"I wonder what would happen if somebody decided to record and archive all "incidents of data exchange" on the UK government's end, and then make that data publicly available?"
This will include an awful lot of banking data. The most interesting banking data is doubtless that connected to gov't officials.;)
That's true, but at the level we're talking about in TFA, we're still mystified by seeds, and might have discovered tilling the ground with a pointed stick. Try that someday, if you want to experience real backbreaking labour... especially in grasslands. In fact, healthy grasslands are just about untillable, beyond a household vegetable patch that will take you a month to prepare, without plow beasts and the related technology (we're not even up to iron plowshares yet).
"Good stuff grows here" is gatherer, not farmer, and requires no labour whatever other than occasionally going to pick the stuff, or driving off competing deer. Trouble is, it tends to be extremely seasonal. Frex, you've got about two weeks to harvest grains before they fall to the ground and you pick them up one kernel at a time.. not practical with pre-selective-breeding grains, which are very small (and avariciously competed for by small rodents).
I used to harvest a sort of dryland precursor to rice that grows wild in Montana. It has big tasty seeds compared to most wild grasses, yet a whole day's work resulted in just one small bowl of food. In the same time and with less effort, I could have killed a couple dozen squirrels and had meat for a week.
That's probably true (especially given that many primitives eat grubs of various sorts). So it's not an exact "reason" for smoking meat, but rather a nebulous cloud of reasons that happen to all wind up with the same goal (edible meat) and result (preserved meat).
Which is true of many such developments -- they're not either/or situations, but rather an accumulation of loosely related processes, and sometimes of outright coincidences.
Don't confuse the development level of instinct and physical abilities with mental abilities. A dog that is as mentally mature as it will ever get (ie. to the level of a 6 year old human child) is an ADULT physically and wrt survival instincts. It is the equivalent of an ADULT human in terms of total maturity.
Dogs are the same way. Mine can tell which pup is picked out as sold, and that one will misbehave on the day it's to leave, often by hiding, no matter how bold it is normally. If it weren't 2am I could tell you a lot of stories about that!
I'd have phrased it "a good idea of the destruction that extra cooking does" !!
I once stayed in a hotel with a fine restaurant downstairs... the rooms had their steak descriptions posted. Doneness ranged from "Very Rare -- still frozen in the middle" to "Well Done -- TSK TSK!!"
Me, I like 'em scorched on the outside, and lukewarm in the middle.:)
"...animals that will continue to do the same thing over and over again, even when it they should be able to see that it is pointless..."
That's an interesting insight on "religion"; indeed, it is very like certain animal behaviours. (speaking from the observatory of a pro dog trainer with almost 40 years experience)
An AC proclaims, "Man is the ONLY animal with an otherwise unexplainable urge to worship."
Well, explain that to some of my dogs, who are rather more worshipful of me than even the most abjectly religious human is of his god(s), and they actively seek opportunity to "worship".
I think it's a thinking-brain thing, a need to make emotional connections to what we perceive as our superiors. Humans have worshipped not only intangible gods, but also gods embodied as lions and elephants, so it's not just the "unexplainable", it's also "that which can clearly dominate me".
[pro dog trainer hat] I've had dogs run back and forth dragging a stick along the side of the kennel, or better yet along corrugated metal -- obviously purely to make noise, and exactly like a little kid dragging a stick along the fence for the same purpose.
And it took me a long time to figure out why some like to dig inside plastic barrels -- but I finally concluded that they're "drumming". They do it because they like the particular noise it makes.
I'm not sure I'd call it music, but it's definitely manufactured, specific noise made for the personal pleasure of the dog.
[pro dog trainer hat] I've had dogs purposefully make a gawdawful mess, then stand back and gaze upon their creation with evident satisfaction.
However, as the primary cleanup dude, I somehow fail to appreciate the artistry in a kennel that's been liberally pawpainted with shit.:/
In my observation, a species' level of intelligence and culture are a matter of where development STOPS. Dogs stop developing at about the level of a 5 or 6 year old human child.
People will revert to normal behaviour once they emerge from the containment of a cult, too.
Dogs will also often react to something not immediately peggable on an object, such as a thunderstorm, by baring their teeth and growling. In my pro dog trainer incarnation, I take this to mean they're doing the canine equivalent of "WTF?! Who said that??"
And from this combined data, I conclude that we are all pigeons.;)
Human teeth are structurally akin to dogs and bears which are also omnivores, tho we're a bit more generalized. Our molars are edged cups, not flat grinders; our premolars are pinching slicers. We also lack the continuously-growing incisors and laminante molars of typical herbivores. I'd guess our teeth started out as carnivores, but have become more generalized as we evolved.
And if hominids are vegetarians by evolution, explain to me why chimps have fangs and why they regularly hunt and eat monkeys. -- The only strict vegetarian apes are endangered species, unable to adapt to new or different diets when their old diet is no longer available. Hmmm!!!
Primitive farming, using stone age tools, is *vastly* more time-consuming than primitive hunting. And the plants of yester-era were not nearly as productive as those we enjoy today. Look up what American maize (corn) looked like just 400 years ago for a good example.
And repelling flies keeps maggots out of the meat, meaning less waste before it gets dried out to the point that it no longer interests flies. Most primitives to this day don't give a flip about flies, they're just a fact of life. But meat consumed by (or ruined by) maggots rather than yourself... that WAS your dinner, so maggots are distinctly undesirable.
Given this chain of thought, and that primitives didn't know fly eggs hatch into maggots -- I begin to suspect that it wasn't the flies they cared about preventing, but rather, the maggots... ie. the same "magic" that prevented maggots happened to discourage flies too. What a coincidence!
Salt or sugar curing can help achieve the same goal -- even if the meat still attracts flies, it's no longer viable for maggots (nor for most bacterias); either disrupts their water balance rather drastically.
What I worry about, is that in this rush to "counteract global warming" (conveniently forgetting that a few decades ago, the paranoia was about "global cooling"!) we'll both disrupt and accelerate the normal cycles (which include both ice ages and warm periods) and wind up with exaggerated cycles that rather than giving us hundreds of years to adapt, come on us in a matter of just a few years; and that rather than staying within the parameters that the ecosystem has adapted to over millennia, will be hostile to most current species and systems.
Considering how little we understand long-term weather and climate, I'd say it's smarter to keep our hands off the controls, lest we crash the planet BY our efforts at course corrections. Our unintentional contributions to the atmosphere haven't caused any huge changes on a millennial scale. But *deliberately* fucking with the system -- that, I think, is more likely to go severely and irreparably wrong. And we don't have a spare planet to beta-test.
Consider that 90% of the volume of the world's sea ice is already underwater, and that ice contracts slightly when it melts. (Water is unlike other materials, in that it expands when frozen.) How much would melting all the world's ice raise ocean levels? I've seen figures as low as a few INCHES.
How much would be offset by the fact that when it's warmer, more water evaporates? That's going to come down as rain somewhere, and some of it in areas where it won't become immediate runoff.
That might even be a net benefit as arid and desert areas are likely to receive more rainfall.
I don't see a great deal of difference between the sports of tiger taunting and rodeo clown;)
But I think you're right -- dressage vs rodeo events (say barrel-racing or pole-bending, if you want teamwork as the foundation) is a lot like baseball vs football. One is all detail work, and the other at least LOOKS like all macro work, which is a lot easier to see under stadium conditions.
Slashdot Mirror
I randomly clicked the Brussels download location, and was handed a PDF without being asked for anything.
Interesting dissection of all the things we mean by "privacy".
"I wonder what would happen if somebody decided to record and archive all "incidents of data exchange" on the UK government's end, and then make that data publicly available?"
This will include an awful lot of banking data. The most interesting banking data is doubtless that connected to gov't officials. ;)
It costs them very little to hold a gun to your head and demand "Hand over the encryption keys."
Why do things the hard way when the easy way generates so much more fear in the sheep?
Doesn't Britain already have a law in place requiring you to hand over encryption keys on demand??
I see that as a very short hop from "on demand" to "as required by law for all encryption users".
Tho I don't suppose it's any worse than the slimey type of bleu cheese!!
Think of it as cheese with bacon bits. ;)
Oh, I wasn't disagreeing, just making further points, since we get so many "we evolved as vegans" nutjobs around here. I guess you are what you eat. ;)
That's true, but at the level we're talking about in TFA, we're still mystified by seeds, and might have discovered tilling the ground with a pointed stick. Try that someday, if you want to experience real backbreaking labour... especially in grasslands. In fact, healthy grasslands are just about untillable, beyond a household vegetable patch that will take you a month to prepare, without plow beasts and the related technology (we're not even up to iron plowshares yet).
"Good stuff grows here" is gatherer, not farmer, and requires no labour whatever other than occasionally going to pick the stuff, or driving off competing deer. Trouble is, it tends to be extremely seasonal. Frex, you've got about two weeks to harvest grains before they fall to the ground and you pick them up one kernel at a time .. not practical with pre-selective-breeding grains, which are very small (and avariciously competed for by small rodents).
I used to harvest a sort of dryland precursor to rice that grows wild in Montana. It has big tasty seeds compared to most wild grasses, yet a whole day's work resulted in just one small bowl of food. In the same time and with less effort, I could have killed a couple dozen squirrels and had meat for a week.
That's probably true (especially given that many primitives eat grubs of various sorts). So it's not an exact "reason" for smoking meat, but rather a nebulous cloud of reasons that happen to all wind up with the same goal (edible meat) and result (preserved meat).
Which is true of many such developments -- they're not either/or situations, but rather an accumulation of loosely related processes, and sometimes of outright coincidences.
Don't confuse the development level of instinct and physical abilities with mental abilities. A dog that is as mentally mature as it will ever get (ie. to the level of a 6 year old human child) is an ADULT physically and wrt survival instincts. It is the equivalent of an ADULT human in terms of total maturity.
Dogs are the same way. Mine can tell which pup is picked out as sold, and that one will misbehave on the day it's to leave, often by hiding, no matter how bold it is normally. If it weren't 2am I could tell you a lot of stories about that!
I'd have phrased it "a good idea of the destruction that extra cooking does" !!
I once stayed in a hotel with a fine restaurant downstairs... the rooms had their steak descriptions posted. Doneness ranged from "Very Rare -- still frozen in the middle" to "Well Done -- TSK TSK!!"
Me, I like 'em scorched on the outside, and lukewarm in the middle. :)
"...animals that will continue to do the same thing over and over again, even when it they should be able to see that it is pointless..."
That's an interesting insight on "religion"; indeed, it is very like certain animal behaviours. (speaking from the observatory of a pro dog trainer with almost 40 years experience)
An AC proclaims, "Man is the ONLY animal with an otherwise unexplainable urge to worship."
Well, explain that to some of my dogs, who are rather more worshipful of me than even the most abjectly religious human is of his god(s), and they actively seek opportunity to "worship".
I think it's a thinking-brain thing, a need to make emotional connections to what we perceive as our superiors. Humans have worshipped not only intangible gods, but also gods embodied as lions and elephants, so it's not just the "unexplainable", it's also "that which can clearly dominate me".
[pro dog trainer hat] I've had dogs run back and forth dragging a stick along the side of the kennel, or better yet along corrugated metal -- obviously purely to make noise, and exactly like a little kid dragging a stick along the fence for the same purpose.
And it took me a long time to figure out why some like to dig inside plastic barrels -- but I finally concluded that they're "drumming". They do it because they like the particular noise it makes.
I'm not sure I'd call it music, but it's definitely manufactured, specific noise made for the personal pleasure of the dog.
[pro dog trainer hat] I've had dogs purposefully make a gawdawful mess, then stand back and gaze upon their creation with evident satisfaction.
However, as the primary cleanup dude, I somehow fail to appreciate the artistry in a kennel that's been liberally pawpainted with shit. :/
In my observation, a species' level of intelligence and culture are a matter of where development STOPS. Dogs stop developing at about the level of a 5 or 6 year old human child.
"This is my body. This is my blood. He who partakes of me..."
Yep, sounds like dogs can get religion. ;)
People will revert to normal behaviour once they emerge from the containment of a cult, too.
Dogs will also often react to something not immediately peggable on an object, such as a thunderstorm, by baring their teeth and growling. In my pro dog trainer incarnation, I take this to mean they're doing the canine equivalent of "WTF?! Who said that??"
And from this combined data, I conclude that we are all pigeons. ;)
Human teeth are structurally akin to dogs and bears which are also omnivores, tho we're a bit more generalized. Our molars are edged cups, not flat grinders; our premolars are pinching slicers. We also lack the continuously-growing incisors and laminante molars of typical herbivores. I'd guess our teeth started out as carnivores, but have become more generalized as we evolved.
And if hominids are vegetarians by evolution, explain to me why chimps have fangs and why they regularly hunt and eat monkeys. -- The only strict vegetarian apes are endangered species, unable to adapt to new or different diets when their old diet is no longer available. Hmmm!!!
Primitive farming, using stone age tools, is *vastly* more time-consuming than primitive hunting. And the plants of yester-era were not nearly as productive as those we enjoy today. Look up what American maize (corn) looked like just 400 years ago for a good example.
And repelling flies keeps maggots out of the meat, meaning less waste before it gets dried out to the point that it no longer interests flies. Most primitives to this day don't give a flip about flies, they're just a fact of life. But meat consumed by (or ruined by) maggots rather than yourself... that WAS your dinner, so maggots are distinctly undesirable.
Given this chain of thought, and that primitives didn't know fly eggs hatch into maggots -- I begin to suspect that it wasn't the flies they cared about preventing, but rather, the maggots... ie. the same "magic" that prevented maggots happened to discourage flies too. What a coincidence!
Salt or sugar curing can help achieve the same goal -- even if the meat still attracts flies, it's no longer viable for maggots (nor for most bacterias); either disrupts their water balance rather drastically.
It's not the space that will kill you. It's the bandwidth bill after someone decides to leech the entire collection.
Hmmm... so the opposite isn't equally true?????
I'm actually old enough to remember the "global cooling" scare. Funny thing, all the same "causes" were pointed at then, too.
I suggest we look a bit further afield... say, that bright thing in the sky with a mind of its own??
All good points.
What I worry about, is that in this rush to "counteract global warming" (conveniently forgetting that a few decades ago, the paranoia was about "global cooling"!) we'll both disrupt and accelerate the normal cycles (which include both ice ages and warm periods) and wind up with exaggerated cycles that rather than giving us hundreds of years to adapt, come on us in a matter of just a few years; and that rather than staying within the parameters that the ecosystem has adapted to over millennia, will be hostile to most current species and systems.
Considering how little we understand long-term weather and climate, I'd say it's smarter to keep our hands off the controls, lest we crash the planet BY our efforts at course corrections. Our unintentional contributions to the atmosphere haven't caused any huge changes on a millennial scale. But *deliberately* fucking with the system -- that, I think, is more likely to go severely and irreparably wrong. And we don't have a spare planet to beta-test.
Consider that 90% of the volume of the world's sea ice is already underwater, and that ice contracts slightly when it melts. (Water is unlike other materials, in that it expands when frozen.) How much would melting all the world's ice raise ocean levels? I've seen figures as low as a few INCHES.
How much would be offset by the fact that when it's warmer, more water evaporates? That's going to come down as rain somewhere, and some of it in areas where it won't become immediate runoff.
That might even be a net benefit as arid and desert areas are likely to receive more rainfall.
I don't see a great deal of difference between the sports of tiger taunting and rodeo clown ;)
But I think you're right -- dressage vs rodeo events (say barrel-racing or pole-bending, if you want teamwork as the foundation) is a lot like baseball vs football. One is all detail work, and the other at least LOOKS like all macro work, which is a lot easier to see under stadium conditions.