Re:Hacking And Overclocking - What?
on
Hackers On Atkins
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· Score: 2, Insightful
the Atkins diet makes the body digest itself because of carbohydrate depravation
Isn't that kind of the point? I'm skeptical of all diets, mostly because I don't think there is a single diet that is optimal for every single person. From what I've observed, Atkins seems to pretty effective for some people. Healthy or not, it has enabled some to drop a big enough chunk of weight that they are now more comfortable going to the gym, and more likely to be protective of their health/appearance. Being in shape is its own reward, and is good motivation for healthy living.
Free and easy? Maybe. If you are morbidly obese, it is relatively easy to see an immediate (weeks) improvement in shape. But there might not be too big a change in weight as muscle tissue is built up. I've been trying to lose about 20lbs, and I have not been very successful. This is with 6 hours of weight training a week and 6 hours of fat burn/intense cardio per week. Food has been the big issue. Problem is that I am already in OK shape, so turning up the execise just ramped up my metabolism. Through my MS engineering program (where I hit my all-time low for healthy living), I never ate breakfast or lunch. Now, if I don't eat a sizable breakfast, by 10AM my Zaurus begins to look like an oatmeal cream pie. MMMmmmmm ppiiieee.
I agree, if you are "fat," eat less, exercise more. I'd also suggest planning your food intake at the times when you are most hungry, not at the traditional meal times (though they often coincide). This will help prevent cheating. For people who are just trying to shed a few pounds through exercise, Cutting back on your food intake might not be the best course of action. You might actually have to eat more.
Agree. But, it should be pointed out that being a full-time musician does not mean that you deserve a high salary (compared to a teacher for instance) and a luxurious lifestyle. If you can't make a living as a musician, you should probably look at other career options-- not because you are bad at what you do, but because the demand for musicians cannot support all musicians. It's just that simple. I want to be a professional athlete. Will I ever be? Hell no. Could I lose a lot of money and incur debt out the wazoo trying to be? Hell yes. Are there phenomenal athletes that could be professional athletes but are not? Absolutely. What are they doing? Consider the panic parents feel when their teenage kids decide that they want to act or be "rock stars" instead of going to college. Not a real high probability of success. Sounds cold, but it's reality.
So you know that there is no such thing as an unstable system (in a mathematically rigorous sense).;-) Just wanted to point out that you can still have a stable vertical operating point on a "stopped" unicycle, if the wheel is rigidly attached to the floor for example. The corrective action would then be whatever torque was necessary to keep the rider in the desired position. So instead of moving the bike beneath the rider (like an inverted pendulum on a translating cart), the rider would be moving above the pivot point. It a two state model versus a four state model.
The segway, on the other hand, is ALWAYS unstable along the axis of motion, and the farther you get away from the stable point, the more force it takes to bring it back to being stable.
Practically speaking, the segway does have two other stable operating points (angle being the only state under consideration): 1) pitched all the forward, with the rider on his/her face, and 2) pitched all the way backwards, with the rider on his/her back. At + or - pi/2 radians from vertical, there might be some huge reaction torque that could "right" the segway and pilot, but I'll assume that is beyond the capability of the motors. In practice, these operating points would be stable.
Bikes are "unstable" too, but the control system (the rider) will rarely fail. The segway plant is open-loop unstable about the normal operating point (upright), but stable about that point when a control loop is wrapped around the inertial sensors. If the control system fails, and the feedback loop is opened (or broken) the operating point about the "vertical" state becomes unstable, and hilarity ensues.
Another issue (the relevent one) is if the plant or compensation system changes: Like when the batteries die and the control effort can't be met.
My favorite Segway issue though, is one that I have yet to see in the news: What the hell happens when a segway hits something near the ground (like a dog), pitching the rider CG forward? Wouldn't this just cause the segway to accelerate even harder in the direction of whatever it hit?
Statistical/probablistic analysis of the code. Mathematicians can say with authority that "the odds of this code being copied are pretty good," or "the probablility that this code was ripped off is higher than what was expected." Statistics and probabilities sound more legit when spoken by a mathematician.
Dealing with a troubling topic often begins with humor. It's a mental/emotional mechanism for dealing with stress.
At least now, through the mechanics of comedy, I know what to expect when I go to jail for not paying SCO.
Consider having the robot just sit there, stationary. The segway doesn't. It must move it's wheels to maintain balance; a modeling nightmare.
It is an inverted pendulum. Of course it has to move its wheels to maintain balance. Unless its wheels are constrained.
I disagree it being a control nightmare. Have you ever seen an inverted pendulum? Find a video on the web. They're easy to control, and well studied. (Missiles, rockets, inverted pendulum, cart and pendulum, etc.)
I might be wrong, but isn't the segway stable even when off-like those blow-up punching bags? I've only seen it in videos and on Leno, and they were upright while parked. Kickstand maybe?
The RC car modeling nightmare isn't so much in the dynamics of the platform as it is in finding a control method to orient it in the way you want at the position where you want it. Imagine how big a pain in the ass it is to get an RC car to turn around 180deg, ending up in its original location.
The typical solution (e.g. a compass, two levels and some cheap servos) is going to cost a few hundred bucks if you want to do it really well. Nowhere close to offsetting the segway
Well, my usual approach is to use a 2-axis gyro for low frequencies and MHD rate sensors for high frequencies. Blending the output yields a nice 2-axis broadband angular rate sensor. Very high accuracy. Not cheap.
You're right though. I would never use a segway in CV when a regular robot with a stabilized gimbal or IMU could give me the same thing with fewer complications.
And yes, balancing on two wheels is cool.
It's worse than other platforms in many ways, including the ones you discuss.
Practically speaking, I wholeheartedly agree. But like you said, It's cool, and that gets attention (on Slashdot) and maybe more $$$. One thing i've learned in school/at work: It doesn't have to be the best solution to be publishable or to convince customers to throw more money your way. Wierd ideas get money. Just look at the weirdness that DARPA funds.
We're on the same page, but I'm thinking of it as a proposal generation type of toy, not as a practical solution. As a computer vision person, let me tell you that just slapping a camera on the front of a segway and compiling the simplest possible obstacle avoidance program will yield a thesis, many many conference papers, a few journal papers, and probably more application specific proposals for additional funding. That's just the academic way.
Besides, if they bought it for research, they would have had to have a good reason other than it being cool. Know what it is?
Seriously, though. Why would you use a Segway instead of, say, a four-wheel RC car?
Because it is easier to model and control the segway. Think of it this way: You have a robot based on the segway, and one based on a 4-wheeled rc car. They are both pointing north. Consider how much easier it is to get the segway to point south, while maintaining the same position (Just changing orientation). If the RC car had differential steering (like a tank), then yeah, you don't need a segway.
If you look at most lab grade wheeled/tracked robots, most all have differential steering. What the segway based version has going for it is that it maintaines a constant vertial orientation--it is a stabilized inverted pendulum: It's always "righted" or "pointing up." (Well, in cases where the wheels are at the same Z, anyway.)
From the computer vision point of view, this is really nice to have. If you had a camera mounted on any other type of robot, and wanted to visually point "out" at something, you'd need to measure the changing orintation of the robot as it clambered over objects or moved up and down hills. The most common way of doing this is to put a gyro or other angular rate sensor or inertial reference unit on the robot base, and then feed-forward the dynamics of the base to a pan/tilt type mechanism to move the camera. (All the extra work & crap required to do this would offset the cost of buying the segway, by the way...) Alternatively, you could close a loop around a video tracker to adjust pan/tilt, but that's been done before, too.
What would be really cool would be to stabilize the segway in 2 angular degrees of freedom. Then, a vision system could be decoupled--easily-- from the robot platform in roll & pitch.(An additional single axis rotation stage could offload any yaw.)
....spam is a trojan horse rolling sexual material into the living rooms of godfearing, wholesome americans.
Bull droppings! Every godfearing person on this planet knows that its that rock-and-roll music that's turning our youth into devil worshipping sexfiends. I feel sorry for all the fresh young 18-15 year old girls who were tricked into exposing their soft creamy privates and warm welcoming bosoms by high-volume high-energy hell-borne drug known as rock music. Girls-Gone-Wild indeed!
Re:Only a partial solution
on
Chicken Run
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· Score: 1
And if the modern animal slaver comes accross someone who does care, so much the better, they can have a smug and comfortable argument belittling vegetarians and intellectualising suffering.
Nah. I don't care enough about the issue to have an argument about it. It's just not the same caliber issue as abortion rights, privacy, etc, where the population is essentially split down the middle. Meat/no meat will never get seriously debated in the same way pro-life/pro-choice arguments do, which is a shame. It is less like the slavery argument you mention, which if you remember required a war to resolve, and more like prohibition-- where people who don't drink have nothing to lose, and more to gain (like safety and lower crime). Those who "enjoy" the occasional drink do lose. They lose the right to drink. Is consuming alcohol wrong? Prohibition didn't work because alcohol is part of some cultures. (Some more than others!) I figure (but don't know, obviously) that banning consumption of meat would fail in a similar fashion as banning alcohol. But the odds of illegalizing meat consumption are slim; there are no strong lobbying forces for making meat illegal, and there isn't enough of a two-sided ethical issue two ever make it a hotly debated issue. (I've never been to a rally againt any meat proc plants or similar; is there ever any opposition the protest? Other than maybe plant workers or those who are somehow related to the industry?)
I doubt anyone is reading this, since it was posted way after the article scrolled off, but I would like some honest comments on this scenario: If you are vegan, pro-animals rights, et cetera, and also the most powerful lawmaker in the known world, what would you do to change people's eating habits? Would you outlaw domesticating/eating animals? Keep in mind that this is not an "it's right" or "its wrong" question. I want to hear justification, just what you would do, and whether or not you think it is feasable.
By the way, when you live on an island (Philippines) that has too large a population to live on agriculture alone, you have to raise animals (chickens, for example) and fish to eat. I imagine a similar situation in the desert. I don't see where being smug or intellectualizing needs to be part of rationalizing eating meat then. But then, you probably never thought about that sitting in Starbucks complaining about how everyone else sucks for not seeing "what's right" like you do. It seems your world is pretty small and uncomplicated. I envy you.
Re:Only a partial solution
on
Chicken Run
·
· Score: 1
Granted, this is a video of the way that Kentucky Fried Chicken treats their birds, and they are known to be particularly cruel.
It the 11-Herbs-and-spices that really get 'em.
Not to mention the fact that the agriculture industry is the number one polluter in America.
Lets get rid of agriculture then. It's the fertilizer right? Or is it still the cows and pigs farting?
(Plus, in case you didn't know, chicken has more cholesterol than beef.)
But what kind of cholesterol?
It amazes me how many people are bothered by the scene in 'Roger and Me' where the woman kills and strips the rabbit, yet they still eat meat...
I'm not bothered by the killing an skinning of rabbits nearly as much as I am bothered by the number of people who think Mike Moore is Jesus. Some good stuff, but also some PAINFULLY bad logic. Also interesting is that I've never found any of his work to be at all humorous--everyone who has encouraged me to see/read his work insists it is hilarious. And it probably is, to him: A millionaire paid to talk "angrily" out of his ass. Hell, me or the Filthy Critic could do that. (I'm doing it now...) I guess you just have to be the type of person who sits (sat) at the mall all day making fun of all the people around you--who actually have a reason to be there--to really enjoy his humor. I recommend reading some classical philosophy stuff if you want "deep" or the Filthy Critic if you want "angry." But, no no, go ahead and buy his book, pay to see his mock documentaries. Everyone else is doing it.
Let's see...Killing and carving up an animal, or "food preparation" as it is occasionally known, has been around for a LONG time. Way back when individual families had to find/raise and prepare their own meat (which is still available--fresh--in winter), everyone killed and gutted animals. And they probably got used to it-- in much the same way doctors get used to gutting people and their wallets.
There isn't a chance in hell that I will stop eating meat. It is embedded in my heritage, my culture and my lifestyle. To think that I could be "persuaded" to change that with no apparent benefit to me or my family is ludicrous. (Informing me of the dangers of meat ie mad cow, 'roids, antibiotics, etc. isn't going to make me not eat meat. I'll just get it from somewhere else.) It might be that in the future everyone is vegetarian, but it will take a lot of time, a lot of pressure, and "The Great Meat Catastrophe of 2067" to get there. As long as you understand that, and are patient, I applaud your efforts in promoting a vegetarian lifestyle.
If you've ever tried to take a dump on a C-130 in flight, going through a thunderstorm, after a 60 day deployment to a tent in Turkey, when your entire digestive tract is in full rebellion...you'd be damn glad that the toilet is designed properly.
Unless you happen to be on a C-130 that only has a "Pee-Pot" or a hole in the fuselage for stand-up urination. Then you pray that your flight suit has the words "Air Tight" somewhere in the design specs.
Yeah...You think that's bad. But it could have been Optimus Prime and Starscream "transforming" into the "Dirty Sanchez" configuration. THAT would be disturbing...
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't that kind of the point? I'm skeptical of all diets, mostly because I don't think there is a single diet that is optimal for every single person. From what I've observed, Atkins seems to pretty effective for some people. Healthy or not, it has enabled some to drop a big enough chunk of weight that they are now more comfortable going to the gym, and more likely to be protective of their health/appearance. Being in shape is its own reward, and is good motivation for healthy living.
Free and easy? Maybe. If you are morbidly obese, it is relatively easy to see an immediate (weeks) improvement in shape. But there might not be too big a change in weight as muscle tissue is built up. I've been trying to lose about 20lbs, and I have not been very successful. This is with 6 hours of weight training a week and 6 hours of fat burn/intense cardio per week. Food has been the big issue. Problem is that I am already in OK shape, so turning up the execise just ramped up my metabolism. Through my MS engineering program (where I hit my all-time low for healthy living), I never ate breakfast or lunch. Now, if I don't eat a sizable breakfast, by 10AM my Zaurus begins to look like an oatmeal cream pie. MMMmmmmm ppiiieee.
I agree, if you are "fat," eat less, exercise more. I'd also suggest planning your food intake at the times when you are most hungry, not at the traditional meal times (though they often coincide). This will help prevent cheating. For people who are just trying to shed a few pounds through exercise, Cutting back on your food intake might not be the best course of action. You might actually have to eat more.
I think a Leisure-Suit Larry movie would sell well. Especially on this site.
She's from Akron, OH. She probably doesn't have many teeth left. ;-)
Because there is a lot of crime to choose from. Hell, if you have to pick one, why not pick the one that irritates you the most.
Agree. But, it should be pointed out that being a full-time musician does not mean that you deserve a high salary (compared to a teacher for instance) and a luxurious lifestyle. If you can't make a living as a musician, you should probably look at other career options-- not because you are bad at what you do, but because the demand for musicians cannot support all musicians. It's just that simple. I want to be a professional athlete. Will I ever be? Hell no. Could I lose a lot of money and incur debt out the wazoo trying to be? Hell yes. Are there phenomenal athletes that could be professional athletes but are not? Absolutely. What are they doing? Consider the panic parents feel when their teenage kids decide that they want to act or be "rock stars" instead of going to college. Not a real high probability of success. Sounds cold, but it's reality.
You forrgooot ddddddrrinkingking.
Commercials with Cadillac's driving around fast with Led Zeppelin playing loudly in the background does qualify as trying to be cool.
And my god does it not work. Its like
Did the RIAA at least send them a t-shirt with a nice target design on it? (your choice of in the back, or on the front)
This is the RIAA. They're shipping pants with a target design on each pair. In the back, of course.
Yes, I'm a bit of an expert in the field
So you know that there is no such thing as an unstable system (in a mathematically rigorous sense). ;-) Just wanted to point out that you can still have a stable vertical operating point on a "stopped" unicycle, if the wheel is rigidly attached to the floor for example. The corrective action would then be whatever torque was necessary to keep the rider in the desired position. So instead of moving the bike beneath the rider (like an inverted pendulum on a translating cart), the rider would be moving above the pivot point. It a two state model versus a four state model.
The segway, on the other hand, is ALWAYS unstable along the axis of motion, and the farther you get away from the stable point, the more force it takes to bring it back to being stable.
Practically speaking, the segway does have two other stable operating points (angle being the only state under consideration): 1) pitched all the forward, with the rider on his/her face, and 2) pitched all the way backwards, with the rider on his/her back. At + or - pi/2 radians from vertical, there might be some huge reaction torque that could "right" the segway and pilot, but I'll assume that is beyond the capability of the motors. In practice, these operating points would be stable.
Bikes are "unstable" too, but the control system (the rider) will rarely fail. The segway plant is open-loop unstable about the normal operating point (upright), but stable about that point when a control loop is wrapped around the inertial sensors. If the control system fails, and the feedback loop is opened (or broken) the operating point about the "vertical" state becomes unstable, and hilarity ensues.
Another issue (the relevent one) is if the plant or compensation system changes: Like when the batteries die and the control effort can't be met.
My favorite Segway issue though, is one that I have yet to see in the news: What the hell happens when a segway hits something near the ground (like a dog), pitching the rider CG forward? Wouldn't this just cause the segway to accelerate even harder in the direction of whatever it hit?
Statistical/probablistic analysis of the code. Mathematicians can say with authority that "the odds of this code being copied are pretty good," or "the probablility that this code was ripped off is higher than what was expected." Statistics and probabilities sound more legit when spoken by a mathematician.
Dealing with a troubling topic often begins with humor. It's a mental/emotional mechanism for dealing with stress. At least now, through the mechanics of comedy, I know what to expect when I go to jail for not paying SCO.
designed more to ease the minds of worried parents and suspicious bosses
I think I'll ease my parents' minds and set my phone adrift in the Hudson.
Consider having the robot just sit there, stationary. The segway doesn't. It must move it's wheels to maintain balance; a modeling nightmare.
It is an inverted pendulum. Of course it has to move its wheels to maintain balance. Unless its wheels are constrained.
I disagree it being a control nightmare. Have you ever seen an inverted pendulum? Find a video on the web. They're easy to control, and well studied. (Missiles, rockets, inverted pendulum, cart and pendulum, etc.)
I might be wrong, but isn't the segway stable even when off-like those blow-up punching bags? I've only seen it in videos and on Leno, and they were upright while parked. Kickstand maybe?
The RC car modeling nightmare isn't so much in the dynamics of the platform as it is in finding a control method to orient it in the way you want at the position where you want it. Imagine how big a pain in the ass it is to get an RC car to turn around 180deg, ending up in its original location.
The typical solution (e.g. a compass, two levels and some cheap servos) is going to cost a few hundred bucks if you want to do it really well. Nowhere close to offsetting the segway
Well, my usual approach is to use a 2-axis gyro for low frequencies and MHD rate sensors for high frequencies. Blending the output yields a nice 2-axis broadband angular rate sensor. Very high accuracy. Not cheap.
You're right though. I would never use a segway in CV when a regular robot with a stabilized gimbal or IMU could give me the same thing with fewer complications.
And yes, balancing on two wheels is cool.
It's worse than other platforms in many ways, including the ones you discuss.
Practically speaking, I wholeheartedly agree. But like you said, It's cool, and that gets attention (on Slashdot) and maybe more $$$. One thing i've learned in school/at work: It doesn't have to be the best solution to be publishable or to convince customers to throw more money your way. Wierd ideas get money. Just look at the weirdness that DARPA funds.
We're on the same page, but I'm thinking of it as a proposal generation type of toy, not as a practical solution. As a computer vision person, let me tell you that just slapping a camera on the front of a segway and compiling the simplest possible obstacle avoidance program will yield a thesis, many many conference papers, a few journal papers, and probably more application specific proposals for additional funding. That's just the academic way.
Besides, if they bought it for research, they would have had to have a good reason other than it being cool. Know what it is?
Seriously, though. Why would you use a Segway instead of, say, a four-wheel RC car?
Because it is easier to model and control the segway. Think of it this way: You have a robot based on the segway, and one based on a 4-wheeled rc car. They are both pointing north. Consider how much easier it is to get the segway to point south, while maintaining the same position (Just changing orientation). If the RC car had differential steering (like a tank), then yeah, you don't need a segway.
If you look at most lab grade wheeled/tracked robots, most all have differential steering. What the segway based version has going for it is that it maintaines a constant vertial orientation--it is a stabilized inverted pendulum: It's always "righted" or "pointing up." (Well, in cases where the wheels are at the same Z, anyway.)
From the computer vision point of view, this is really nice to have. If you had a camera mounted on any other type of robot, and wanted to visually point "out" at something, you'd need to measure the changing orintation of the robot as it clambered over objects or moved up and down hills. The most common way of doing this is to put a gyro or other angular rate sensor or inertial reference unit on the robot base, and then feed-forward the dynamics of the base to a pan/tilt type mechanism to move the camera. (All the extra work & crap required to do this would offset the cost of buying the segway, by the way...) Alternatively, you could close a loop around a video tracker to adjust pan/tilt, but that's been done before, too.
What would be really cool would be to stabilize the segway in 2 angular degrees of freedom. Then, a vision system could be decoupled--easily-- from the robot platform in roll & pitch.(An additional single axis rotation stage could offload any yaw.)
Bull droppings! Every godfearing person on this planet knows that its that rock-and-roll music that's turning our youth into devil worshipping sexfiends. I feel sorry for all the fresh young 18-15 year old girls who were tricked into exposing their soft creamy privates and warm welcoming bosoms by high-volume high-energy hell-borne drug known as rock music. Girls-Gone-Wild indeed!
And if the modern animal slaver comes accross someone who does care, so much the better, they can have a smug and comfortable argument belittling vegetarians and intellectualising suffering.
Nah. I don't care enough about the issue to have an argument about it. It's just not the same caliber issue as abortion rights, privacy, etc, where the population is essentially split down the middle. Meat/no meat will never get seriously debated in the same way pro-life/pro-choice arguments do, which is a shame. It is less like the slavery argument you mention, which if you remember required a war to resolve, and more like prohibition-- where people who don't drink have nothing to lose, and more to gain (like safety and lower crime). Those who "enjoy" the occasional drink do lose. They lose the right to drink. Is consuming alcohol wrong? Prohibition didn't work because alcohol is part of some cultures. (Some more than others!) I figure (but don't know, obviously) that banning consumption of meat would fail in a similar fashion as banning alcohol. But the odds of illegalizing meat consumption are slim; there are no strong lobbying forces for making meat illegal, and there isn't enough of a two-sided ethical issue two ever make it a hotly debated issue. (I've never been to a rally againt any meat proc plants or similar; is there ever any opposition the protest? Other than maybe plant workers or those who are somehow related to the industry?)
I doubt anyone is reading this, since it was posted way after the article scrolled off, but I would like some honest comments on this scenario: If you are vegan, pro-animals rights, et cetera, and also the most powerful lawmaker in the known world, what would you do to change people's eating habits? Would you outlaw domesticating/eating animals? Keep in mind that this is not an "it's right" or "its wrong" question. I want to hear justification, just what you would do, and whether or not you think it is feasable.
By the way, when you live on an island (Philippines) that has too large a population to live on agriculture alone, you have to raise animals (chickens, for example) and fish to eat. I imagine a similar situation in the desert. I don't see where being smug or intellectualizing needs to be part of rationalizing eating meat then. But then, you probably never thought about that sitting in Starbucks complaining about how everyone else sucks for not seeing "what's right" like you do. It seems your world is pretty small and uncomplicated. I envy you.
Granted, this is a video of the way that Kentucky Fried Chicken treats their birds, and they are known to be particularly cruel.
It the 11-Herbs-and-spices that really get 'em.
Not to mention the fact that the agriculture industry is the number one polluter in America.
Lets get rid of agriculture then. It's the fertilizer right? Or is it still the cows and pigs farting?
(Plus, in case you didn't know, chicken has more cholesterol than beef.)
But what kind of cholesterol?
It amazes me how many people are bothered by the scene in 'Roger and Me' where the woman kills and strips the rabbit, yet they still eat meat...
I'm not bothered by the killing an skinning of rabbits nearly as much as I am bothered by the number of people who think Mike Moore is Jesus. Some good stuff, but also some PAINFULLY bad logic. Also interesting is that I've never found any of his work to be at all humorous--everyone who has encouraged me to see/read his work insists it is hilarious. And it probably is, to him: A millionaire paid to talk "angrily" out of his ass. Hell, me or the Filthy Critic could do that. (I'm doing it now...) I guess you just have to be the type of person who sits (sat) at the mall all day making fun of all the people around you--who actually have a reason to be there--to really enjoy his humor. I recommend reading some classical philosophy stuff if you want "deep" or the Filthy Critic if you want "angry." But, no no, go ahead and buy his book, pay to see his mock documentaries. Everyone else is doing it.
Let's see...Killing and carving up an animal, or "food preparation" as it is occasionally known, has been around for a LONG time. Way back when individual families had to find/raise and prepare their own meat (which is still available--fresh--in winter), everyone killed and gutted animals. And they probably got used to it-- in much the same way doctors get used to gutting people and their wallets.
There isn't a chance in hell that I will stop eating meat. It is embedded in my heritage, my culture and my lifestyle. To think that I could be "persuaded" to change that with no apparent benefit to me or my family is ludicrous. (Informing me of the dangers of meat ie mad cow, 'roids, antibiotics, etc. isn't going to make me not eat meat. I'll just get it from somewhere else.) It might be that in the future everyone is vegetarian, but it will take a lot of time, a lot of pressure, and "The Great Meat Catastrophe of 2067" to get there. As long as you understand that, and are patient, I applaud your efforts in promoting a vegetarian lifestyle.
Or you're a chicken.
But the McNuggets do contain:
dimethylpolysiloxane
sodium acid pyrophosphate
sodium aluminum phosphate
monocalcium phosphate
Oh, thank god! I was afraid I wasn't getting enough dimethylpolysiloxane in my normal diet. So a 9-piece a day and I should stop foaming, right?
If you've ever tried to take a dump on a C-130 in flight, going through a thunderstorm, after a 60 day deployment to a tent in Turkey, when your entire digestive tract is in full rebellion...you'd be damn glad that the toilet is designed properly.
Unless you happen to be on a C-130 that only has a "Pee-Pot" or a hole in the fuselage for stand-up urination. Then you pray that your flight suit has the words "Air Tight" somewhere in the design specs.
All me and my friends can figure out is that they are trapped inside a matrix within a matrix
That's VMWare, baby!
Yeah...You think that's bad. But it could have been Optimus Prime and Starscream "transforming" into the "Dirty Sanchez" configuration. THAT would be disturbing...