Lets assume NASA was to get specific funding to do this. I would foresee NASA becoming more of a Grand Inquisitor of sorts, and anyone who has independant theories - plausible or not - would have to go through NASA to get any due consideration. Keep in mind the myriad of independant new branches of science and technology which start out with "crackpots". IBM never gave microcomputers a second look, and considered mainframe and minicomputers to be the future until the day came when Apples and DECs were taking up desktop real estate. Big blue had the muscle to catch up, and the free market mandate to give us the PC/AT. NASA, being a government agency, would simply be spending taxpayer money on maintaining an inflexibile artifice while other bodies were forging ahead, or worse, being trampled under by NASA.
"Largely because of tough actions by the record companies to combat free music sites through the courts, legislation and even through techno-guerrilla tactics, there is a noticeable change of sentiment in a small segment of the downloading cognoscenti. Though their numbers are low, many are the early adapters who spot a trend first."
I love it. These fucking idiots in the record industry didn't even offer pay for download services when Napster and their ilk came on the scene. These dildos aren't inventing a new trend, they're finally getting a clue - many consumers find their product too damn inconvenient. I have to go to a physical location, find a physical CD, get assaulted by mind numbed liberal children who think their GenY hipness overrides my GenX old-n-bustedness, just to find the latest Incubus. God forbid I be unfortunate enough to not have a virgin megastore nearby when I want a copy of Nina Simone ("who?"). And then, what I have is stuck on a piece of shit plastic disk that - when scratched - is nothing more than a shiny coaster.
Then enter P2P networks. I can get any song, anytime, anywhere, in multiple formats (ISO, CDA, MP3, OGG, WAV, et al). Hell, it's free too...I'd pay on a per song basis - but hey, that would eliminate 90% of the crap some 'arteests' put out today.
The record industry may have gotten a clue just in time to save their asses for the short term and justify their narrow field of vision, but don't expect them to be around much longer if they don't overhaul their business models. Put out a quality product, give greater flexibility in buying the product, and learn to deliver the product - not expect it to be picked up.
You call this news? Is SlashDot that hard up (or worse, flaccid) that this page worthy of being posted?
There are many fine sites out there with information on building subwoofer enclosures. While the construction of this one was fairly robust and adequate, the design will likely have a very poor response. There are too many no-no's here to cover for a SlashDot comment. Y'all should try some real sites for a start:
It appears that humans adapt very quickly to metabolic intake, and we may not even need evolution to adapt our dietary needs. As long as the available sustinance is relatively close to our typical diets. We had carbo intake even when we spent time chasing herds around, since there was a lot of gathering going on. Anthropologically speaking, setting down into agricultural societies has more to do with the ease (and safety) of gathering compared to chasing herds of pissed of bison around.
A calorie (most properly called a gram/calorie) is the amount of heat required to raise one gram of water by one degree celcius. Heat is the movement of thermal energy, NOT the amount of thermal energy involved in a reaction. A drop (1 cc) of water at a given thermal temperature has more heat than a 1 cm2 square of aluminum, because water doesn't hold its thermal energy as well.
What's the point in this remedial physics lesson? Tell me, what the hell does a 'calorie' have to do with the bodies metabolic processes? The body doesn't combust foods to generate energy, nor is the body made all of water. Even if it was, water is not consistant in its heat value because it is a fluid. So using "calories" is about the most horse-shit dead reckoning you can do. It's like saying that red cars go faster. Well, the most popular color for sports cars is red, right?
The energy in food derived from the amount of ATP that can be derived from the various chemicals in it through the least amount of digestion. Sugars pack the most, followed by starches, followed by carbs, then fats. Proteins have almost no energy (except the ATP in the cells already), we need them to provide essential amino acids for us (those are the amino acids that our body cannot make itself). Amino acids build the body.
When you buy "low fat" foods, all you are buying are un-naturally processed foods where the fats have been displaced by carbs, usually really simple ones. If you don't use those carbs, they go to fat.
For the last time, your body doesn't work like an internal combustion engine, so calories are about as worthless as tits on a boar hog. Answer me this: If calories are the ultimate measure of energy intake, than how can people who go on starvation diets (i.e., 800 calories per day or less) actually gain weight?
BTW, Average americans couldn't afford vegetables 'back in the day'. Any idiot who studied the industrial revolution knows that vegetables were far more expensive than just going out and shooting your dinner prior to the industrial revolution (when durable cans made packing and shipping veggies like corn economical).
Absolutely, and I'll tell you why: Because you have a reason. Most people who become vegetarian, lacto-ova, or vegan, do so based on ignorance, not on philosophy. They do it because PETA tells them that animals suffer because of their eating habits. I try to buy free range meat from animals that lived happy and die fast (for the reasons mentioned above). If we could grow meat without an animal attached, (which looks to be a very real possibility), and it was just as healthy as the real thing, we could end animal suffering. But that's not a reality we have right now.
Others become vegetarians because they're told it's healtheir. Well, I've met very few 'healthy' vegetarians, not because vegetarianism is not healthy, but because they don't know how to budget their diet to include essential proteins as provided by nuts, soy, and other plants. They don't know how to include diet supplements that provide them with things they aren't getting from plants.
Finally, there are people who interpret their religeous teachings (or are directly taught by their faith) that eating animals is bad. I can respect this whole heartedly. In general, these people also come from a back ground of vegetarians for the same reasons, and their body is more adapted to their diet. A Sikh from Delhi will live healither off a vegetarian diet than a Hunn from Berlin. People who adopt religeons that are extracultural need to be aware of thier metabolic needs and supplement for them if they expect to have a long healthy life.
You sound like you've got your diet set up right for who you are and how you live, and that's easy to respect. Unfortunately, I can't invite you to my next barbecue; You might offend my carnivore freinds ; )
People on low-carb diets typically shun vegetables. If they get any carbs, it's from leafy greens.
But if they are on high protein diets, they're getting more fat, right? How do you explain that people on no-carb diets typically lose weight very quickly? Ignoring the importance - the VITAL importance - of fats in ones diet is dangerous.
So you ask, why are people eating more fat? WHO SAYS THEY ARE? Go to the store, and you'll see that nearly every product has a low fat/no fat equivalent. As a whole, we consume less fat in this country than we did 50 years ago. Do you know what they are doing to make those no/low fat foods taste as good as the original? They are replacing the fats with carbs. A quick look at the label shows this. Even McDonalds has reduced the amount of fat in their french frieds TWICE in the last 15 years by switching oils, but they aren't any more healthy for you. French fries...made from potatos...potatos are starchy tubers....starches...are we having a break through yet?
Somehow I am going to convince you (keep in mind, I've lost almost 48% of my body in the last two years by eating healthy like i talk about above. How much have you lost on your low fat starvation diets?
Well, thank you. I feel so enlightened by your educated supposition, and it's one word conclusion: "bullshit". Perhaps you'd like to explain how it is that everyone did'nt die of heart disease before we discovered how to make fat free foods? Yes, let me poke some more holes here. The average american diet prior to 1900 consisted of MOSTLY MEAT. Vegetables were fragile and did not ship well. Meat could be preserved for several months merely by salting it. So tell me, how did generations of Americans (and Europeans) live long, happy, healthy lives eatching fatty meat foods loaded with salts?
Here's another tidbit for you: Cows don't eat meat. Cows are vegetarian. How the hell do they get so fat if they don't eat fat? BLING BLING!
Finally, ponder this: Fat is almost a calabolic food. That is, it takes so much energy to break fats down into their glucogenic equivalents, that the body realizes very little net energy profit. I"m not talking calories here, because you're body doesn't burn food. Calories are useless. What you have to look for is the energy content of a food, and meats provide none. Fats provide very little. Candy bars, twinkies, and doughnuts pack the spare tires on like a champ, and leave you hungry for more because your insulin rockets through the roof.
No one diet holds true for everyone. I liked to that article because I felt it was the most respectful treatment of fats and proteins in the popular media today. The bottom line is to eat healthy whole foods prepared with natural processes, and avoid foods that came out of test tubes. Now, for me a high protein diet (50% meat, 5% fats, 35% complex carbs) works the best. My friend Danielle is different. Her metabolism is so high that she can eat all the junk food she wants and not gain a lb (she's a damn twig!). That'll change for her by the time she's 37, and we've seen it in her mom and aunt.
Different people evolved differently. there are tribes in Africa where the diet is almost 100% protein, and heart disease is unheard of. There are cultures in the middle east where you eat little to no meat, and they are equally as healthy. America is the connecting point for all of these cultures, and our American diet is generally incompatible with body types that are the result of millenia of evolution. What is important is that everyone finds their own diet, and not the diet that the USDA, AMA, or FDA tells them is healthy.
Dr. Dean Adell? If that's who you're referring to, then you need to change the channel and listed to Dr. Lance Dreyer. I think he's cured a lot more fatties than Adell has.
As for this "no evidence" thing, it's absolutely wrong. There are reams of research on the issue of hyperinsulinism and insulin resistance that show it is directly the result of our voracious appettites for sugars and ultra-simple carbs. Even the article itself points out the corelary between Italian's penchants for pasta and big distended bellies. I'd dig it all up for you, but I have a policy that if it requies research, I post it to K-5 instead of slashdot.
Every where I go I'm inundated with low fat this, low fat that, no fat, no cholesterol, not meat, et al. It's been 20 years since the AMA dropped the bombshell that fat was killing us, and in spite of the absolute lack of information to back it up (and where it exists, lets call a spade a spade and admit that it was junk science at best). Everyone has been pushing this anti-fat nonsense, yet Americans are getting fatter and fatter, heart disease is on the up as is diabetes, and millions of Americans find that they can't control their cholesterol no matter how hard they try - and now they are on dangerous liver-killing drugs to try.
When will America cast of this "fat is bad" myth, and accept that the real evil - the only evil - in our diets is all the processed crap and high sugar/carbs we consume? In 1910, the average American consumed roughly 1.5 lbs of sugar (and it was unrefined cane sugar at that). Heart disease wasn't even something most doctors knew about because people were dying of crap like tuberculosis and influenze far more often then from heart attacks. Fast forward to today: The average American consumes some 118 lbs of refined sugar. Food makers sell prepackaged foods which are highly profitable, chocked full of artificial flavors and colors, and made mostly from fillers. Labels like "low fat" and "no fat" make people salivate like pavlovian dogs when they think that it must be heart healthy, but eveyone is ignoring the obvious. Scientists still can't tell us precisely what roles cholesterol play, they can't agree on what is good, what is bad, and nobody has a clue on how cholesterol goes from lipids in the blood stream to plaque along the artery walls.
And the diet fads: First we're told that vegetarianism is the way to go, but every vegetarian I've ever met has been relatively unremarkable in their health, and never any better off than before they made their "commitment". Then there are 'hollywood' diet plans that offer people the chance to lose gobs of weight in only weeks, but what they don't mention is that you'll gain all that weight back and then some.
The only vegetarians/vegans I respect are the ones who go on the diet because of concerns about the treatment of food animals. There are alternatives: Nuts, vitamins, soy, etc. But outside of that, anyone who foreswears meat for 'health concerns' is a stark raving fool who is willfully depriving themselves of a number of essential amino acids needed to keep the body healthy. And before you go slathering that baby back ribs with gobs of barbecue sauce, look at how much sugar/sucrose/fructrose is in there. In fact, look at all your foods. If it has "ose", "ayse", or anything you can't pronounce you should toss it in the trash. People rave about the evil of sodium, but if you're drinking water and sweating, sodium is the least of your worries. Watch your intake of sugar and simple carbs. Ban yourself from white bread, cornbread, and anythign that isn't 100% whole grain. Walk straight pass the aisle with all the potato chips, pretend you did'nt even see the pastas, and get your ass into the produce section. If you want to be healthy, make sure there is not more than a few steps between you and your food. And for those of us still eating meat - know where your meat comes from. Free range, hormone free, non-corn-fed meat is the only way to go. And if you don't have a concience, consider this: stress causes animals to pump natural hormones out that make meat taste gamy. Make sure your meat comes from animals that lived happy, and died fast.
One more thing (and I dont think anyone can disagree with this): Unplug yourself, put the remote down, and go OUT SIDE! You see that big burning ball of fire in the sky? That's called a sun. Try to expose yourself to it more often, it's a great source of vitamin D (not directly obviously). Here's a concept that works: RUN. Sweat. Give yourself some cramps somewhere besides your wrists for a change. Unless you want your legacy to be that you wrote somethign that got included in an obscure 8 digit release Linux kernal, then you died fat and alone in your one bedroom apartment in front of your computer while wearing only your underwear and clutching a twinkie in your left hand, you should excercise. Believe me, running a 100m dash in 10 seconds is just as satisfying as killing a bug in your source code.
Okay, I'm done now...oh, and if any of you are wondering what inspired this rant, it was spending the first 24 years of my life as a fat out of shape and hypertensive stress ball. Since I saw through the lies, I have lost 130 lbs. I feel great, look great, I'm happy, and I actually get laid on occasion now. Oh yeah, some light reading on the subject from the New York Times (no registration required, put it helps to have Acrobat reader installed).
Solid methane on the oceans floor is nothing new, and it shouldn't be suprising that they found some up north. Here's the deal: Plants and animals die, sink to the bottom, get covered in silt, mud, whatever. They rot, giving off methane, but the methane is trapped, supercooled and under pressure. So, it forms ice crystals. One of the coolist things I've ever seen is where scientists would pull methyl ice out of cores, and set it on fire: burning ice.
Now picture this...an undersea quake or current shift uncovers a large deposity of methyl ice. The water immediately melts it, releasing large quanties of it in gaseous form. As these bubbles rise and depressurize, they may glow from certain electrical phenomena. When the surface, if some unlucky boat happens to be in the area - well, boats don't float in air, and they may fall intact below the waters surface, leaving little or no flotsam. As the gasses continue to rise, they gain more static charge, and this tends to draw compasses away from magnetic north. Sound familiar? Radios experience interference, magnetic navigation aids are fouled, planes fly thousands of miles off course, run out of gas, and crash. Even more fun, planes which fly through the gas clouds ignite explosions.
This was all in someones book, and it almost perfectly explain the wierdness of the bermuda triangle for me.
So, does this guy realize that there are print processes besides the "inkjet" out there? Granted, I'm not happy with the fact that Epson won't let me use Piezography inks in my new Stylus Pro 7600 (oh, wait...their Ultrachrome inks should be better), but they have the gaul to tell me they won't warranty my printer if I use someone else's inks. Has the Magnussen-Moss act not reached Seiko yet?
Anyway, the author can rant, but he's bitching for pissy reasons. Anyone literate in printing knows that if you are going to print something, you need to configure the driver to get the best results from each print, or use a RIP.
So, aside from the usual (yet, richly deserved) ICANN bashing, WTF does this mean to me as an owner of a dot-ourgh domain?
Double Check Your Facts (When You Have Them)
on
How to Test Your T1?
·
· Score: 1
Maybe I did'nt make this clear: I sell telecom services. It's "Certified" Internet Rate on all the contracts I pass from companies like Sprint, Qwest, and XO.
If DSL (or cable is available), there is no reason not to take advantage of it.
The Word You're Looking for is CIR
on
How to Test Your T1?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Ask him the "Certified Internet Rate". A full T-1 line delivers 1.5 MB/S through 24 separate channels, each channel is responsible for 128K. For instance, the T-1 where I work is separated into 12 circuits for internet (768kbps) and 12 for voice. My CIR is 700 kbps down, 256 up. That means I can download something at a guaranteed minimum of 700 kbps, and I can upload something at a guaranteed 256 kbps.
He cannot, by law, lie about the CIR. If he does, the company he works for gets major fragmentation from the shit that hits the fan. I can sell T-1 service all day long, but if all 24 channels only amount to a CIR of 1 MBPS, I'm hardly competitive with companies who are selling my T-1 lines with 1.4 Mbps CIR.
BTW, why are you getting a T-1 line? Are you splitting it for both voice and data, or is it pure data. A number of clients I've consulted for in the past really only needed a cable or dsl connection for their uses (basically, web collaboration and surfing).
Seriously, have you talked with her (I'm assuming gender roles, feel free to insert he or him where appropriate). You should make your feelings on the issue known, and elicit her opinion. In my experience, even the most socially concious woman is still a greedy little wench who doesn't care who has to die for her diamonds and wedding dress. But you never know, she might suprise you and say she actually would prever an Emerald Callagh (sp?).
In other news, diamonds DO have resale value, just not the kind of diamonds us phillistines have access too. And lest face it, you may think you know your four c's, but after spending some time in the jewelry business you do not know your four c's unless the only diamonds you are satisfied with cost more than a hatian boatload of gold.
As to alternatives, Canada and Australia are home to some of the finest diamonds on the market, but their production is small scale and limited. They don't have the DeBeers marketing machine going for them, but they truly are nicer. And there's my favorite non-CZ diamond simulant: Diamondique (yes, it even fools thos damn diamond detecters jewelers use sometimes).
How many of you farking morons are going to repetively spew the same damned garbage already. Look, we don't need 500 posts about the twiddler, or your personal half assed attempts at building one.
Oh, and the twiddler. It's not even fucking close. Does it fit nearly into the palm of the hand? No. Does it use "chording" of less than 10 buttons? No..
Now, being that Im' through with my rant, I would like talk about my mutant version of this keyboard which also incorporates a heavily hacked CueCat barcode scanner, but the collective has redesignated me to another cube, and I must leave now.
It's really easy. Put it in a manilla envelope, write "TPS Reports 08/2002" on the outside. Create another envelope, label it "TPS Reports 10/2002". Seal 'em, put them both on your desk. When you die, someone will have to look at those TPS Reports. Unlike your swingline stapler and the printer, noone will bother it, so you can safely leave it on your desk, but in the event of your death, someone will open the October TPS Reports wondering WTF Octobers reports were already done for, and find a reference the August TPS Reports which should have already been filed. Then, the cats out of the bag.
I still use floppy disks occasionally - like once in a blue moon for a boot disk. However, after I discovered the fine art of making bootable CD's, it's really no longer something I need to do.
My main machine has the floppy still installed, but you have to pull the side off of the case to access it, and it has to be enabled in the BIOS. That's just because you never know.
My SQL server still has a floppy as well, but *only* because I don't have anything to plug into the hole it takes up now.
Okay, so you get three whopping choices. You now, we get three choices every four years and nobody is happy with that. Who comes up with these choices anywho? I never heard of any of the three spots, and the one that was chosen was not correctly named, and oh yeah: Thursdays are league night. It should be arranged to allow the actual participants to nominate locations. What, does meetups get a kickback or something?
RSVP'ing
What's the point. I RSVP'd, couldn't find the place, came in 15 minute late (after 45 minutes of driving), nobody there - fuckit, I went home.
4 RSVP Rule
Doesn't work. Any fool can RSVP and not show up. I didn't RSVP till the last minute, which probably failed to incent enough other people. Really gotta rethink this issue...
Other Issues:WTF Is In Charge Here?
So, I've got a bunch of cartoon nicknames (which I recognize from/.), but no real names, no contact numbers, no nothing. So when shit like what happens tonight (major FUBAR) happens, what's my lead? What is my incentive to even bother going. We're GEEKS - if we had outgoing personalities and social skills, we wouldn't need meetups!
Other Issues:Choosing a Date/Time
For starters, Thursday is fucked. Wednesday is much better for me, because it's hump day and there's usually b33r specials. 7:00 is dually fucked. I have a workout regiment that I will not compromise for anything, and I've got 4 recruits that depend on me for motivation and guidance. It is simply not an option for me to miss because I still have a little ways to go in my PT, and it doesn't set a very good example for me to knock-off early to "hang". But then, I'm not special. Some people work nights. Some people would prefer saturday mornings, or friday nights. The bottom line is, this arbitrary date inconveniences a goodly portion of potential attendees. There needs to be a way for meetup groups to self-manage the venue, date, and time.
Other Issues: Consolidation
Okay, I live with about 4 million other people here, and we could easily have the Phoenix/Sun Valley metroplex up on the list. Instead, we (like so many other places) are fragmented. If we could get all the cities together, we could have a hella LAN party. There needs to be an option to allow smaller groups to integrate with larger groups.
Other Issues: The Interface
It's clumsy. Simple, elegant, but fractured. You need to have a menu with all the activities a person can do for their meetup account.
Final Analysis
I've got two months before I ship out - I don't honestly think I'm going to bother with the next great meetup. It's a great concept, I was psyched about it, but the flopping noise from the meetup in my area startled me, and I think I would've been happier going to the sneek preview of the new Austin Powers movie. Keep working on it, and quick - before someone steals the idea, does it better, and gets the girl, the glory, and the fame.
Slashdot Mirror
Why should GM bother with a dinosaur like EV-1 when they have the next generation of electric vehicles going into preproduction testing?
Lets assume NASA was to get specific funding to do this. I would foresee NASA becoming more of a Grand Inquisitor of sorts, and anyone who has independant theories - plausible or not - would have to go through NASA to get any due consideration. Keep in mind the myriad of independant new branches of science and technology which start out with "crackpots". IBM never gave microcomputers a second look, and considered mainframe and minicomputers to be the future until the day came when Apples and DECs were taking up desktop real estate. Big blue had the muscle to catch up, and the free market mandate to give us the PC/AT. NASA, being a government agency, would simply be spending taxpayer money on maintaining an inflexibile artifice while other bodies were forging ahead, or worse, being trampled under by NASA.
"Largely because of tough actions by the record companies to combat free music sites through the courts, legislation and even through techno-guerrilla tactics, there is a noticeable change of sentiment in a small segment of the downloading cognoscenti. Though their numbers are low, many are the early adapters who spot a trend first."
I love it. These fucking idiots in the record industry didn't even offer pay for download services when Napster and their ilk came on the scene. These dildos aren't inventing a new trend, they're finally getting a clue - many consumers find their product too damn inconvenient. I have to go to a physical location, find a physical CD, get assaulted by mind numbed liberal children who think their GenY hipness overrides my GenX old-n-bustedness, just to find the latest Incubus. God forbid I be unfortunate enough to not have a virgin megastore nearby when I want a copy of Nina Simone ("who?"). And then, what I have is stuck on a piece of shit plastic disk that - when scratched - is nothing more than a shiny coaster.
Then enter P2P networks. I can get any song, anytime, anywhere, in multiple formats (ISO, CDA, MP3, OGG, WAV, et al). Hell, it's free too...I'd pay on a per song basis - but hey, that would eliminate 90% of the crap some 'arteests' put out today.
The record industry may have gotten a clue just in time to save their asses for the short term and justify their narrow field of vision, but don't expect them to be around much longer if they don't overhaul their business models. Put out a quality product, give greater flexibility in buying the product, and learn to deliver the product - not expect it to be picked up.
There are many fine sites out there with information on building subwoofer enclosures. While the construction of this one was fairly robust and adequate, the design will likely have a very poor response. There are too many no-no's here to cover for a SlashDot comment. Y'all should try some real sites for a start:
It appears that humans adapt very quickly to metabolic intake, and we may not even need evolution to adapt our dietary needs. As long as the available sustinance is relatively close to our typical diets. We had carbo intake even when we spent time chasing herds around, since there was a lot of gathering going on. Anthropologically speaking, setting down into agricultural societies has more to do with the ease (and safety) of gathering compared to chasing herds of pissed of bison around.
A calorie (most properly called a gram/calorie) is the amount of heat required to raise one gram of water by one degree celcius. Heat is the movement of thermal energy, NOT the amount of thermal energy involved in a reaction. A drop (1 cc) of water at a given thermal temperature has more heat than a 1 cm2 square of aluminum, because water doesn't hold its thermal energy as well.
What's the point in this remedial physics lesson? Tell me, what the hell does a 'calorie' have to do with the bodies metabolic processes? The body doesn't combust foods to generate energy, nor is the body made all of water. Even if it was, water is not consistant in its heat value because it is a fluid. So using "calories" is about the most horse-shit dead reckoning you can do. It's like saying that red cars go faster. Well, the most popular color for sports cars is red, right?
The energy in food derived from the amount of ATP that can be derived from the various chemicals in it through the least amount of digestion. Sugars pack the most, followed by starches, followed by carbs, then fats. Proteins have almost no energy (except the ATP in the cells already), we need them to provide essential amino acids for us (those are the amino acids that our body cannot make itself). Amino acids build the body.
When you buy "low fat" foods, all you are buying are un-naturally processed foods where the fats have been displaced by carbs, usually really simple ones. If you don't use those carbs, they go to fat.
For the last time, your body doesn't work like an internal combustion engine, so calories are about as worthless as tits on a boar hog. Answer me this: If calories are the ultimate measure of energy intake, than how can people who go on starvation diets (i.e., 800 calories per day or less) actually gain weight?
BTW, Average americans couldn't afford vegetables 'back in the day'. Any idiot who studied the industrial revolution knows that vegetables were far more expensive than just going out and shooting your dinner prior to the industrial revolution (when durable cans made packing and shipping veggies like corn economical).
how apt...look, if you don't have the cahones to type asshole, then dont type at all. Bitch.
Absolutely, and I'll tell you why: Because you have a reason. Most people who become vegetarian, lacto-ova, or vegan, do so based on ignorance, not on philosophy. They do it because PETA tells them that animals suffer because of their eating habits. I try to buy free range meat from animals that lived happy and die fast (for the reasons mentioned above). If we could grow meat without an animal attached, (which looks to be a very real possibility), and it was just as healthy as the real thing, we could end animal suffering. But that's not a reality we have right now.
Others become vegetarians because they're told it's healtheir. Well, I've met very few 'healthy' vegetarians, not because vegetarianism is not healthy, but because they don't know how to budget their diet to include essential proteins as provided by nuts, soy, and other plants. They don't know how to include diet supplements that provide them with things they aren't getting from plants.
Finally, there are people who interpret their religeous teachings (or are directly taught by their faith) that eating animals is bad. I can respect this whole heartedly. In general, these people also come from a back ground of vegetarians for the same reasons, and their body is more adapted to their diet. A Sikh from Delhi will live healither off a vegetarian diet than a Hunn from Berlin. People who adopt religeons that are extracultural need to be aware of thier metabolic needs and supplement for them if they expect to have a long healthy life.
You sound like you've got your diet set up right for who you are and how you live, and that's easy to respect. Unfortunately, I can't invite you to my next barbecue; You might offend my carnivore freinds ; )
People on low-carb diets typically shun vegetables. If they get any carbs, it's from leafy greens.
But if they are on high protein diets, they're getting more fat, right? How do you explain that people on no-carb diets typically lose weight very quickly? Ignoring the importance - the VITAL importance - of fats in ones diet is dangerous.
So you ask, why are people eating more fat? WHO SAYS THEY ARE? Go to the store, and you'll see that nearly every product has a low fat/no fat equivalent. As a whole, we consume less fat in this country than we did 50 years ago. Do you know what they are doing to make those no/low fat foods taste as good as the original? They are replacing the fats with carbs. A quick look at the label shows this. Even McDonalds has reduced the amount of fat in their french frieds TWICE in the last 15 years by switching oils, but they aren't any more healthy for you. French fries...made from potatos...potatos are starchy tubers....starches...are we having a break through yet?
Somehow I am going to convince you (keep in mind, I've lost almost 48% of my body in the last two years by eating healthy like i talk about above. How much have you lost on your low fat starvation diets?
Well, thank you. I feel so enlightened by your educated supposition, and it's one word conclusion: "bullshit". Perhaps you'd like to explain how it is that everyone did'nt die of heart disease before we discovered how to make fat free foods? Yes, let me poke some more holes here. The average american diet prior to 1900 consisted of MOSTLY MEAT. Vegetables were fragile and did not ship well. Meat could be preserved for several months merely by salting it. So tell me, how did generations of Americans (and Europeans) live long, happy, healthy lives eatching fatty meat foods loaded with salts?
Here's another tidbit for you: Cows don't eat meat. Cows are vegetarian. How the hell do they get so fat if they don't eat fat? BLING BLING!
Finally, ponder this: Fat is almost a calabolic food. That is, it takes so much energy to break fats down into their glucogenic equivalents, that the body realizes very little net energy profit. I"m not talking calories here, because you're body doesn't burn food. Calories are useless. What you have to look for is the energy content of a food, and meats provide none. Fats provide very little. Candy bars, twinkies, and doughnuts pack the spare tires on like a champ, and leave you hungry for more because your insulin rockets through the roof.
I'd love to hear your educated response.
No one diet holds true for everyone. I liked to that article because I felt it was the most respectful treatment of fats and proteins in the popular media today. The bottom line is to eat healthy whole foods prepared with natural processes, and avoid foods that came out of test tubes. Now, for me a high protein diet (50% meat, 5% fats, 35% complex carbs) works the best. My friend Danielle is different. Her metabolism is so high that she can eat all the junk food she wants and not gain a lb (she's a damn twig!). That'll change for her by the time she's 37, and we've seen it in her mom and aunt.
Different people evolved differently. there are tribes in Africa where the diet is almost 100% protein, and heart disease is unheard of. There are cultures in the middle east where you eat little to no meat, and they are equally as healthy. America is the connecting point for all of these cultures, and our American diet is generally incompatible with body types that are the result of millenia of evolution. What is important is that everyone finds their own diet, and not the diet that the USDA, AMA, or FDA tells them is healthy.
Dr. Dean Adell? If that's who you're referring to, then you need to change the channel and listed to Dr. Lance Dreyer. I think he's cured a lot more fatties than Adell has.
As for this "no evidence" thing, it's absolutely wrong. There are reams of research on the issue of hyperinsulinism and insulin resistance that show it is directly the result of our voracious appettites for sugars and ultra-simple carbs. Even the article itself points out the corelary between Italian's penchants for pasta and big distended bellies. I'd dig it all up for you, but I have a policy that if it requies research, I post it to K-5 instead of slashdot.
Just wondering, because it's just such a petty thing...not to mention OFF FUCKING TOPIC!
Every where I go I'm inundated with low fat this, low fat that, no fat, no cholesterol, not meat, et al. It's been 20 years since the AMA dropped the bombshell that fat was killing us, and in spite of the absolute lack of information to back it up (and where it exists, lets call a spade a spade and admit that it was junk science at best). Everyone has been pushing this anti-fat nonsense, yet Americans are getting fatter and fatter, heart disease is on the up as is diabetes, and millions of Americans find that they can't control their cholesterol no matter how hard they try - and now they are on dangerous liver-killing drugs to try.
When will America cast of this "fat is bad" myth, and accept that the real evil - the only evil - in our diets is all the processed crap and high sugar/carbs we consume? In 1910, the average American consumed roughly 1.5 lbs of sugar (and it was unrefined cane sugar at that). Heart disease wasn't even something most doctors knew about because people were dying of crap like tuberculosis and influenze far more often then from heart attacks. Fast forward to today: The average American consumes some 118 lbs of refined sugar. Food makers sell prepackaged foods which are highly profitable, chocked full of artificial flavors and colors, and made mostly from fillers. Labels like "low fat" and "no fat" make people salivate like pavlovian dogs when they think that it must be heart healthy, but eveyone is ignoring the obvious. Scientists still can't tell us precisely what roles cholesterol play, they can't agree on what is good, what is bad, and nobody has a clue on how cholesterol goes from lipids in the blood stream to plaque along the artery walls.
And the diet fads: First we're told that vegetarianism is the way to go, but every vegetarian I've ever met has been relatively unremarkable in their health, and never any better off than before they made their "commitment". Then there are 'hollywood' diet plans that offer people the chance to lose gobs of weight in only weeks, but what they don't mention is that you'll gain all that weight back and then some.
The only vegetarians/vegans I respect are the ones who go on the diet because of concerns about the treatment of food animals. There are alternatives: Nuts, vitamins, soy, etc. But outside of that, anyone who foreswears meat for 'health concerns' is a stark raving fool who is willfully depriving themselves of a number of essential amino acids needed to keep the body healthy. And before you go slathering that baby back ribs with gobs of barbecue sauce, look at how much sugar/sucrose/fructrose is in there. In fact, look at all your foods. If it has "ose", "ayse", or anything you can't pronounce you should toss it in the trash. People rave about the evil of sodium, but if you're drinking water and sweating, sodium is the least of your worries. Watch your intake of sugar and simple carbs. Ban yourself from white bread, cornbread, and anythign that isn't 100% whole grain. Walk straight pass the aisle with all the potato chips, pretend you did'nt even see the pastas, and get your ass into the produce section. If you want to be healthy, make sure there is not more than a few steps between you and your food. And for those of us still eating meat - know where your meat comes from. Free range, hormone free, non-corn-fed meat is the only way to go. And if you don't have a concience, consider this: stress causes animals to pump natural hormones out that make meat taste gamy. Make sure your meat comes from animals that lived happy, and died fast.
One more thing (and I dont think anyone can disagree with this): Unplug yourself, put the remote down, and go OUT SIDE! You see that big burning ball of fire in the sky? That's called a sun. Try to expose yourself to it more often, it's a great source of vitamin D (not directly obviously). Here's a concept that works: RUN. Sweat. Give yourself some cramps somewhere besides your wrists for a change. Unless you want your legacy to be that you wrote somethign that got included in an obscure 8 digit release Linux kernal, then you died fat and alone in your one bedroom apartment in front of your computer while wearing only your underwear and clutching a twinkie in your left hand, you should excercise. Believe me, running a 100m dash in 10 seconds is just as satisfying as killing a bug in your source code.
Okay, I'm done now...oh, and if any of you are wondering what inspired this rant, it was spending the first 24 years of my life as a fat out of shape and hypertensive stress ball. Since I saw through the lies, I have lost 130 lbs. I feel great, look great, I'm happy, and I actually get laid on occasion now. Oh yeah, some light reading on the subject from the New York Times (no registration required, put it helps to have Acrobat reader installed).
Solid methane on the oceans floor is nothing new, and it shouldn't be suprising that they found some up north. Here's the deal: Plants and animals die, sink to the bottom, get covered in silt, mud, whatever. They rot, giving off methane, but the methane is trapped, supercooled and under pressure. So, it forms ice crystals. One of the coolist things I've ever seen is where scientists would pull methyl ice out of cores, and set it on fire: burning ice.
Now picture this...an undersea quake or current shift uncovers a large deposity of methyl ice. The water immediately melts it, releasing large quanties of it in gaseous form. As these bubbles rise and depressurize, they may glow from certain electrical phenomena. When the surface, if some unlucky boat happens to be in the area - well, boats don't float in air, and they may fall intact below the waters surface, leaving little or no flotsam. As the gasses continue to rise, they gain more static charge, and this tends to draw compasses away from magnetic north. Sound familiar? Radios experience interference, magnetic navigation aids are fouled, planes fly thousands of miles off course, run out of gas, and crash. Even more fun, planes which fly through the gas clouds ignite explosions.
This was all in someones book, and it almost perfectly explain the wierdness of the bermuda triangle for me.
So, does this guy realize that there are print processes besides the "inkjet" out there? Granted, I'm not happy with the fact that Epson won't let me use Piezography inks in my new Stylus Pro 7600 (oh, wait...their Ultrachrome inks should be better), but they have the gaul to tell me they won't warranty my printer if I use someone else's inks. Has the Magnussen-Moss act not reached Seiko yet?
Anyway, the author can rant, but he's bitching for pissy reasons. Anyone literate in printing knows that if you are going to print something, you need to configure the driver to get the best results from each print, or use a RIP.
So, aside from the usual (yet, richly deserved) ICANN bashing, WTF does this mean to me as an owner of a dot-ourgh domain?
Maybe I did'nt make this clear: I sell telecom services. It's "Certified" Internet Rate on all the contracts I pass from companies like Sprint, Qwest, and XO.
If DSL (or cable is available), there is no reason not to take advantage of it.
Ask him the "Certified Internet Rate". A full T-1 line delivers 1.5 MB/S through 24 separate channels, each channel is responsible for 128K. For instance, the T-1 where I work is separated into 12 circuits for internet (768kbps) and 12 for voice. My CIR is 700 kbps down, 256 up. That means I can download something at a guaranteed minimum of 700 kbps, and I can upload something at a guaranteed 256 kbps.
He cannot, by law, lie about the CIR. If he does, the company he works for gets major fragmentation from the shit that hits the fan. I can sell T-1 service all day long, but if all 24 channels only amount to a CIR of 1 MBPS, I'm hardly competitive with companies who are selling my T-1 lines with 1.4 Mbps CIR.
BTW, why are you getting a T-1 line? Are you splitting it for both voice and data, or is it pure data. A number of clients I've consulted for in the past really only needed a cable or dsl connection for their uses (basically, web collaboration and surfing).
Seriously, have you talked with her (I'm assuming gender roles, feel free to insert he or him where appropriate). You should make your feelings on the issue known, and elicit her opinion. In my experience, even the most socially concious woman is still a greedy little wench who doesn't care who has to die for her diamonds and wedding dress. But you never know, she might suprise you and say she actually would prever an Emerald Callagh (sp?).
In other news, diamonds DO have resale value, just not the kind of diamonds us phillistines have access too. And lest face it, you may think you know your four c's, but after spending some time in the jewelry business you do not know your four c's unless the only diamonds you are satisfied with cost more than a hatian boatload of gold.
As to alternatives, Canada and Australia are home to some of the finest diamonds on the market, but their production is small scale and limited. They don't have the DeBeers marketing machine going for them, but they truly are nicer. And there's my favorite non-CZ diamond simulant: Diamondique (yes, it even fools thos damn diamond detecters jewelers use sometimes).
How many of you farking morons are going to repetively spew the same damned garbage already. Look, we don't need 500 posts about the twiddler, or your personal half assed attempts at building one.
Oh, and the twiddler. It's not even fucking close. Does it fit nearly into the palm of the hand? No. Does it use "chording" of less than 10 buttons? No..
Now, being that Im' through with my rant, I would like talk about my mutant version of this keyboard which also incorporates a heavily hacked CueCat barcode scanner, but the collective has redesignated me to another cube, and I must leave now.
It's really easy. Put it in a manilla envelope, write "TPS Reports 08/2002" on the outside. Create another envelope, label it "TPS Reports 10/2002". Seal 'em, put them both on your desk. When you die, someone will have to look at those TPS Reports. Unlike your swingline stapler and the printer, noone will bother it, so you can safely leave it on your desk, but in the event of your death, someone will open the October TPS Reports wondering WTF Octobers reports were already done for, and find a reference the August TPS Reports which should have already been filed. Then, the cats out of the bag.
I still use floppy disks occasionally - like once in a blue moon for a boot disk. However, after I discovered the fine art of making bootable CD's, it's really no longer something I need to do.
My main machine has the floppy still installed, but you have to pull the side off of the case to access it, and it has to be enabled in the BIOS. That's just because you never know.
My SQL server still has a floppy as well, but *only* because I don't have anything to plug into the hole it takes up now.
Venu Voting
/.), but no real names, no contact numbers, no nothing. So when shit like what happens tonight (major FUBAR) happens, what's my lead? What is my incentive to even bother going. We're GEEKS - if we had outgoing personalities and social skills, we wouldn't need meetups!
Okay, so you get three whopping choices. You now, we get three choices every four years and nobody is happy with that. Who comes up with these choices anywho? I never heard of any of the three spots, and the one that was chosen was not correctly named, and oh yeah: Thursdays are league night. It should be arranged to allow the actual participants to nominate locations. What, does meetups get a kickback or something?
RSVP'ing
What's the point. I RSVP'd, couldn't find the place, came in 15 minute late (after 45 minutes of driving), nobody there - fuckit, I went home.
4 RSVP Rule
Doesn't work. Any fool can RSVP and not show up. I didn't RSVP till the last minute, which probably failed to incent enough other people. Really gotta rethink this issue...
Other Issues:WTF Is In Charge Here?
So, I've got a bunch of cartoon nicknames (which I recognize from
Other Issues:Choosing a Date/Time
For starters, Thursday is fucked. Wednesday is much better for me, because it's hump day and there's usually b33r specials. 7:00 is dually fucked. I have a workout regiment that I will not compromise for anything, and I've got 4 recruits that depend on me for motivation and guidance. It is simply not an option for me to miss because I still have a little ways to go in my PT, and it doesn't set a very good example for me to knock-off early to "hang". But then, I'm not special. Some people work nights. Some people would prefer saturday mornings, or friday nights. The bottom line is, this arbitrary date inconveniences a goodly portion of potential attendees. There needs to be a way for meetup groups to self-manage the venue, date, and time.
Other Issues: Consolidation
Okay, I live with about 4 million other people here, and we could easily have the Phoenix/Sun Valley metroplex up on the list. Instead, we (like so many other places) are fragmented. If we could get all the cities together, we could have a hella LAN party. There needs to be an option to allow smaller groups to integrate with larger groups.
Other Issues: The Interface
It's clumsy. Simple, elegant, but fractured. You need to have a menu with all the activities a person can do for their meetup account.
Final Analysis
I've got two months before I ship out - I don't honestly think I'm going to bother with the next great meetup. It's a great concept, I was psyched about it, but the flopping noise from the meetup in my area startled me, and I think I would've been happier going to the sneek preview of the new Austin Powers movie. Keep working on it, and quick - before someone steals the idea, does it better, and gets the girl, the glory, and the fame.
I said the same thing last month about Phoenix/Mesa/Tempe/Scottsdale/Gilbert/Chandler/Gle ndale/Peoria blah blah blah stupid lamers...