Yeah, the narrative in the article is pretty bad. The feed got too expensive to make raising pigs at the current market price profitable, and the farmers know that if the price goes up, the demand will go down. So they unload their pigs now to cut their losses. A lot of farmers had this same idea, so there is a glut of pigs on the market and the prices are really low. Soon there won't be as many pigs laying around, and prices will go up. This despite the likelihood of feed going down in price as demand weakens.
Then the farmers will of course see the high price of pork and the low price of feed and many of them will start to raise pigs again, which will drive prices back down as feed gets more expensive... you know the rest:)
Actually this would be a fantastic time to hoard. Contrary to the narrative in the article, the price of pork is down right now - not because grocery chains are "paying less per pig" - but because the farmers are all unloading their pigs on the market at once, creating a glut. I don't know how long bacon keeps in a deep freeze, but it probably makes sense to stock up if you are already running the deep freeze anyway... otherwise it's a pretty expensive way to save money:)
I don't think anyone should call you names, but surely you can see that you are stating things that are obvious, correct, and yet completely irrelevant to the discussion?
What are you going on about? A heat pump is demonstrably more efficient than a space heater, light bulb, or any other resistive system - simply because it "cheats" and pulls heat in from outside the system. I don't think your choice of system boundaries is defensible in the context of this discussion.
Don't get me wrong, I'm on board with all the points they raise in that article. I even refuse to buy antibiotic soap. I'm just pointing out that nothing really supports the claim that our meat has a bunch of antibiotic residue in it. I'm certain there are trace amounts - just like there are just about everywhere these days. But I have to agree with the anonymous coward that a "citation is needed":)
I'm a little surprised if that is your experience. Diesel's advantage over gasoline starts to disappear as the gasoline throttle plate opens up. Highway driving shouldn't offer up much advantage, unless your engine is grossly over-sized. Diesels should be a bit better than gasoline in "around town" driving - though the extra weight drags down the inherent advantages there as well. A lot of people think that diesel is a lot more efficient than gasoline, but often they are failing to consider that the diesel fuel is more energy-dense, and they are not comparing similar performing cars at similar prices.
My understanding of antibiotics is that you need to dose at least daily to keep serum levels up. I suspect they used this dose to see worst-case. I don't doubt that trace antibiotics exist, but I'm very skeptical that we regularly see level such as the ones in this study in our food supply. I'm sure they do slaughter sick animals - I'm just not sure that they dose them as they are on their way to the slaughterhouse! Why waste the antibiotic?
I ain't no sciamatist, but these studies seem... unrealistic:
From the first:
For the present study, ground meat was used from lambs dosed intravenously with oxytetracyclene 4 h prior to slaughter.
The second did not even study antibiotics present in animals, and instead injected fermenting sausages directly with antibiotics.
The third:
Each animal was injected intramuscularly in the neck area and within two hours after the third injection, was slaughtered.
I don't think this is the citation that was hoped for, unless you are asserting that calves and lambs are regularly treated for a disease within hours of slaughter.
That's exactly what I thought. Even the red second hand - the most recent change - was added in 1953. But then I realized that Mickey Mouse is still in copyright as well. Weird, weird world we live in.
So you see no difference between an elected administration and a private entity with no democratic oversight?
There are large swaths of the US government without any direct democratic oversight. And corporations do, ultimately, follow the rules set by congress. The government can seize corporations, and it has done that a lot recently with banks, insurance companies, and even domestic automakers. Corporations are whatever the government wants them to be - they are not some natural economic entity.
That said, I think you are right - we are often more comfortable letting private individuals run the show, because at least we can be sure that their motivations are mostly fiscal. While this leads to some pretty shitty behavior, it is also fairly predictable and reasonably dealt with.
The problem we face now is that we left a feedback cycle in place when creating corporations, where the corporation can funnel money back at the government. So now you have unelected, non-appointed people with a lot of influence in the day-to-day affairs of the "real" government. I don't pretend to be smart enough to know what the answer is, but it probably involves rethinking the corporate charter a bit.
For me, it would be remote backup and video streaming. Video streaming lets me get rid of cable (or would, if it weren't for live sports). Before you say, "but 15 Mbps is fast enough for HD video", consider that there are 4 people living in this house - and a remote backup could kick off at any time as well. Remote backup is awesome at high speed if your upstream can handle it. For my roughly 2TB of data from 3 computers, it takes (best case) 3 months to upload on a Comcast 2Mbps uplink. The 50 Mbps minimum speed that they quote in TFA applies upstream as well, so that's only 4 days!
It's about time people woke up and realised that there should be limits to what _both_ companies and governments aught to be able to do.
In my view, corporations get their charter from government and are thus an extension of government. It makes little difference whether a corporation or a government is doing the tracking. As a practical matter, the corporation is completely dependent on the government and will (usually) freely share the information. If they won't share, there are usually ways to induce them to share it - even without the obvious "court order", "pass a new law" or "executive order" route.
I'm not completely hyper about privacy, but I do think we lack an appreciation of exactly how much "they" know about us.
Don't get me wrong - there is plenty of juvenile comments on Slashdot, but there is enough meat here to keep reading. If the freaking editors set the bar so low I'm afraid this will change.
Smoking has an actual link to cancer. Traffic exhaust has an actual link to cancer. Living in Manhattan makes you statistically more likely to develop cancer.
Eating organic food has no link whatsoever to cancer. If there is a link, it must have some complex relationship like you posit, or the link must be very marginal. I'd say it's less like a New Yorker beginning to smoke and more like someone worried about swallowing some ocean water after peeing in the ocean.
I always enjoyed the sight of people coming out of the Union Square Whole Foods in NYC with organic groceries. Because the smog, heavy metals, and road traffic exhaust of Manhattan won't give you cancer, but that trace amount of pesticide sure will.
I'm not really interested in 6th-grade playground name-calling. I like Slashdot for the more mature or technical discussions. I can get knee-jerk stuff anywhere. CNN and YouTube are awesome examples of pure useless seafoam in the comments section.
Newsworthy, sure. But I expect some technical details, policy debate, etc. Starting the discussion off by calling the machines "nude-o-scopes" is probably not the best way to generate a productive discussion.
Calling the spending "wasteful" is certainly opinionated and will certainly spark discussion and clicks. Calling the machines "nude-o-scopes" takes it into MoveOn territory.
Slashdot Mirror
I hear data centers are bad, too.
Mine's too old for that book now, too. But fortunately there's still the boy a few years behind her :)
Yeah, the narrative in the article is pretty bad. The feed got too expensive to make raising pigs at the current market price profitable, and the farmers know that if the price goes up, the demand will go down. So they unload their pigs now to cut their losses. A lot of farmers had this same idea, so there is a glut of pigs on the market and the prices are really low. Soon there won't be as many pigs laying around, and prices will go up. This despite the likelihood of feed going down in price as demand weakens.
Then the farmers will of course see the high price of pork and the low price of feed and many of them will start to raise pigs again, which will drive prices back down as feed gets more expensive... you know the rest :)
Actually this would be a fantastic time to hoard. Contrary to the narrative in the article, the price of pork is down right now - not because grocery chains are "paying less per pig" - but because the farmers are all unloading their pigs on the market at once, creating a glut. I don't know how long bacon keeps in a deep freeze, but it probably makes sense to stock up if you are already running the deep freeze anyway... otherwise it's a pretty expensive way to save money :)
I don't think anyone should call you names, but surely you can see that you are stating things that are obvious, correct, and yet completely irrelevant to the discussion?
What are you going on about? A heat pump is demonstrably more efficient than a space heater, light bulb, or any other resistive system - simply because it "cheats" and pulls heat in from outside the system. I don't think your choice of system boundaries is defensible in the context of this discussion.
Woah... I can't believe you had the exact same thought as me... crazy.
Don't get me wrong, I'm on board with all the points they raise in that article. I even refuse to buy antibiotic soap. I'm just pointing out that nothing really supports the claim that our meat has a bunch of antibiotic residue in it. I'm certain there are trace amounts - just like there are just about everywhere these days. But I have to agree with the anonymous coward that a "citation is needed" :)
I'm a little surprised if that is your experience. Diesel's advantage over gasoline starts to disappear as the gasoline throttle plate opens up. Highway driving shouldn't offer up much advantage, unless your engine is grossly over-sized. Diesels should be a bit better than gasoline in "around town" driving - though the extra weight drags down the inherent advantages there as well. A lot of people think that diesel is a lot more efficient than gasoline, but often they are failing to consider that the diesel fuel is more energy-dense, and they are not comparing similar performing cars at similar prices.
My understanding of antibiotics is that you need to dose at least daily to keep serum levels up. I suspect they used this dose to see worst-case. I don't doubt that trace antibiotics exist, but I'm very skeptical that we regularly see level such as the ones in this study in our food supply. I'm sure they do slaughter sick animals - I'm just not sure that they dose them as they are on their way to the slaughterhouse! Why waste the antibiotic?
Local grassfed? That works great if your "local" includes grassland. My "local" is mostly corn farms.
I ain't no sciamatist, but these studies seem... unrealistic:
From the first:
The second did not even study antibiotics present in animals, and instead injected fermenting sausages directly with antibiotics.
The third:
I don't think this is the citation that was hoped for, unless you are asserting that calves and lambs are regularly treated for a disease within hours of slaughter.
That's exactly what I thought. Even the red second hand - the most recent change - was added in 1953. But then I realized that Mickey Mouse is still in copyright as well. Weird, weird world we live in.
So you see no difference between an elected administration and a private entity with no democratic oversight?
There are large swaths of the US government without any direct democratic oversight. And corporations do, ultimately, follow the rules set by congress. The government can seize corporations, and it has done that a lot recently with banks, insurance companies, and even domestic automakers. Corporations are whatever the government wants them to be - they are not some natural economic entity.
That said, I think you are right - we are often more comfortable letting private individuals run the show, because at least we can be sure that their motivations are mostly fiscal. While this leads to some pretty shitty behavior, it is also fairly predictable and reasonably dealt with.
The problem we face now is that we left a feedback cycle in place when creating corporations, where the corporation can funnel money back at the government. So now you have unelected, non-appointed people with a lot of influence in the day-to-day affairs of the "real" government. I don't pretend to be smart enough to know what the answer is, but it probably involves rethinking the corporate charter a bit.
For me, it would be remote backup and video streaming. Video streaming lets me get rid of cable (or would, if it weren't for live sports). Before you say, "but 15 Mbps is fast enough for HD video", consider that there are 4 people living in this house - and a remote backup could kick off at any time as well. Remote backup is awesome at high speed if your upstream can handle it. For my roughly 2TB of data from 3 computers, it takes (best case) 3 months to upload on a Comcast 2Mbps uplink. The 50 Mbps minimum speed that they quote in TFA applies upstream as well, so that's only 4 days!
It's about time people woke up and realised that there should be limits to what _both_ companies and governments aught to be able to do.
In my view, corporations get their charter from government and are thus an extension of government. It makes little difference whether a corporation or a government is doing the tracking. As a practical matter, the corporation is completely dependent on the government and will (usually) freely share the information. If they won't share, there are usually ways to induce them to share it - even without the obvious "court order", "pass a new law" or "executive order" route.
I'm not completely hyper about privacy, but I do think we lack an appreciation of exactly how much "they" know about us.
You got it.
Don't get me wrong - there is plenty of juvenile comments on Slashdot, but there is enough meat here to keep reading. If the freaking editors set the bar so low I'm afraid this will change.
Smoking has an actual link to cancer. Traffic exhaust has an actual link to cancer. Living in Manhattan makes you statistically more likely to develop cancer.
Eating organic food has no link whatsoever to cancer. If there is a link, it must have some complex relationship like you posit, or the link must be very marginal. I'd say it's less like a New Yorker beginning to smoke and more like someone worried about swallowing some ocean water after peeing in the ocean.
I meant debate about policy here on Slashdot.
There's no policy debate at the national level because the two major parties are so similar, especially on this matter.
Good, because I like to take my organic free-range beef and then throw it on the BBQ.
I always enjoyed the sight of people coming out of the Union Square Whole Foods in NYC with organic groceries. Because the smog, heavy metals, and road traffic exhaust of Manhattan won't give you cancer, but that trace amount of pesticide sure will.
To be fair, they do have above-average produce.
I'm not really interested in 6th-grade playground name-calling. I like Slashdot for the more mature or technical discussions. I can get knee-jerk stuff anywhere. CNN and YouTube are awesome examples of pure useless seafoam in the comments section.
Newsworthy, sure. But I expect some technical details, policy debate, etc. Starting the discussion off by calling the machines "nude-o-scopes" is probably not the best way to generate a productive discussion.
Calling the spending "wasteful" is certainly opinionated and will certainly spark discussion and clicks. Calling the machines "nude-o-scopes" takes it into MoveOn territory.
I love a good incendiary summary as much as the next guy, but isn't this a bit blatant, even for Slashdot?