by definition. There are a very few that can also do it without. Secondly, animals kill each other REGULARLY, within their own species.
Black widows and Praying mantis kill and eat the male after sex. Bullfrogs reguarly eat their own young that they just produced. Lions, bears, monkeys and many more will kill the young of their own species. Even mice and other rodents will do so. Chimpanzee tribes (and other social monkees such as baboons) will make raids and wage actual war on other tribes. Elk, bison, similar animals, have been known to kill each other in mating season. Even whales have been known to kill each other in the quest of a mate, bodyslamming each other into submission.
Its cost pure and simple. It would cost a lot to do, take years for return on investment, and no one wants to do it (ie pay for it) in addition to all the other stuff we pay for transportation too. for historical perspective, no one wanted to do the interstates either. the same argumetns happened then as now. difference is, they managed to ram it thru during an economic boom, and it eventually did prove valuable to the economy.
trouble is the typical one: getting people to look past the high short term cost, long term residual costs to see the long term ROI, an ROI that isnt directly visible in terms of money returned to the coffers...ie, gov spends the money on it, but never sees money come back directly from it, but rather indirectly.
the biggest problem with rail in our country is it was largely made to connect the far reaches of the country and once that occured almost no further expansion took place. A few of our cities got subways and Els, but by and large we didnt build the cities with rail transit in mind. the good economic times and ease of getting cars meant people flocked to them isntead. the suburban sprawl happened. and keeps happening. we have the room to grow and for most people thats more simply addressed with a car than a metro line. so no track gets laid.
ya ya. lobby this and lobby that some people say. that's really not the source though. its simply that laying new track is expensive, and it only gets more so over time, especially in cities were real estate goes at a premium.
oh the military wants them. what they dont want is the programs getting bogged down and bloated with extra requirements from civilians that have nothing to do with the original mission for the system.
"make the engines in my state" "you also need to accomplish unrelated mission X over here, increasing complexity and cost 100x" "what about this program, dont they conflict? i demand a feasibility study that proves my program is better than yours, and/or we need to merge them together"
and unlike most of the rest of the world, our tracks are also privately owned and used primarily for shipping not passenger service. Comparison to the rest of the world doesnt automatically mean something is wrong. Someday people will understand that. Different societies. Different economies. Differences...so stop trying to make everyone the same.
Greener doesnt automatically mean better conditions for the animals. Nor does "buying green" mean intensive farming will diminish. The "green" products require even more land, use even more resources, and cost more to consumers. And for what? So you dont feel guilty? So you can say no antibiotics were used on your cow?
Overuse of AB's is and can be bad, but one reason they started using them generally instead of waiting for an animal to get sick first is it costs a lot to fix a sick cow. It's very labor intensive, its not garunteed to work, and across a spread of a few hundred to thousand cows, that's a lot of potentially sick cows, especially if it spreads to the whole herd, as it easily might. The potential is there to lose a quarter of your herd, or even worse, the entire herd. Using antibiotics proactively instead of reactively caused an increase in the quality and number of animals they could bring to market and sell; fewer animals were relegated to "dog food use only", and there was less chance of losing a significant portion of your herd to sickness or uncertaintity.
You clearly have little actual knowledge of the food supply chain or why things are done how they are done.
And yet you can do all the "right things" and still die within the margin of error of the "average lifespan". all that stress, all that effort, all that self denial, and for what? And others do all the wrong things and still live into their 90s. The stats are all over the place even once you take out the obvious stuff like smoking and eating nothing but bacon. My grandfather has had 5 heart attacks (1 minor, 2nd resulted in a shunt and pacemaker) surgery, he's nearly 90 and still going strong; turned out the 3 most recent (each over 10 years ago) were caused by having hte wrong medicine after getting a pacemaker. After switching, his health returned. even hsi pacemaker wasnt so much because he -had- to have it, but to even out the blood pressure changes as he got older (ie, his system would restore balance slower with a bit of exertion)
Face it. We got an expiration date. And the more we learn about it, the more it seems to be tied to genetics than to anything else. Outside of not rolling around in carcinogens and eating Lardo 9000, it more and more seems to come down to your own personal mix of genetics. As medicine gets better, we keep chipping away at the limit, pushing it further and further back. But the end is still there waiting for us, and most of us still cluster around a fairly steady value for a given level of medical care.
So pass me the bacon and ranch cheeseburger pizza. I'm gonna enjoy life and leave it on my terms, rather than stress out for the next 40 years trying to eeke out a few extra days.
This anti-milk stuff is silly. Milk is healthy and a simple easy source of calcium for the majority of people, no specially modifed foods required. Milk is a simple easy source of food for a great many people. And milk is absolutely essential in a large number of hte foods we eat cause of this little thing called "cooking" which is really just chemistry, and the milk plays an integral part.
So get off you're soapbox and cut the hyperbull; just watch where you step, you were spewing manure from your face.
We are meat eaters (technically omnivores, but that by definition includes a portion of meat). Get over it. Animal protien is still the only one stop shop for -all- amino acids in one easy meal. yes we have learned over time that we can mix and match foods, but that took years of science and agriculture. do we need meat at every meal? no, but neither do we need fruits or grains at every meal to get all the good stuff from them either.
Stopping everyone from eating meat is silly. Nor would we all be healthier (you're healthier with some than totally without), nor would there be more food for everyone, and population density would still be more related to cultural norms than to food (re: first world+shrinking populations despite tons of food vs 3rd-world and ever booming levels despite lack of food)
cooking (and by extension pasteurization) dramatically expanded the list of things we can safely eat and reduced deaths from even things that seem innocuous.
In your proposed world: Fresh vegetables..yummy...do they need cooked? Depends...did some infected animal crap or slobber on them? You want to take that chance?
You're an idiot for even suggesting we roll back thousands of years of human progress and return to the age of random death for unexplained reasons cause of tainted food.
agriculture isnt natural animal husbandry isnt natural lets all go back to hunting and killing and gathering our own food, eating it raw or dirty freshly dug up frmt he ground.
Sadly I find his work needlessly dense and arcane, and his settings uninteresting. Complexity for the sake of complexity appeals not to this reader so I've found him to be rather hit or miss with how engaged I get with the story or not. Granted I havent tried his work since Accelerando, which I only got about a quarter into and it completely failed to draw me in. On the other hand a couple of the Laundry stories were enjoyable (why I tried Accelerando)
It's not the same. When someone reviews a book, you can assume that they've actually read a few pages *snip*
That's not true. My sister has "written" a few "books" on Amazon. I'm convinced she then paid for a "marketing service" because they got astroturfed to hell and back. Her first book got labeled "As good and thrilling as The Lord of the Rings" multiple times. Being her brother I tried to read that book...I'm pretty sure I wrote a better story in the 2nd grade about picking my nose and eating it.
That's the biggest problem with Amazon. Astroturfing is so rampant I basically disregard 99% of all positive reviews. I look the bad reviews. Now some of those are being reverse astroturfed "this book sucks, go read XXXX instead", but not as often and not as blatantly as the "OMG This is a the best thing ever. I couldnt put it down" being posted 100 times about a book about digging in your butt.
Hell, you dont even need all that stuff. Two 9V batteries shorted together like legos is enough to cause a small fire. for extra fun, use 4 9V's stacked together.
Hell, a cigarette tucked in a match book makes for a simple "delayed timer incendiary device". Thank you Stalag 17 for that piece of education...guess it's time to ban old classic movies now, too?
Yes, lets just assume she's stupid enough to leave a gun in her desk drawer, loaded, and unsecured. That argument is just as specious as the one that goes "what if the teacher has a bad day".
Because all gun owners are lazy irresponsible heathers who leave guns out for kids to play with. And all gun owners will, whenhaving a bad day, pull out their gun and start shooting kids.
There are millions of gun owners. And believe it or not, nearly all of them manage to not leave them out for kids who dont know better to play with them like toys, and they manage to have emotions, nagative ones, without causing massacres. Your argument is compeltely specious and irrelevent.
Shouldn't you be concerned that the bee dies when it delivers the sting, than the fact it's electrically stimulated? I mean if you're gonna be concerned about the welfare of the insect (that numbers in the many millions of individuals), at least be logical and go the distance.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess emotions and devotion and attachment are all artificial constructs too. That's a load of crap. Both states are natural to the human species. The defining characteristic is the social structure of the tribe the individuals live within.
Who the hell taught you that?
First off, every animal reproduces via sex by definition. There are a very few that can also do it without.
Secondly, animals kill each other REGULARLY, within their own species.
Black widows and Praying mantis kill and eat the male after sex.
Bullfrogs reguarly eat their own young that they just produced.
Lions, bears, monkeys and many more will kill the young of their own species.
Even mice and other rodents will do so.
Chimpanzee tribes (and other social monkees such as baboons) will make raids and wage actual war on other tribes.
Elk, bison, similar animals, have been known to kill each other in mating season.
Even whales have been known to kill each other in the quest of a mate, bodyslamming each other into submission.
You're about as ignorant as the girl vet in family guy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7QhpJ3DWDA
Its cost pure and simple. It would cost a lot to do, take years for return on investment, and no one wants to do it (ie pay for it) in addition to all the other stuff we pay for transportation too. for historical perspective, no one wanted to do the interstates either. the same argumetns happened then as now. difference is, they managed to ram it thru during an economic boom, and it eventually did prove valuable to the economy.
trouble is the typical one: getting people to look past the high short term cost, long term residual costs to see the long term ROI, an ROI that isnt directly visible in terms of money returned to the coffers...ie, gov spends the money on it, but never sees money come back directly from it, but rather indirectly.
plus you see more of the splendor of the countryside. i love taking the train through the mountains or the southwest desert
the biggest problem with rail in our country is it was largely made to connect the far reaches of the country and once that occured almost no further expansion took place. A few of our cities got subways and Els, but by and large we didnt build the cities with rail transit in mind. the good economic times and ease of getting cars meant people flocked to them isntead. the suburban sprawl happened. and keeps happening. we have the room to grow and for most people thats more simply addressed with a car than a metro line. so no track gets laid.
ya ya. lobby this and lobby that some people say. that's really not the source though. its simply that laying new track is expensive, and it only gets more so over time, especially in cities were real estate goes at a premium.
oh the military wants them. what they dont want is the programs getting bogged down and bloated with extra requirements from civilians that have nothing to do with the original mission for the system.
"make the engines in my state"
"you also need to accomplish unrelated mission X over here, increasing complexity and cost 100x"
"what about this program, dont they conflict? i demand a feasibility study that proves my program is better than yours, and/or we need to merge them together"
and unlike most of the rest of the world, our tracks are also privately owned and used primarily for shipping not passenger service.
Comparison to the rest of the world doesnt automatically mean something is wrong. Someday people will understand that.
Different societies. Different economies. Differences...so stop trying to make everyone the same.
Greener doesnt automatically mean better conditions for the animals. Nor does "buying green" mean intensive farming will diminish. The "green" products require even more land, use even more resources, and cost more to consumers. And for what? So you dont feel guilty? So you can say no antibiotics were used on your cow?
Overuse of AB's is and can be bad, but one reason they started using them generally instead of waiting for an animal to get sick first is it costs a lot to fix a sick cow. It's very labor intensive, its not garunteed to work, and across a spread of a few hundred to thousand cows, that's a lot of potentially sick cows, especially if it spreads to the whole herd, as it easily might. The potential is there to lose a quarter of your herd, or even worse, the entire herd. Using antibiotics proactively instead of reactively caused an increase in the quality and number of animals they could bring to market and sell; fewer animals were relegated to "dog food use only", and there was less chance of losing a significant portion of your herd to sickness or uncertaintity.
You clearly have little actual knowledge of the food supply chain or why things are done how they are done.
And yet you can do all the "right things" and still die within the margin of error of the "average lifespan". all that stress, all that effort, all that self denial, and for what? And others do all the wrong things and still live into their 90s. The stats are all over the place even once you take out the obvious stuff like smoking and eating nothing but bacon. My grandfather has had 5 heart attacks (1 minor, 2nd resulted in a shunt and pacemaker) surgery, he's nearly 90 and still going strong; turned out the 3 most recent (each over 10 years ago) were caused by having hte wrong medicine after getting a pacemaker. After switching, his health returned. even hsi pacemaker wasnt so much because he -had- to have it, but to even out the blood pressure changes as he got older (ie, his system would restore balance slower with a bit of exertion)
Face it. We got an expiration date. And the more we learn about it, the more it seems to be tied to genetics than to anything else.
Outside of not rolling around in carcinogens and eating Lardo 9000, it more and more seems to come down to your own personal mix of genetics.
As medicine gets better, we keep chipping away at the limit, pushing it further and further back. But the end is still there waiting for us, and most of us still cluster around a fairly steady value for a given level of medical care.
So pass me the bacon and ranch cheeseburger pizza. I'm gonna enjoy life and leave it on my terms, rather than stress out for the next 40 years trying to eeke out a few extra days.
This anti-milk stuff is silly. Milk is healthy and a simple easy source of calcium for the majority of people, no specially modifed foods required. Milk is a simple easy source of food for a great many people. And milk is absolutely essential in a large number of hte foods we eat cause of this little thing called "cooking" which is really just chemistry, and the milk plays an integral part.
So get off you're soapbox and cut the hyperbull; just watch where you step, you were spewing manure from your face.
We are meat eaters (technically omnivores, but that by definition includes a portion of meat). Get over it. Animal protien is still the only one stop shop for -all- amino acids in one easy meal. yes we have learned over time that we can mix and match foods, but that took years of science and agriculture. do we need meat at every meal? no, but neither do we need fruits or grains at every meal to get all the good stuff from them either.
Stopping everyone from eating meat is silly. Nor would we all be healthier (you're healthier with some than totally without), nor would there be more food for everyone, and population density would still be more related to cultural norms than to food (re: first world+shrinking populations despite tons of food vs 3rd-world and ever booming levels despite lack of food)
TL:DR: Ignorant
cooking (and by extension pasteurization) dramatically expanded the list of things we can safely eat and reduced deaths from even things that seem innocuous.
In your proposed world: Fresh vegetables..yummy...do they need cooked? Depends...did some infected animal crap or slobber on them? You want to take that chance?
You're an idiot for even suggesting we roll back thousands of years of human progress and return to the age of random death for unexplained reasons cause of tainted food.
agriculture isnt natural
animal husbandry isnt natural
lets all go back to hunting and killing and gathering our own food, eating it raw or dirty freshly dug up frmt he ground.
ya lets go back to that.
because big pharma cares enough to hire shills to astroturf on /.
Sadly I find his work needlessly dense and arcane, and his settings uninteresting. Complexity for the sake of complexity appeals not to this reader so I've found him to be rather hit or miss with how engaged I get with the story or not. Granted I havent tried his work since Accelerando, which I only got about a quarter into and it completely failed to draw me in. On the other hand a couple of the Laundry stories were enjoyable (why I tried Accelerando)
It's not the same. When someone reviews a book, you can assume that they've actually read a few pages *snip*
That's not true. My sister has "written" a few "books" on Amazon.
I'm convinced she then paid for a "marketing service" because they got astroturfed to hell and back.
Her first book got labeled "As good and thrilling as The Lord of the Rings" multiple times.
Being her brother I tried to read that book...I'm pretty sure I wrote a better story in the 2nd grade about picking my nose and eating it.
That's the biggest problem with Amazon. Astroturfing is so rampant I basically disregard 99% of all positive reviews. I look the bad reviews. Now some of those are being reverse astroturfed "this book sucks, go read XXXX instead", but not as often and not as blatantly as the "OMG This is a the best thing ever. I couldnt put it down" being posted 100 times about a book about digging in your butt.
LICD, Penny Arcade, GU, Dark Legacy, Schlock Mercenary
And this lil mini lop rabbit says I gotta toss in Sluggy Freelance.
*snikt*
Headline asked a question.
The answer is still "no".
Nothing about being funny in the equation in there at all.
And so it begins.
Car battery (sulfuric acid) + sugar -- exothermic reaction, potentially self ignites, produced a "charcoal" that ignites easily
Balloon + fine milled flour + flame -- dust explosion
Electrolysis of water + containment (to catch the escaping gas) + flame -- hydrogen explosion
sodium hydroxide + potash + sulfur -- one (of many) basic gunpowder recipes
Hell, you dont even need all that stuff.
Two 9V batteries shorted together like legos is enough to cause a small fire.
for extra fun, use 4 9V's stacked together.
Hell, a cigarette tucked in a match book makes for a simple "delayed timer incendiary device".
Thank you Stalag 17 for that piece of education...guess it's time to ban old classic movies now, too?
Yes, lets just assume she's stupid enough to leave a gun in her desk drawer, loaded, and unsecured.
That argument is just as specious as the one that goes "what if the teacher has a bad day".
Because all gun owners are lazy irresponsible heathers who leave guns out for kids to play with.
And all gun owners will, whenhaving a bad day, pull out their gun and start shooting kids.
There are millions of gun owners. And believe it or not, nearly all of them manage to not leave them out for kids who dont know better to play with them like toys, and they manage to have emotions, nagative ones, without causing massacres. Your argument is compeltely specious and irrelevent.
Fiber and veggies (which is really just more fiber and/or cellulose) help too.
There's still something to be said for not cramming a gallon of food into your gut at every sitting. IE, the "put down the fork" school of thought.
Full feeling or not, at some point you just have to recognize just how much stuff you're cramming in there.
Shouldn't you be concerned that the bee dies when it delivers the sting, than the fact it's electrically stimulated?
I mean if you're gonna be concerned about the welfare of the insect (that numbers in the many millions of individuals), at least be logical and go the distance.