Nice Fallout reference, but a very large number of houses in warm areas of the planet are built out of either poured concrete forms or concrete block. It's unusual in the US for residential construction which is nearly always stick frame, but the rest of the world actually builds that way quite a bit.
In fact pretty much every house I have lived in outside of the US used concrete construction at least for the exterior walls. The interior walls are often concrete as well.
It's amazing to me how irrational people become as soon as the subject of food comes up. Science? Evidence? What's that? People convince themselves of all kinds of ridiculous ideas about food and nutrition, none of which have even the slightest shred of evidence to back them up. Probably because people don't want it to be simply a matter of calories. It's another example of intellectual hedonism. People don't want to believe that the quantity of food they are eating is just too much. So they simply choose not to believe it. Instead they invent some simple rule that does not rely on calorie counting or ever being hungry. Fat doesn't make you fat. Sugar doesn't make you fat. Preservatives and MSG don't make you fat. "Refined" foods don't make you fat. Fast food doesn't make you fat. Burgers and donuts don't make you fat. Even insulin doesn't make you fat. If you are overweight (as I am) the only thing you can blame is your own lack of self-control. It's calories that make you fat. Fat people simply eat too much for the amount of physical activity they engage in. You could live on pure fat or pure sugar and huge amounts of preservatives and lots of MSG and as long as you didn't exceed 1000 calories per day you wouldn't gain weight. In fact you would probably lose it.
It is true that some restriction diets are effective, but not for the reasons usually given. If all you eat is low calorie vegetables you are very unlikely to gain weight and quite likely to lose it. That's because most people cannot manage to eat enough low calorie vegetables to gain weight. Some vegetables are so low in calories that you would pretty much have to eat them continuously the whole day. Carbohydrate restricted diets are popular these days. They don't work because 'carbohydrates make you fat'. They work because people seem to more easily be able to eat fewer calories on those diets. They are probably the most effective diets if you can stay on them because protein makes you feel full faster and keeps you feeling full longer. I've tried this but I feel truly awful for the first couple of days. I get really depressed without any carbohydrates. So I haven't been able to stay on it for long. I also find that I can quite easily overeat on all protein diets. So I'm back to counting calories again anyway.
I've had better luck with calorie restricted vegetable diets, but the problem with those is that I have to constantly eat throughout the day to not feel hungry. I can eat a huge bowl of Romaine lettuce and within an hour I am hungry again. Not only is it a huge amount of work to keep filling my stomach with low calorie vegetables, but it's very expensive and tiring to constantly be preparing food.
I've lived in several countries besides the US and none of those countries have as many overweight people as the US. The only other country I have visited which seems to be able to compete with the US in terms of obesity is Italy. In most countries people eat high calorie foods. The reason they do not get fat is simply because they don't overeat. It really is that simple. Just stop eating before you feel full. You should still feel at least a little bit hungry. One of my most successful diets was achieved just by eating my meals with a thin friend of mine. I ate exactly the same things he did in exactly the same amounts at every meal. He wasn't on any kind of special diet. He just didn't eat all that much food. I lost a lot of weight and I was left only slightly hungry.
Whatever happened to the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag? This story sounds like the beginning of a Michael Crichton novel and we all know how those end. Joe Haldeman's Old Twentieth also had something like this called the Becker-Cendrek process. Made you immortal. Somehow I don't think it would be too difficult to get human volunteers for this one.
Have you ever lost someone that you loved? It all depends on whether he actually loved her or not. If he did love her I don't think that realization will make him feel any better about it. Her actions have made it clear that she did not love him, but that doesn't mean that he did not love her. For his sake I at least hope she was ugly.
Actually, corrupt abusive cops and prosecutors are the problem. They should be 'put to sleep' humanely just like a vicious dog who cannot seem to stop biting people.
And if a woman goes out at night after 9pm in a sexy outfit, not even carrying a firearm, well she is practically asking to be raped and tortured. She wouldn't be a victim. She would be doing it to herself. People can be so self-destructive. If you give a cop the finger and he beats you to death or shoots you until has Glock is out of bullets it is something you have done to yourself. The angry cop cannot be held responsible. And if you publicly criticize the government...well you know what to expect. The government cannot be held responsible for what they are forced to do to you. They would rather not ruin the life of an innocent person, but they were left with no choice. Victims have no one to blame but themselves. I think I am starting to understand now.
Which part of "prisoner of war" do you not understand? There are only two choices. Either you prosecute someone as a criminal with all the same human rights that your own citizens have or you hold them in humane conditions as "prisoners of war" based on widely accepted rules and with the expectation that if you treat your prisoners like animals then you should expect your soldiers to be treated the same by any enemy in the future. As far as torture, sadism, and inhumane conditions, karma is a bitch. Either a government respects human rights or it doesn't. To say that group A is fully human and so has rights but that group B is not fully human and doesn't have any rights is precisely the same position that Nazi Germany took WRT jews. The US gets into more wars than any other country I can think of. You'd think we'd want to be careful about how we treat our prisoners because turnabout is fair play.
So you're a cop then. God, I fucking hate pigs. Worthless scum every last one of you. Please put your Glock in your mouth and pull the trigger. As a favor to me. I'd really appreciate it.
And the US founders predate Rand by centuries. And as a philosopher John Locke also predates Rand by centuries. The Founders were most certainly Libertarians. So, I don't agree that Libertarians are necessarily Randians. Ayn Rand had an entire philosophy. Not just politics, but ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics too. The name 'Libertarian' refers to only a political philosophy, which Miss Rand most certainly did not start. Although she may have revitalized it. Nice try at a straw man. You don't seem to have the slightest idea of what you are talking about.
You are quite simply wrong. Paul has run as the Libertarian presidential candidate many times. So many times that I got sick of hearing about it and wished that the party would at least occasionally choose someone with a bit more charisma. Why he was chosen as the Libertarian candidate so many times I do not know. Maybe no one else wanted to waste their time running in an election which they knew was impossible to win. Check your facts next time. Spouting disinformation because you are too lazy to check is not helping anyone.
So your position is that both he and his son are clinically insane? As evidence you present a policy that the US actually had up until fairly recently. I guess the entire country must have been clinically insane while we had commodity backed currency. For most of the history of our republic our currency has been backed by gold. People who try to strawman Libertarians as being nothing more than gold bugs are just demonstrating their own ignorance. I'd be in favor of a commodity backed money supply, but it is far from a core value of my political beliefs. The core values are no or low taxes, natural rights, and a weak, highly limited government which cannot crush you under its boot because it cannot afford a boot. If you want to criticize the Libertarian position at least do so honestly.
The guys who wrote the constitution were mostly what we would call Libertarians today. That is, their political views are practically identical to the views of the majority of people who consider themselves to be Libertarians.
Well, modern Libertarians are a lot more consistent in their support for freedom. I've never met a Libertarian who would support slavery for instance. Any person who honestly researches the views of the Founders will quickly see what I am talking about.
Wouldn't it be better to vote for an actual Libertarian candidate? I don't really agree with Libertarians calling themselves Republicans. I don't know much about Paul's positions other than he ran many times as a Libertarian candidate. I believe I heard that he is pro-life, which is a position I think most Libertarians disagree with. If true then that is at least some justification to attempt to get a Republican nomination.
I never really agreed with Ron Paul as the Libertarian candidate. To me, he just isn't charismatic enough. For a Libertarian candidate to have any chance of winning at all he'd have to be even more charismatic than Reagan was and Paul is anything but that. Perhaps his son would fare better though.
I think most of the people who might otherwise consider running as a Libertarian presidential candidate don't because they don't believe there is one chance in a million that they could actually win. I think it may someday be possible for a sufficiently charismatic Libertarian candidate to run for president and win, but only after we have become even more of a police state than we are now. Once we truly reach a V for Vendetta or 1984-ish government it will be a whole lot easier for people to vote Libertarian. We are headed in that direction at a rapid pace even with a democratic president, but I believe it could take as long as another half century before we truly reach a point where anti-government feelings are high enough to attempt to turn back the clock to something much closer to the kind of republic that the Founders envisioned.
It is my belief that those of us who are Libertarian will have to sacrifice a great deal more as a group if we want to truly be free. I'm thinking of something along the lines of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress meets the Free State Project except maybe on Antarctica or one of the islands in the Southern Ocean. Some place on earth that no one cares about enough to fight for.
Are you referring to East and West Germany in terms of a "proof"? AFAIK the only Libertarian societies that have ever existed on this planet are the early US and France for a very short time after the French Revolution. So presumably your 'proof' would have to refer back to the 18th century. A comparison of 18th century economics in the US vs. England would be an interesting comparison. I'm skeptical that you can prove what you claim, but I would certainly be interested in reading an unbiased comparison from that time.
that supporting Ron Paul is completely untenable without self-deception, but that the Randian-Libertarian philosophy taken as a whole is.
The fact that you know so little about the topic that you assert that Libertarianism = Randianism leads me to believe that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. I would love to see the proof that either Randian or Libertarian philosophy is "untenable". Of course you can't be bothered because you are just trolling.
Ayn Rand (Anna Rosenbaum was her real name I think) was certainly a Libertarian in her political beliefs. What would now be considered a pretty standard Limited Government Libertarian. The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged no doubt have influenced some people toward Libertarian ideas. Perhaps Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress has as well.
I don't believe the connection between Ayn Rand and Libertarians is unfair. Randians will almost certainly be Libertarians, but Libertarians are not necessarily Randians. I am a Libertarian despite the fact that I at least somewhat disagree with Rand's position on ethics. Rand also stressed a kind of pacifism where force can only be justified in defending yourself from harm. An idea which I think resonates quite well with many Libertarians as a principle behind their belief in political freedom.
So you are presumably a democrat then. In terms of economics I would guess you are a big fan of John Maynard Keynes. Unless you are unusually good at mathematics you will probably be voting for Obama. He's the devil you know.
I too refuse to pay for a DRMed product. Why not download a "free" DRM-free version then and if you like it just buy a paper copy. Then you will be rewarding the author for a good story as well as casting your vote against DRMed ebooks. It is nice to see that at least the ebook is less than half the cost of the paperback edition and quite reasonable at $5.99. If only all ebook versions were sold that way I might start actually buying some. Paying the same price for the ebook and the paper copy is not something I will do either.
Settling disputes via denial of service attacks. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that idea. It's not like they ever result in counter-attacks. I would personally be quite happy to man the ion cannons against these guys. I guess you can choose the other side. I'm not sure who will win, but I know who will lose. Everyone who actually wants to use the internet for something.
Of course if you don't like being stopped and interrogated every time your car measures even slightly above background radiation I guess you could always move to a "less free" country where you don't have to worry about such things. I think it's mostly Americans who have never lived abroad who believe the US is a "free country". As soon as you discover how much less restricted your life is in nearly any other country you start to question whether Americans really understand the meaning of the word "freedom". I felt far more free to do what I wanted and be left alone by the state even in some Communist countries than I have in the U.S. We have a very frightening sort of "freedom" here.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice Fallout reference, but a very large number of houses in warm areas of the planet are built out of either poured concrete forms or concrete block. It's unusual in the US for residential construction which is nearly always stick frame, but the rest of the world actually builds that way quite a bit.
In fact pretty much every house I have lived in outside of the US used concrete construction at least for the exterior walls. The interior walls are often concrete as well.
It's amazing to me how irrational people become as soon as the subject of food comes up. Science? Evidence? What's that? People convince themselves of all kinds of ridiculous ideas about food and nutrition, none of which have even the slightest shred of evidence to back them up. Probably because people don't want it to be simply a matter of calories. It's another example of intellectual hedonism. People don't want to believe that the quantity of food they are eating is just too much. So they simply choose not to believe it. Instead they invent some simple rule that does not rely on calorie counting or ever being hungry. Fat doesn't make you fat. Sugar doesn't make you fat. Preservatives and MSG don't make you fat. "Refined" foods don't make you fat. Fast food doesn't make you fat. Burgers and donuts don't make you fat. Even insulin doesn't make you fat. If you are overweight (as I am) the only thing you can blame is your own lack of self-control. It's calories that make you fat. Fat people simply eat too much for the amount of physical activity they engage in. You could live on pure fat or pure sugar and huge amounts of preservatives and lots of MSG and as long as you didn't exceed 1000 calories per day you wouldn't gain weight. In fact you would probably lose it.
It is true that some restriction diets are effective, but not for the reasons usually given. If all you eat is low calorie vegetables you are very unlikely to gain weight and quite likely to lose it. That's because most people cannot manage to eat enough low calorie vegetables to gain weight. Some vegetables are so low in calories that you would pretty much have to eat them continuously the whole day. Carbohydrate restricted diets are popular these days. They don't work because 'carbohydrates make you fat'. They work because people seem to more easily be able to eat fewer calories on those diets. They are probably the most effective diets if you can stay on them because protein makes you feel full faster and keeps you feeling full longer. I've tried this but I feel truly awful for the first couple of days. I get really depressed without any carbohydrates. So I haven't been able to stay on it for long. I also find that I can quite easily overeat on all protein diets. So I'm back to counting calories again anyway.
I've had better luck with calorie restricted vegetable diets, but the problem with those is that I have to constantly eat throughout the day to not feel hungry. I can eat a huge bowl of Romaine lettuce and within an hour I am hungry again. Not only is it a huge amount of work to keep filling my stomach with low calorie vegetables, but it's very expensive and tiring to constantly be preparing food.
I've lived in several countries besides the US and none of those countries have as many overweight people as the US. The only other country I have visited which seems to be able to compete with the US in terms of obesity is Italy. In most countries people eat high calorie foods. The reason they do not get fat is simply because they don't overeat. It really is that simple. Just stop eating before you feel full. You should still feel at least a little bit hungry. One of my most successful diets was achieved just by eating my meals with a thin friend of mine. I ate exactly the same things he did in exactly the same amounts at every meal. He wasn't on any kind of special diet. He just didn't eat all that much food. I lost a lot of weight and I was left only slightly hungry.
Whatever happened to the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag? This story sounds like the beginning of a Michael Crichton novel and we all know how those end. Joe Haldeman's Old Twentieth also had something like this called the Becker-Cendrek process. Made you immortal. Somehow I don't think it would be too difficult to get human volunteers for this one.
so wouldn't he be better off without her anyway?
Have you ever lost someone that you loved? It all depends on whether he actually loved her or not. If he did love her I don't think that realization will make him feel any better about it. Her actions have made it clear that she did not love him, but that doesn't mean that he did not love her. For his sake I at least hope she was ugly.
Somehow I am getting the impression that you don't have sympathy for anyone under any circumstances except perhaps for yourself.
Actually, corrupt abusive cops and prosecutors are the problem. They should be 'put to sleep' humanely just like a vicious dog who cannot seem to stop biting people.
And if a woman goes out at night after 9pm in a sexy outfit, not even carrying a firearm, well she is practically asking to be raped and tortured. She wouldn't be a victim. She would be doing it to herself. People can be so self-destructive. If you give a cop the finger and he beats you to death or shoots you until has Glock is out of bullets it is something you have done to yourself. The angry cop cannot be held responsible. And if you publicly criticize the government...well you know what to expect. The government cannot be held responsible for what they are forced to do to you. They would rather not ruin the life of an innocent person, but they were left with no choice. Victims have no one to blame but themselves. I think I am starting to understand now.
http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/security-and-human-rights/guantanamo
Which part of "prisoner of war" do you not understand? There are only two choices. Either you prosecute someone as a criminal with all the same human rights that your own citizens have or you hold them in humane conditions as "prisoners of war" based on widely accepted rules and with the expectation that if you treat your prisoners like animals then you should expect your soldiers to be treated the same by any enemy in the future. As far as torture, sadism, and inhumane conditions, karma is a bitch. Either a government respects human rights or it doesn't. To say that group A is fully human and so has rights but that group B is not fully human and doesn't have any rights is precisely the same position that Nazi Germany took WRT jews. The US gets into more wars than any other country I can think of. You'd think we'd want to be careful about how we treat our prisoners because turnabout is fair play.
So you're a cop then. God, I fucking hate pigs. Worthless scum every last one of you. Please put your Glock in your mouth and pull the trigger. As a favor to me. I'd really appreciate it.
Funny. You don't sound particularly sympathetic.
And the US founders predate Rand by centuries. And as a philosopher John Locke also predates Rand by centuries. The Founders were most certainly Libertarians. So, I don't agree that Libertarians are necessarily Randians. Ayn Rand had an entire philosophy. Not just politics, but ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics too. The name 'Libertarian' refers to only a political philosophy, which Miss Rand most certainly did not start. Although she may have revitalized it. Nice try at a straw man. You don't seem to have the slightest idea of what you are talking about.
You are quite simply wrong. Paul has run as the Libertarian presidential candidate many times. So many times that I got sick of hearing about it and wished that the party would at least occasionally choose someone with a bit more charisma. Why he was chosen as the Libertarian candidate so many times I do not know. Maybe no one else wanted to waste their time running in an election which they knew was impossible to win. Check your facts next time. Spouting disinformation because you are too lazy to check is not helping anyone.
So your position is that both he and his son are clinically insane? As evidence you present a policy that the US actually had up until fairly recently. I guess the entire country must have been clinically insane while we had commodity backed currency. For most of the history of our republic our currency has been backed by gold. People who try to strawman Libertarians as being nothing more than gold bugs are just demonstrating their own ignorance. I'd be in favor of a commodity backed money supply, but it is far from a core value of my political beliefs. The core values are no or low taxes, natural rights, and a weak, highly limited government which cannot crush you under its boot because it cannot afford a boot. If you want to criticize the Libertarian position at least do so honestly.
The guys who wrote the constitution were mostly what we would call Libertarians today. That is, their political views are practically identical to the views of the majority of people who consider themselves to be Libertarians.
Well, modern Libertarians are a lot more consistent in their support for freedom. I've never met a Libertarian who would support slavery for instance. Any person who honestly researches the views of the Founders will quickly see what I am talking about.
Wouldn't it be better to vote for an actual Libertarian candidate? I don't really agree with Libertarians calling themselves Republicans. I don't know much about Paul's positions other than he ran many times as a Libertarian candidate. I believe I heard that he is pro-life, which is a position I think most Libertarians disagree with. If true then that is at least some justification to attempt to get a Republican nomination.
I never really agreed with Ron Paul as the Libertarian candidate. To me, he just isn't charismatic enough. For a Libertarian candidate to have any chance of winning at all he'd have to be even more charismatic than Reagan was and Paul is anything but that. Perhaps his son would fare better though.
I think most of the people who might otherwise consider running as a Libertarian presidential candidate don't because they don't believe there is one chance in a million that they could actually win. I think it may someday be possible for a sufficiently charismatic Libertarian candidate to run for president and win, but only after we have become even more of a police state than we are now. Once we truly reach a V for Vendetta or 1984-ish government it will be a whole lot easier for people to vote Libertarian. We are headed in that direction at a rapid pace even with a democratic president, but I believe it could take as long as another half century before we truly reach a point where anti-government feelings are high enough to attempt to turn back the clock to something much closer to the kind of republic that the Founders envisioned.
It is my belief that those of us who are Libertarian will have to sacrifice a great deal more as a group if we want to truly be free. I'm thinking of something along the lines of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress meets the Free State Project except maybe on Antarctica or one of the islands in the Southern Ocean. Some place on earth that no one cares about enough to fight for.
Are you referring to East and West Germany in terms of a "proof"? AFAIK the only Libertarian societies that have ever existed on this planet are the early US and France for a very short time after the French Revolution. So presumably your 'proof' would have to refer back to the 18th century. A comparison of 18th century economics in the US vs. England would be an interesting comparison. I'm skeptical that you can prove what you claim, but I would certainly be interested in reading an unbiased comparison from that time.
that supporting Ron Paul is completely untenable without self-deception, but that the Randian-Libertarian philosophy taken as a whole is.
The fact that you know so little about the topic that you assert that Libertarianism = Randianism leads me to believe that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. I would love to see the proof that either Randian or Libertarian philosophy is "untenable". Of course you can't be bothered because you are just trolling.
Ayn Rand (Anna Rosenbaum was her real name I think) was certainly a Libertarian in her political beliefs. What would now be considered a pretty standard Limited Government Libertarian. The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged no doubt have influenced some people toward Libertarian ideas. Perhaps Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress has as well.
I don't believe the connection between Ayn Rand and Libertarians is unfair. Randians will almost certainly be Libertarians, but Libertarians are not necessarily Randians. I am a Libertarian despite the fact that I at least somewhat disagree with Rand's position on ethics. Rand also stressed a kind of pacifism where force can only be justified in defending yourself from harm. An idea which I think resonates quite well with many Libertarians as a principle behind their belief in political freedom.
So you believe Richard Nixon was a Libertarian?
So you are presumably a democrat then. In terms of economics I would guess you are a big fan of John Maynard Keynes. Unless you are unusually good at mathematics you will probably be voting for Obama. He's the devil you know.
We also risk the spread of tropical and subtropical diseases into formerly temperate areas
Haha! Very funny. Oh wait. You weren't joking.
I too refuse to pay for a DRMed product. Why not download a "free" DRM-free version then and if you like it just buy a paper copy. Then you will be rewarding the author for a good story as well as casting your vote against DRMed ebooks. It is nice to see that at least the ebook is less than half the cost of the paperback edition and quite reasonable at $5.99. If only all ebook versions were sold that way I might start actually buying some. Paying the same price for the ebook and the paper copy is not something I will do either.
You missed the third option, which is to stop producing the content altogether.
That would be far too good a result to ever actually happen. They are making way too much money making shit for morons to ever stop.
Settling disputes via denial of service attacks. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that idea. It's not like they ever result in counter-attacks. I would personally be quite happy to man the ion cannons against these guys. I guess you can choose the other side. I'm not sure who will win, but I know who will lose. Everyone who actually wants to use the internet for something.
Of course if you don't like being stopped and interrogated every time your car measures even slightly above background radiation I guess you could always move to a "less free" country where you don't have to worry about such things. I think it's mostly Americans who have never lived abroad who believe the US is a "free country". As soon as you discover how much less restricted your life is in nearly any other country you start to question whether Americans really understand the meaning of the word "freedom". I felt far more free to do what I wanted and be left alone by the state even in some Communist countries than I have in the U.S. We have a very frightening sort of "freedom" here.