It's merely an anecdote and I stated clearly that it was such. Nor did I state that I was a statistician of any kind. I'm just saying in my limited personal experience and the stories told to me by many teachers that they spend a vast amount of their time merely attempting to maintain order in their classrooms. Most teachers I know feel lucky if they actually get to impart knowledge and inspire learning.
It's a sad state of affairs and probably worthy of rigorous study. My posting was never intended to represent itself as the results of such a study.
You seem unreasonably hostile and I hope you find a way to deal with that and have a happy life.
Oh wait, someone has to teach them the stuff they're being quized about in the first place... which is like 95% of the job.
The experience I've had volunteering in my ex-girlfriend's class room is that about 80% of it is keeping the kids in their seats and not disrupting the other students. Another 10 to 15% is administrative tasks put on the teacher. The actual imparting of knowledge and a desire to learn is a much smaller percentage.
You'd be better served by spending that 2 years focusing on a graduate degree - if you can get into a school.
The masters degree will most likely trump the bachelors degree, even if the guy with the bachelors has better grades. And in many places you'll automatically start at a higher salary.
Plus with the masters program you should be able to tailor your coursework to focus on the things that truly interest you.
On the other hand, few recruiters are going to ask you how long you were in school, and on top of that, so many people these days are doing a non-traditional route to completing a "4-year" program. Don't put your GPA's on your school lines of your resumes. They're not needed.
Where I work (a Fortune 500), merely having the degree will meet the education requirement that will get you through the automated screening system. At that point, it will be your experience and the way you present yourself that will matter.
So, only repeat if you really really want to. The GPA is probably not important. And if you must keep going to school, consider a graduate degree.
One last caveat, if you have specific employers you want to work for, contact people who work there. Schedule "informational interviews" with people who do the kind of work you want to do. Find out from them what is most important.
You don't need to get the best worker possible. You just need to get someone who is "good enough".
It's like the principle of the "cost of perfect information". A company could mount a tremendous effort for every job they hire and truly find the best person possible. But that would be very expensive to do and the return from hiring that better person probably wouldn't be enough to offset that additional cost in hiring.
H1-B's exacerbate this by lowering the overall cost of the employee.
At my company, every job gets thousands of applicants from all over the world. They use an automated system as the first screening - if you don't score high enough on that initial screening, no human will ever see your application. It's infuriating because I know that as I applied for a lot of these jobs, I was qualified... but because of my score no human ever evaluated my application.
The only problem with that is that if you want to practice law you have two choices:
1) represent yourself - which is a pretty dumb idea
2) go to law school and then join a private club known as the Bar.
I have a friend going before the bar soon and it's insane. The court is a government function but in order to be a part of that court, you have to be a member of a private club that can exert all kinds of discriminatory pressure against potential applicants.
Anyway, even though our friend Sanjay can do our tax preparation, software development, and read our x-rays all from his call-box in India, he won't be able to easily join the bar in your state and practice law.
Furthermore, I can't imagine why a person in that situation would hobble their competitiveness in the job market with an H-1B. A green card holder can take and leave jobs as they please, whereas an H-1B holder is very much beholden to their employer's whims.
People often act in ways contrary to their best interest. What's worse is that when you point out what they could be doing better they cling ever more tenaciously to the way they originally had.
I don't know what would make people act against their best interest when it would require a simple change for the better, but I'm certain this is the cause of conservatism.
The most important thing is that he's fat and his voice is a little whiny. If you can't see that and channel your rage accordingly, I feel sorry for you dirty hippies.
It still catches people who are violating the law. It probably would lead to fewer violations if they started cancelling licenses belonging to repeat offenders.
The DOT of Virginia actually determined that the redlight cameras led to an INCREASE in injury accidents. Thus their cancellation of the program. Other states are taking similar action.
The experience here is that the red light cameras simply cause more people to drive through neighborhoods, which is much less safe.
If you want to stop red light runners, put a cop in a marked car at the intersections - and have them pull over offenders. This has a much bigger deterrent effect and is much less oppressive to people in general.
And most of the redlight cameras in this area had their yellow lights shortened on average of about 2 seconds.
It's not about safety. It's about money - for the municipality and even more for the company that peddles this stuff and the services required to run it.
I was going to write a post here arguing about establishing a Reference Behavior Pattern, determining relationships and causality, and the difference between verifying and validating models...
I know here in Oregon they are experimenting on a limited basis with installing GPS devices to charge taxes by the mile. Currently, the taxes are assessed at specific gas stations who can read the GPS values.
They claim it's to help stem the decline in gas tax revenues a people switch to more fuel efficient cars.
Rather than spy on citizens, I don't see why they can't just make the gas taxes a percentage of the gas price rather than a fixed amount.
I'm sure the GPS systems will soon be set up to call-home on a regular basis so a tax bill can be sent to every car owner.
For Army Top Secret clearances, it's almost entirely investigating your past. While waiting to be questioned for mine, I was on a detail that spent entire days shredding old reports that were made investigating people.
The funny thing is this. They don't seem to care too much if you have been a bad person - stealing, doing drugs, assaulting people. They really only care if you admitted to it or not.
I once requested my dossier and it was just pages and pages of an officer's report saying "Went to place ___. They had nothing negative to report about the subject." I'm sure all that foot-work costs quite a bit.
Since its tidally locked to Jupiter (just like the Moon is to the Earth), then there's not much spinning to be concerned about.
Io appears to be rotating. Look at the features as they move past where the light and dark meet (I know there's a word for this - ahh, terminator). You can see features moving across the terminator fairly quickly in this 8 minute film clip. Either the light source is moving or the moon is rotating.
Am I missing something? Or is it merely that the rotation has little effect on what is happening here?
The world came into being when I woke up this morning. It'll end after I fall asleep tonight.
I'll create a new one while I sleep. Hell, I've been doing it for the past thirty-odd years. I'm getting pretty good at it.
Well, then could you finally get me a girlfriend with HUUUUGE tracts of land? I'm really getting tired of self-service in this reality you keep creating every morning.
.The cops, on the whole, DO believe you innocent until proven guilty.
One of my best friends is a public defender and she'd certainly have story after story to tell you that would hopefully make you think a bit differently.
In her experience, many cops have pre-determined the defendant's guilt and do whatever they can to ensure a conviction, going from omitting exculpatory evidence going all the way out outright lying on the stand.
Sure, there are plenty of "good" cops, maybe even a majority, but there are also plenty who lie, cheat, and misuse their positions to abuse people at their whim. And sadly, there's not a lot you can do if you're in the crosshairs of one these cops. They have a nearly infinite arsenal of ways to legally screw with you.
I'm definitely accustomed to a lot of caffeine, unfortunately. I drink a lot of tea every day. And I definitely know what a caffeine withdrawal headache feels like.
However, on several occasions, I've been fully caffeinated as normal. I may end up with what feels like an "aspartame headache" (they *feel* different - different part of my head, different "note" of pain, different intensity). When that's happened, I can usually trace it back to having chewed some sugar free gum or having been given some sugar-free treat that had aspartame.
I know for a better experiment, I could have someone secretly adding aspartame or other stuff and recording my response. Likewise, it MAY be that I merely believe I'm susceptible to aspartame and it's all in my head. In any case, I get bad headaches from it so I avoid it. It's easy enough to avoid most of the time - problem solved. Others can have all they want of it... it's their issue.
As for caffeine... I'm not ready to tackle that one yet. I have difficulty waking and difficulty sleeping and I'm sure part of it is caffeine related. I'm working on regulating my sleep cycle better, temporarily using Rozerem, and using that regulation to help me get on a regular exercise schedule - and in that time I'm also trying to reduce the amount of caffeine I take in.
Unlike MSG and High Fructose Corn Syrup (which I tried to eliminate from my diet all at once), I can't drop the caffeine cold-turkey. As a system, I need it to function "normally". I'm working steadily at changing that system, but it takes time to get all the other parts working without it.
Could a cat really pull hundreds of meters of string?
Maybe if you send a dog after it.
It makes me think of an episode of Studio 60 where there's a missing poisonous snake under the stage. The animal handler then sends a ferret after it. Then the ferret wouldn't come out, so they send a coyote after it...
Maybe it would have been better to put an LED laser on the cat's head so he'd chase the point through the tube. Of course they didn't exist then, so the dog it is!
As the other poster commented, your body has gotten used to a new diet.
But as I replied elsewhere, I regularly eat burgers, beer, fried chicken, BBQ, Thai, Vietnamese (oh, I miss Pho, but it tends to be loaded with MSG), Indian, Ethiopian, Italian, Fish & Chips, sushi, Reubens, hot wings, steaks, gumbo, etc. I try to find places that use natural ingredients, don't add MSG, etc.
I probably eat burgers and fries at least once a week if not more. My stomach and digestive flora are certainly used to beef, bread, pickles, cheese, lettuce, mustard, mayo, and deep-fried potatoes. So what is it in the McDonald's and Wendy's that is making me feel ill?
What are they doing to the ingredients or what are they adding that's making me feel ill when burgers and fries from other places don't? Is it something I really want my body to be used to?
I DID see that show, but AFTER I had tried to cut out fast food from my diet. And while I agree with the general idea of trying to cut down on fast food, I felt the movie was very "sensationalist".
For example, in the outtakes he does an "experiment" where he puts different kinds of hamburgers in glass jars and watches their progress over the course of a month as they rot. The McDonald's burger looked mostly unrotted for most of that time. But, it's not any kind of valid experiment that proves anything about the health-quality of the food. I don't care how "ok" it looks, I'm not going to eat a 3-day old McDonald's hamburger!
It's good, however, that he's working to raise consciousness of a growing health problem - at least in the US.
"organic" (I take it that's not the chemical definition) food usually lacks the additives used in large-scale commercial products. This often results in a much weaker taste. Let's just say I'll never again try eating organic peanut butter...
That's strange to me as I have just the opposite experience. Take tomatoes for example. I find most tomatoes at a normal grocery store have practically no flavor at all... even the "HotHouse" brand ones. I find that locally grown organic tomatoes are full of intense flavor and I can't stop eating them. I once bought a partial share of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) for a few weeks while a friend was on vacation. Every time I picked it up, I couldn't stop eating the tomatoes. Wow!
Now, it's true that most organic foods won't have the punch of say, Doritos or Sour Cream & Onion Chips, but those are loaded with salt and MSG to punch up that flavor. After avoiding those things for the last few months (as much as possible), I find that foods tend to have a richer blend of flavors - or I'm better able to detect them. It's nice because I generally love food.
And I personally really like the organic peanut butter I'm eating now - all it has are peanuts. The only downside is having to mix it up every time I use it.
I went to the local Sonic drive-in, and ordered the No. 2 burger meal.
Oh man, I LOVED Sonic - especially those coneys with cheese. I lived in texas for 4 months while I was in the army and I ate so much of that.
I never connected that crappy diet with my steady diet of Rolaids. We have a Sonic in Oregon now and it was so tempting... but somehow, I don't think that a coney will settle any better now than it did then. I like how I don't need Rolaids any more.
Eating a hamburger one day isn't going to ruin your day or your ability to think or perform unless you have completely strayed from what's typical of a modern diet.
That's the funny thing. I eat plenty of burgers and fries (I actually eat ALL kinds of things from many different ethnicities, cultures, and ingredients). But I eat them from places that use "natural" sources and organics, etc. I love them!
But, if I eat a burger and fries from McDonalds, Burger King, or Wendys, I just don't feel well. They used to taste good, but now they don't even do that. I think the craving that leads me there is from some kind of nostalgia from my youth. Those three places are masters of industrialized food-product and is as far removed from natural as they can possibly get because it saves costs. Who knows what exactly they do to it to make it palatable.
Almost nothing you order in a restaurant would fit that bill, let alone the limited selection at the supermarket. I guess I'm lucky to live in a town that has a high consciousness about food and its sources and quality. I live near a grocery that sells mostly local and organic food. One thing that makes it different is that when you walk in, you can actually smell produce. Go to the nearest Kroger/Fred Meyer, and you can't tell if you're in canned goods, housewares, or produce based on only the smell. There are many restaurants here that are also dedicated to locally grown and organic foods, no-hormone-added/antibiotic free meats, etc.
There's truth to that old saying I learned in school, "you are what you eat". Why choose to eat (and be made of) highly-processed, artificial chemical (as in not naturally occurring in food) infused food products that have been shipped tens of thousands of miles when you can choose stuff that was grown in the next county without chemical fertilizers and pesticides?
I know in my own anecdotal case, I feel better eating fresh natural foods. I'll advocate it to anyone, especially if they're always feeling bad. But don't worry, I'm not going to try and take away your fast-food-product. What you eat is up to you.
I didn't present anything as "evidence"... it was merely anecdote. But I know I get a certain kind of headache with aspartame. When I end up with that kind of headache, I can usually trace it back and figure out I accidentally got some from something.
What matters to me is I FEEL better. If that's at the added cost of buying organic foods, or foods with fewer chemicals, then I'm fine with that. It's generally safer than religion.
And honestly, I'd much rather have a can of soup with 5 easy to identify ingredients rather than say 25 mostly unpronounceable ones. Maybe I'm a rube, but I'm a better-feeling one... fewer headaches, less indigestion, better sleep... I'll take it, whether you think it's freaky or not.
You are still fool[ed], but we could deduce that from the fact that you were in the army. (What are the added health risks of being in the army?)
Tell me about it. We all make mistakes in our youth - and this one was irreversible for 4 years. I still wonder about that day of in-processing with all the pills and shots. What were we REALLY getting? And what was all the crap in my water at Ft Bragg? It would plug up the filter I put on my faucet in under a month.
I was fortunate to avoid anyone trying to quickly increase the amount of lead in my body and high-speed impacts with the ground (I was a paratrooper).
Slashdot Mirror
It's merely an anecdote and I stated clearly that it was such. Nor did I state that I was a statistician of any kind. I'm just saying in my limited personal experience and the stories told to me by many teachers that they spend a vast amount of their time merely attempting to maintain order in their classrooms. Most teachers I know feel lucky if they actually get to impart knowledge and inspire learning.
It's a sad state of affairs and probably worthy of rigorous study. My posting was never intended to represent itself as the results of such a study.
You seem unreasonably hostile and I hope you find a way to deal with that and have a happy life.
Oh wait, someone has to teach them the stuff they're being quized about in the first place... which is like 95% of the job.
The experience I've had volunteering in my ex-girlfriend's class room is that about 80% of it is keeping the kids in their seats and not disrupting the other students. Another 10 to 15% is administrative tasks put on the teacher. The actual imparting of knowledge and a desire to learn is a much smaller percentage.
You'd be better served by spending that 2 years focusing on a graduate degree - if you can get into a school.
The masters degree will most likely trump the bachelors degree, even if the guy with the bachelors has better grades. And in many places you'll automatically start at a higher salary.
Plus with the masters program you should be able to tailor your coursework to focus on the things that truly interest you.
On the other hand, few recruiters are going to ask you how long you were in school, and on top of that, so many people these days are doing a non-traditional route to completing a "4-year" program. Don't put your GPA's on your school lines of your resumes. They're not needed.
Where I work (a Fortune 500), merely having the degree will meet the education requirement that will get you through the automated screening system. At that point, it will be your experience and the way you present yourself that will matter.
So, only repeat if you really really want to. The GPA is probably not important. And if you must keep going to school, consider a graduate degree.
One last caveat, if you have specific employers you want to work for, contact people who work there. Schedule "informational interviews" with people who do the kind of work you want to do. Find out from them what is most important.
Good luck.
You don't need to get the best worker possible. You just need to get someone who is "good enough".
It's like the principle of the "cost of perfect information". A company could mount a tremendous effort for every job they hire and truly find the best person possible. But that would be very expensive to do and the return from hiring that better person probably wouldn't be enough to offset that additional cost in hiring.
H1-B's exacerbate this by lowering the overall cost of the employee.
At my company, every job gets thousands of applicants from all over the world. They use an automated system as the first screening - if you don't score high enough on that initial screening, no human will ever see your application. It's infuriating because I know that as I applied for a lot of these jobs, I was qualified... but because of my score no human ever evaluated my application.
Nice play on Shakespeare!
The only problem with that is that if you want to practice law you have two choices:
1) represent yourself - which is a pretty dumb idea
2) go to law school and then join a private club known as the Bar.
I have a friend going before the bar soon and it's insane. The court is a government function but in order to be a part of that court, you have to be a member of a private club that can exert all kinds of discriminatory pressure against potential applicants.
Anyway, even though our friend Sanjay can do our tax preparation, software development, and read our x-rays all from his call-box in India, he won't be able to easily join the bar in your state and practice law.
I wonder how many H1-B lawyers there are...
Furthermore, I can't imagine why a person in that situation would hobble their competitiveness in the job market with an H-1B. A green card holder can take and leave jobs as they please, whereas an H-1B holder is very much beholden to their employer's whims.
People often act in ways contrary to their best interest. What's worse is that when you point out what they could be doing better they cling ever more tenaciously to the way they originally had.
I don't know what would make people act against their best interest when it would require a simple change for the better, but I'm certain this is the cause of conservatism.
Thanks.. and you're right. I just re-read the original and see how I totally missed it.
Whereas the italicized line above is a near textbook quality lack of senses of humor, sarcasm, criticism, and irony.
You're right, but you forgot "lack of sleep". Now that I've fixed that and re-read the original, I see what the poster was doing.
The most important thing is that he's fat and his voice is a little whiny. If you can't see that and channel your rage accordingly, I feel sorry for you dirty hippies.
A near textbook quality ad hominem attack.
The do not reduce traffic accidents or violators.
It still catches people who are violating the law. It probably would lead to fewer violations if they started cancelling licenses belonging to repeat offenders.
The DOT of Virginia actually determined that the redlight cameras led to an INCREASE in injury accidents. Thus their cancellation of the program. Other states are taking similar action.
The experience here is that the red light cameras simply cause more people to drive through neighborhoods, which is much less safe.
If you want to stop red light runners, put a cop in a marked car at the intersections - and have them pull over offenders. This has a much bigger deterrent effect and is much less oppressive to people in general.
And most of the redlight cameras in this area had their yellow lights shortened on average of about 2 seconds.
It's not about safety. It's about money - for the municipality and even more for the company that peddles this stuff and the services required to run it.
I was going to write a post here arguing about establishing a Reference Behavior Pattern, determining relationships and causality, and the difference between verifying and validating models...
But I like your way of thinking better...
I know here in Oregon they are experimenting on a limited basis with installing GPS devices to charge taxes by the mile. Currently, the taxes are assessed at specific gas stations who can read the GPS values.
They claim it's to help stem the decline in gas tax revenues a people switch to more fuel efficient cars.
Rather than spy on citizens, I don't see why they can't just make the gas taxes a percentage of the gas price rather than a fixed amount.
I'm sure the GPS systems will soon be set up to call-home on a regular basis so a tax bill can be sent to every car owner.
For Army Top Secret clearances, it's almost entirely investigating your past. While waiting to be questioned for mine, I was on a detail that spent entire days shredding old reports that were made investigating people.
The funny thing is this. They don't seem to care too much if you have been a bad person - stealing, doing drugs, assaulting people. They really only care if you admitted to it or not.
I once requested my dossier and it was just pages and pages of an officer's report saying "Went to place ___. They had nothing negative to report about the subject." I'm sure all that foot-work costs quite a bit.
Since its tidally locked to Jupiter (just like the Moon is to the Earth), then there's not much spinning to be concerned about.
Io appears to be rotating. Look at the features as they move past where the light and dark meet (I know there's a word for this - ahh, terminator). You can see features moving across the terminator fairly quickly in this 8 minute film clip. Either the light source is moving or the moon is rotating.
Am I missing something? Or is it merely that the rotation has little effect on what is happening here?
The world came into being when I woke up this morning. It'll end after I fall asleep tonight.
I'll create a new one while I sleep. Hell, I've been doing it for the past thirty-odd years. I'm getting pretty good at it.
Well, then could you finally get me a girlfriend with HUUUUGE tracts of land? I'm really getting tired of self-service in this reality you keep creating every morning.
.The cops, on the whole, DO believe you innocent until proven guilty.
One of my best friends is a public defender and she'd certainly have story after story to tell you that would hopefully make you think a bit differently.
In her experience, many cops have pre-determined the defendant's guilt and do whatever they can to ensure a conviction, going from omitting exculpatory evidence going all the way out outright lying on the stand.
Sure, there are plenty of "good" cops, maybe even a majority, but there are also plenty who lie, cheat, and misuse their positions to abuse people at their whim. And sadly, there's not a lot you can do if you're in the crosshairs of one these cops. They have a nearly infinite arsenal of ways to legally screw with you.
I'm definitely accustomed to a lot of caffeine, unfortunately. I drink a lot of tea every day. And I definitely know what a caffeine withdrawal headache feels like.
However, on several occasions, I've been fully caffeinated as normal. I may end up with what feels like an "aspartame headache" (they *feel* different - different part of my head, different "note" of pain, different intensity). When that's happened, I can usually trace it back to having chewed some sugar free gum or having been given some sugar-free treat that had aspartame.
I know for a better experiment, I could have someone secretly adding aspartame or other stuff and recording my response. Likewise, it MAY be that I merely believe I'm susceptible to aspartame and it's all in my head. In any case, I get bad headaches from it so I avoid it. It's easy enough to avoid most of the time - problem solved. Others can have all they want of it... it's their issue.
As for caffeine... I'm not ready to tackle that one yet. I have difficulty waking and difficulty sleeping and I'm sure part of it is caffeine related. I'm working on regulating my sleep cycle better, temporarily using Rozerem, and using that regulation to help me get on a regular exercise schedule - and in that time I'm also trying to reduce the amount of caffeine I take in.
Unlike MSG and High Fructose Corn Syrup (which I tried to eliminate from my diet all at once), I can't drop the caffeine cold-turkey. As a system, I need it to function "normally". I'm working steadily at changing that system, but it takes time to get all the other parts working without it.
Could a cat really pull hundreds of meters of string?
Maybe if you send a dog after it.
It makes me think of an episode of Studio 60 where there's a missing poisonous snake under the stage. The animal handler then sends a ferret after it. Then the ferret wouldn't come out, so they send a coyote after it...
Maybe it would have been better to put an LED laser on the cat's head so he'd chase the point through the tube. Of course they didn't exist then, so the dog it is!
As the other poster commented, your body has gotten used to a new diet.
But as I replied elsewhere, I regularly eat burgers, beer, fried chicken, BBQ, Thai, Vietnamese (oh, I miss Pho, but it tends to be loaded with MSG), Indian, Ethiopian, Italian, Fish & Chips, sushi, Reubens, hot wings, steaks, gumbo, etc. I try to find places that use natural ingredients, don't add MSG, etc.
I probably eat burgers and fries at least once a week if not more. My stomach and digestive flora are certainly used to beef, bread, pickles, cheese, lettuce, mustard, mayo, and deep-fried potatoes. So what is it in the McDonald's and Wendy's that is making me feel ill?
What are they doing to the ingredients or what are they adding that's making me feel ill when burgers and fries from other places don't? Is it something I really want my body to be used to?
I DID see that show, but AFTER I had tried to cut out fast food from my diet. And while I agree with the general idea of trying to cut down on fast food, I felt the movie was very "sensationalist".
For example, in the outtakes he does an "experiment" where he puts different kinds of hamburgers in glass jars and watches their progress over the course of a month as they rot. The McDonald's burger looked mostly unrotted for most of that time. But, it's not any kind of valid experiment that proves anything about the health-quality of the food. I don't care how "ok" it looks, I'm not going to eat a 3-day old McDonald's hamburger!
It's good, however, that he's working to raise consciousness of a growing health problem - at least in the US.
"organic" (I take it that's not the chemical definition) food usually lacks the additives used in large-scale commercial products. This often results in a much weaker taste. Let's just say I'll never again try eating organic peanut butter...
That's strange to me as I have just the opposite experience. Take tomatoes for example. I find most tomatoes at a normal grocery store have practically no flavor at all... even the "HotHouse" brand ones. I find that locally grown organic tomatoes are full of intense flavor and I can't stop eating them. I once bought a partial share of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) for a few weeks while a friend was on vacation. Every time I picked it up, I couldn't stop eating the tomatoes. Wow!
Now, it's true that most organic foods won't have the punch of say, Doritos or Sour Cream & Onion Chips, but those are loaded with salt and MSG to punch up that flavor. After avoiding those things for the last few months (as much as possible), I find that foods tend to have a richer blend of flavors - or I'm better able to detect them. It's nice because I generally love food.
And I personally really like the organic peanut butter I'm eating now - all it has are peanuts. The only downside is having to mix it up every time I use it.
I went to the local Sonic drive-in, and ordered the No. 2 burger meal.
Oh man, I LOVED Sonic - especially those coneys with cheese. I lived in texas for 4 months while I was in the army and I ate so much of that.
I never connected that crappy diet with my steady diet of Rolaids. We have a Sonic in Oregon now and it was so tempting... but somehow, I don't think that a coney will settle any better now than it did then. I like how I don't need Rolaids any more.
Eating a hamburger one day isn't going to ruin your day or your ability to think or perform unless you have completely strayed from what's typical of a modern diet.
That's the funny thing. I eat plenty of burgers and fries (I actually eat ALL kinds of things from many different ethnicities, cultures, and ingredients). But I eat them from places that use "natural" sources and organics, etc. I love them!
But, if I eat a burger and fries from McDonalds, Burger King, or Wendys, I just don't feel well. They used to taste good, but now they don't even do that. I think the craving that leads me there is from some kind of nostalgia from my youth. Those three places are masters of industrialized food-product and is as far removed from natural as they can possibly get because it saves costs. Who knows what exactly they do to it to make it palatable.
Almost nothing you order in a restaurant would fit that bill, let alone the limited selection at the supermarket.
I guess I'm lucky to live in a town that has a high consciousness about food and its sources and quality. I live near a grocery that sells mostly local and organic food. One thing that makes it different is that when you walk in, you can actually smell produce. Go to the nearest Kroger/Fred Meyer, and you can't tell if you're in canned goods, housewares, or produce based on only the smell. There are many restaurants here that are also dedicated to locally grown and organic foods, no-hormone-added/antibiotic free meats, etc.
There's truth to that old saying I learned in school, "you are what you eat". Why choose to eat (and be made of) highly-processed, artificial chemical (as in not naturally occurring in food) infused food products that have been shipped tens of thousands of miles when you can choose stuff that was grown in the next county without chemical fertilizers and pesticides?
I know in my own anecdotal case, I feel better eating fresh natural foods. I'll advocate it to anyone, especially if they're always feeling bad. But don't worry, I'm not going to try and take away your fast-food-product. What you eat is up to you.
Well if you want to FEEL like you live longer, just give up wine, women and song.
Yeah, but then what's the point?! That's like getting to stay late at Disneyland - but they've closed all the rides.
I didn't present anything as "evidence"... it was merely anecdote. But I know I get a certain kind of headache with aspartame. When I end up with that kind of headache, I can usually trace it back and figure out I accidentally got some from something.
What matters to me is I FEEL better. If that's at the added cost of buying organic foods, or foods with fewer chemicals, then I'm fine with that. It's generally safer than religion.
And honestly, I'd much rather have a can of soup with 5 easy to identify ingredients rather than say 25 mostly unpronounceable ones. Maybe I'm a rube, but I'm a better-feeling one... fewer headaches, less indigestion, better sleep... I'll take it, whether you think it's freaky or not.
You are still fool[ed], but we could deduce that from the fact that you were in the army. (What are the added health risks of being in the army?)
Tell me about it. We all make mistakes in our youth - and this one was irreversible for 4 years. I still wonder about that day of in-processing with all the pills and shots. What were we REALLY getting? And what was all the crap in my water at Ft Bragg? It would plug up the filter I put on my faucet in under a month.
I was fortunate to avoid anyone trying to quickly increase the amount of lead in my body and high-speed impacts with the ground (I was a paratrooper).