I know exactly what happens in the commercial farms and slaughter houses, and it's one reason I prefer hunted wild game. But the PETA doesn't want me to do that either.
You don't have to do everything PETA says. Simply eating only wild game or free range meat is a huge improvement. Both in the treatment of animals and in taste.
I disagree with "shock theater" It's not "shock theater" - it's reality that is just never ever shown on any media.
If every meat eater has to kill his own animals there would be a whole lot more vegetarians.
If every person had to build their own house there would be a whole lot more homeless. If every person had to assemble their own pens there would be a whole lot less writers. If every person had to plant their own food there would be a whole less vegetarians, and so on.
It's called 'division of labor' and it's the foundation of society and civilization. Get used to it.
You're missing the point. It's not about division of labour, it's about knowing what actually happens in the meat industry. I've heard of several people who became vegetarian after working in a slaughter house. I'd say that strongly supports GP's argument.
If you want to get biblical about it, keep in mind that in the new testament, all dietary restrictions were revoked, and we're supposed to use our own common sense about it now.
My common sense, for example, tells me not to give money to people who are excessively cruel to animals. Nor do I need meat every day. But every once in a while eating meat that was produced in a responsible manner sounds acceptable and even healthy to me.
I feel it is a right for me to eat meat. No one should have the ability to remove that right from me.
I don't want to take away anyone's right to eat meat (I occasionally eat it myself), but have you considered the way that meat is produced? A lot of animals that are bred for meat are treated very badly. Comparisons to torture and nazi concentration camps aren't really all that inappropriate, once you know how the meat industry works.
If you want to go out in the woods and shoot your own dinner, by all means, go ahead. But if you by your meat in the supermarket, please pay attention to whether you're supporting cruelty to animals. There's also free-range meat, for example.
I must refer back to Genesis in this respect. God gave Adam dominion of all life on the earth to use as he saw fit.
As it stands, this original mandate, before being cast from Eden, allows us to do what we will with these animals. Later, in Leviticus, certain restrictions on diet and deviate sexual practices (bestiality) were later forbidden, but the original mandate was never completely rescinded.
I'm not sure how Genesis and Leviticus are relevant here, but if you want to go that way, the obvious answer to the "God made us rulers over animals, so we can mistreat them as much as we like" is that nowadays we prefer responsible rulers over tyrants and dictators.
I do get the impression that PETA is rather extreme and militant, but them making parody games seems pretty harmless to me.
I guess it comes down to what we can learn versus the risks. I think the one thing we might be able to learn from h. neanderthalensis is how we as a species look to an outside observer. Do we really want them to look us in the eyes and tell us what they see?
So, yes, I would be interested in knowing how an outside observer views us. It may also prove of some use in girding us for reactions from an intelligent alien species, should we ever come across any.
How is a cloned Neanderthal an outsider? Either he'll be raised as a human (by far the least amount of ethical quicksand there), in which case he'll be culturally as human as any of us, or he'll be raised as a monkey, lab experiment or feral child, in which case he will probably unable to talk.
If you want comments from cultural outsiders, talk to members from a different culture, from primitive hunter-gatherer tribes, or something like that. Or read that piece from Sitting Bull.
What cloning a Neanderthal will (or might) give us, is a better understanding of Neanderthal physiology, and some idea of how their mental faculties compare to ours. It won't say much about us, other than that we're willing to do it.
If you can interbreed, you are not a separate species.
That's an old and obsolete definition of "species". Wolves and coyotes are considered different species, yet they can interbreed. Interbreeding relationships between some bird populations can get quite complex.
Also, it's by no means certain that we'd be able to interbreed with Neanderthal.
Also, I happen to think that elephants and whales are probably pretty smart. Maybe not as smart as us, but if you take the animal world as a whole, I think the correlation is obvious and undeniable. The smartest animals on earth (humans, elephants, dolphins, apes, etc) have the largest brains on the planet. The only real outlier is birds. Parrots can be very smart - evolution apparently found a way to build a small intelligent brain while still allowing the animal to fly.
Brain mass to body mass ratio is actually a better predictor of intelligence. While I won't deny that elephants are pretty intelligent compared to most animals, crows show much more impressive feats of intelligence (including standardized tool use, even). And crows have a far bigger brain/body ratio than any other animal. Even bigger than ours though (as do many other birds), so clearly this ratio isn't the ultimate predictor either.
Actually the body to brain mass ratio is directly correlated to intelligence. This may not matter among humans, but across separate species it does. The Elephant has a ratio of 1/560, where humans are 1/40. So elephants may have larger brains, but relatively speaking human brains are MUCH larger in ratio to our body mass.
Ratio is not all there is, though. Many birds have much higher brain-to-body ratios than we do, but while crows can display impressive feats of intelligence, they're not as intelligent as we are.
Of course in the case of birds, body mass is kept down by the need to be able to fly.
I think the result so far is that it's a bit of both. So to be a genius you need both the genetic inclination and a sufficiently stimulating environment.
And perhaps also quite a bit of stupid luck. Lots of non-genetic characteristics are still determined before birth. Does that count as nature or nurture?
Thats the point, who says? Who says Einstein and Newton want to be cloned?
Well, since nothing of their possible respective opinions on the matter is recorded, the only way we'll ever know the answer is to ask them.
Considering that we have no reliable method for communicating with the dead, the only way we can ask whether or not to they would want to be is to clone them.
How will that help? They'll still be dead. Cloning is not the same as resurrection. Identical twins are not the same individual. They just happen to have the same genes, but people are quite a lot more than their genes.
Also something for consideration since the technology isn't too far off, people should consider putting cloning clauses in their wills, assuming there's reason to believe that someone would actually want to clone you.
Do people already have clauses in their wills about what should happen with any frozen sperm or eggs they may leave behind? Because that's no different. It's genes, that's all.
I'm not at all in favour of cloning humans, but let's not muddle the issue by pretending cloning is some sort of magical resurrection. It's not.
That's the thing; Neanderthals aren't just like us. If they were, they'd be Homo Sapiens, not Homo Neanderthalensis. There IS a small, but definite, genetic difference by definition.
The big question is: how meaningful is that difference really? Their brains were as big as ours. It's not unlikely that they'll turn out to be stocky humans with heavy eyebrows and an average IQ of 95.
Cloning a Neanderthal in order to study him and learn more about them could mean we'd effectively be condemning a human to a life as a science project.
And having used it, I think it works quite well. The only thing that really annoys me about Apple mice is the invisible right mouse button. It has one, but when you click it, half the time it's registered as a left click.
Re:Stephenson actually sucks. There. I've said it.
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He writes at an amazing rate (or used to, at least), but I think it has ceased being about money a long time ago. I think he's one of the richest writers in the world, and second richest fantasy author after J.K. Rowling.
But while his books have grown a bit in size, each book is still a self-contained story that wraps up all its own story lines, unlike the mammoth trilogies from some other authors. But compare it to The Colour of Magic: that was a thin book that contained four reasonably self-contained stories.
Re:Stephenson actually sucks. There. I've said it.
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I've read 'em both, and I can't believe you would make the "Crisply Written" argument using Vinge as your example. Are we talking about the same guy?
Asimov was crisp. Early Arthur C. Clarke was crisp. HG Wells was so crisp there aren't even words.
But modern Sci-fi? There is no one who comes even close. All the best are wordier, they add in exposition and scene setting that would have been considered frippery 50 years ago.
It's still frippery, but everybody believes himself to be the new Tolkien. Look at fantasy books of the last 20 years. With the lone exception of Terry Pratchett, everybody wants to write big, epic, overwrought trilogies that grow way beyond their original intentions. Hell, even Pratchett's books have slowly been growing in size.
Compare to other geek favorites Stephen R Donaldson, Robert Jordan and George R. R. Martin. Unlike them, Stephenson finished an entire story in a single book. How terse of him!
He's terse when you compare him with second-rate geek favourites. Try comparing him to first-rate writers like Asimov, Pratchett, Clarke or Tolkien (ooh, bad example that last one).
It's a 935-page novel that should be 600 pages or less.
You do know who wrote the book, right? He can't type out the 10 commandments without 250 pages, an epilogue,
An epilogue? From Neal Stephenson? He'd probably leave the tenth commandment out completely. But the first three commandments will be absolutely brilliant and will fill half the book and all your mind with their exciting implications.
He's not. He writes fiction. Like Dan Brown. You didn't take The Davinci Code seriously, did you? If you don't like it, don't read it. But "fraud" is ridiculous hyperbole.
Re:Halfway through the book, and ...
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The Diamond Age, year I've been meaning to finish it. Everytime I start I get to about one-third and then I can't take it anymore.
Understandable. The start is by far the best part, and it loses direction about halfway through. It gets better, and even has a few more surprises in store, but don't expect a satisfying ending. It is Neal Stephenson, after all.
Diamond Age is somewhere in between Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon. It's more original and less cliche than Snow Crash, it's filled with some of the most brilliant ideas you've ever seen on paper, but halfway through, he doesn't know how to get to the end of the story, and when he finally gets there, he doesn't know what to do with it. It is in many ways the most typical Neal Stephenson book: brilliant ideas, vibrant world, no ending.
Cryptonomicon is much more well-rounded. Every single one of its 1100 pages is filled with excitement (except for the two arrivals in Manilla in a row), it's full of interesting and complex logical and mathematical ideas, many of them explained very well, and it even has some sort of an ending.
Cryptonomicon has dethroned Lord of the Rings as "Best book ever" in my opinion. I haven't read the Baroque cycle yet.
The definition of the word literally is as I said. The commonly accepted definition of the word is like I said.
Good lord, man. You're stubborn. Look it up. Lots of people of people have very different definitions of creationism. In fact, lots of people disagree with you on quite a lot of topics. I assure you that your life will become a lot easier once you accept that simple fact.
If you can't accept the world isn't going to change just to make you right, then you deserve to call yourself a creationist.
Wait, now creationism is suddenly about believing that the world will change to make you right? That's the widest and most irrelevant definition I've encountered so far. Looks like you are a creationist according to your own definition, then.
Wow, where do you get 5 weeks? 2 weeks is standard in the US unless you have seniority. For example at the law firm I work for you get 2 weeks your first year, 3 weeks the next and 4 weeks every year after that. you CAN get 5 weeks, but only after 20yrs with the firm.
How can you ever go on vacation like that? Don't American children have about a dozen weeks vacation from school? How do you deal with that? How do you visit family around christmas, have a 3 week vacation in summer, and still have some days left for random other stuff? Or a week away in spring or something?
Less than 5 weeks vacation would be a deal breaker for me. I'd rather accept a lot less pay than sacrifice what little free time I still have.
They want more time off because they've been around longer (2 weeks for new hires don't cut it).
Wow. I wouldn't take a job fresh out of college that only gave 2 weeks of vacation. When I started, 3 weeks was standard, and I thought that was merely 'acceptable'.
It's 5 weeks here, and I definitely wouldn't have taken a job that offered less than 4 weeks vacation. Even 5 weeks is barely enough.
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I know exactly what happens in the commercial farms and slaughter houses, and it's one reason I prefer hunted wild game. But the PETA doesn't want me to do that either.
You don't have to do everything PETA says. Simply eating only wild game or free range meat is a huge improvement. Both in the treatment of animals and in taste.
I disagree with "shock theater"
It's not "shock theater" - it's reality that is just never ever shown on any media.
If every meat eater has to kill his own animals there would be a whole lot more vegetarians.
If every person had to build their own house there would be a whole lot more homeless. If every person had to assemble their own pens there would be a whole lot less writers. If every person had to plant their own food there would be a whole less vegetarians, and so on.
It's called 'division of labor' and it's the foundation of society and civilization. Get used to it.
You're missing the point. It's not about division of labour, it's about knowing what actually happens in the meat industry. I've heard of several people who became vegetarian after working in a slaughter house. I'd say that strongly supports GP's argument.
If you want to get biblical about it, keep in mind that in the new testament, all dietary restrictions were revoked, and we're supposed to use our own common sense about it now.
My common sense, for example, tells me not to give money to people who are excessively cruel to animals. Nor do I need meat every day. But every once in a while eating meat that was produced in a responsible manner sounds acceptable and even healthy to me.
I feel it is a right for me to eat meat. No one should have the ability to remove that right from me.
I don't want to take away anyone's right to eat meat (I occasionally eat it myself), but have you considered the way that meat is produced? A lot of animals that are bred for meat are treated very badly. Comparisons to torture and nazi concentration camps aren't really all that inappropriate, once you know how the meat industry works.
If you want to go out in the woods and shoot your own dinner, by all means, go ahead. But if you by your meat in the supermarket, please pay attention to whether you're supporting cruelty to animals. There's also free-range meat, for example.
I must refer back to Genesis in this respect. God gave Adam dominion of all life on the earth to use as he saw fit.
As it stands, this original mandate, before being cast from Eden, allows us to do what we will with these animals. Later, in Leviticus, certain restrictions on diet and deviate sexual practices (bestiality) were later forbidden, but the original mandate was never completely rescinded.
I'm not sure how Genesis and Leviticus are relevant here, but if you want to go that way, the obvious answer to the "God made us rulers over animals, so we can mistreat them as much as we like" is that nowadays we prefer responsible rulers over tyrants and dictators.
I do get the impression that PETA is rather extreme and militant, but them making parody games seems pretty harmless to me.
I guess it comes down to what we can learn versus the risks. I think the one thing we might be able to learn from h. neanderthalensis is how we as a species look to an outside observer. Do we really want them to look us in the eyes and tell us what they see?
So, yes, I would be interested in knowing how an outside observer views us. It may also prove of some use in girding us for reactions from an intelligent alien species, should we ever come across any.
How is a cloned Neanderthal an outsider? Either he'll be raised as a human (by far the least amount of ethical quicksand there), in which case he'll be culturally as human as any of us, or he'll be raised as a monkey, lab experiment or feral child, in which case he will probably unable to talk.
If you want comments from cultural outsiders, talk to members from a different culture, from primitive hunter-gatherer tribes, or something like that. Or read that piece from Sitting Bull.
What cloning a Neanderthal will (or might) give us, is a better understanding of Neanderthal physiology, and some idea of how their mental faculties compare to ours. It won't say much about us, other than that we're willing to do it.
If you can interbreed, you are not a separate species.
That's an old and obsolete definition of "species". Wolves and coyotes are considered different species, yet they can interbreed. Interbreeding relationships between some bird populations can get quite complex.
Also, it's by no means certain that we'd be able to interbreed with Neanderthal.
Also, I happen to think that elephants and whales are probably pretty smart. Maybe not as smart as us, but if you take the animal world as a whole, I think the correlation is obvious and undeniable. The smartest animals on earth (humans, elephants, dolphins, apes, etc) have the largest brains on the planet. The only real outlier is birds. Parrots can be very smart - evolution apparently found a way to build a small intelligent brain while still allowing the animal to fly.
Brain mass to body mass ratio is actually a better predictor of intelligence. While I won't deny that elephants are pretty intelligent compared to most animals, crows show much more impressive feats of intelligence (including standardized tool use, even). And crows have a far bigger brain/body ratio than any other animal. Even bigger than ours though (as do many other birds), so clearly this ratio isn't the ultimate predictor either.
Actually the body to brain mass ratio is directly correlated to intelligence. This may not matter among humans, but across separate species it does. The Elephant has a ratio of 1/560, where humans are 1/40. So elephants may have larger brains, but relatively speaking human brains are MUCH larger in ratio to our body mass.
Ratio is not all there is, though. Many birds have much higher brain-to-body ratios than we do, but while crows can display impressive feats of intelligence, they're not as intelligent as we are.
Of course in the case of birds, body mass is kept down by the need to be able to fly.
I think the result so far is that it's a bit of both. So to be a genius you need both the genetic inclination and a sufficiently stimulating environment.
And perhaps also quite a bit of stupid luck. Lots of non-genetic characteristics are still determined before birth. Does that count as nature or nurture?
Thats the point, who says? Who says Einstein and Newton want to be cloned?
Well, since nothing of their possible respective opinions on the matter is recorded, the only way we'll ever know the answer is to ask them.
Considering that we have no reliable method for communicating with the dead, the only way we can ask whether or not to they would want to be is to clone them.
How will that help? They'll still be dead. Cloning is not the same as resurrection. Identical twins are not the same individual. They just happen to have the same genes, but people are quite a lot more than their genes.
Also something for consideration since the technology isn't too far off, people should consider putting cloning clauses in their wills, assuming there's reason to believe that someone would actually want to clone you.
Do people already have clauses in their wills about what should happen with any frozen sperm or eggs they may leave behind? Because that's no different. It's genes, that's all.
I'm not at all in favour of cloning humans, but let's not muddle the issue by pretending cloning is some sort of magical resurrection. It's not.
That depends. Is she hot?
Depends on your taste. Stocky, low forehead, heavy eyebrows. If that's your idea of hot, then yes.
That's the thing; Neanderthals aren't just like us. If they were, they'd be Homo Sapiens, not Homo Neanderthalensis. There IS a small, but definite, genetic difference by definition.
The big question is: how meaningful is that difference really? Their brains were as big as ours. It's not unlikely that they'll turn out to be stocky humans with heavy eyebrows and an average IQ of 95.
Cloning a Neanderthal in order to study him and learn more about them could mean we'd effectively be condemning a human to a life as a science project.
And having used it, I think it works quite well. The only thing that really annoys me about Apple mice is the invisible right mouse button. It has one, but when you click it, half the time it's registered as a left click.
He writes at an amazing rate (or used to, at least), but I think it has ceased being about money a long time ago. I think he's one of the richest writers in the world, and second richest fantasy author after J.K. Rowling.
But while his books have grown a bit in size, each book is still a self-contained story that wraps up all its own story lines, unlike the mammoth trilogies from some other authors. But compare it to The Colour of Magic: that was a thin book that contained four reasonably self-contained stories.
I've read 'em both, and I can't believe you would make the "Crisply Written" argument using Vinge as your example. Are we talking about the same guy?
Asimov was crisp. Early Arthur C. Clarke was crisp. HG Wells was so crisp there aren't even words.
But modern Sci-fi? There is no one who comes even close. All the best are wordier, they add in exposition and scene setting that would have been considered frippery 50 years ago.
It's still frippery, but everybody believes himself to be the new Tolkien. Look at fantasy books of the last 20 years. With the lone exception of Terry Pratchett, everybody wants to write big, epic, overwrought trilogies that grow way beyond their original intentions. Hell, even Pratchett's books have slowly been growing in size.
Compare to other geek favorites Stephen R Donaldson, Robert Jordan and George R. R. Martin. Unlike them, Stephenson finished an entire story in a single book. How terse of him!
He's terse when you compare him with second-rate geek favourites. Try comparing him to first-rate writers like Asimov, Pratchett, Clarke or Tolkien (ooh, bad example that last one).
It's a 935-page novel that should be 600 pages or less.
You do know who wrote the book, right? He can't type out the 10 commandments without 250 pages, an epilogue,
An epilogue? From Neal Stephenson? He'd probably leave the tenth commandment out completely. But the first three commandments will be absolutely brilliant and will fill half the book and all your mind with their exciting implications.
Neal Stephenson is a complete fraud.
He's not. He writes fiction. Like Dan Brown. You didn't take The Davinci Code seriously, did you? If you don't like it, don't read it. But "fraud" is ridiculous hyperbole.
The Diamond Age, year I've been meaning to finish it. Everytime I start I get to about one-third and then I can't take it anymore.
Understandable. The start is by far the best part, and it loses direction about halfway through. It gets better, and even has a few more surprises in store, but don't expect a satisfying ending. It is Neal Stephenson, after all.
Diamond Age is somewhere in between Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon. It's more original and less cliche than Snow Crash, it's filled with some of the most brilliant ideas you've ever seen on paper, but halfway through, he doesn't know how to get to the end of the story, and when he finally gets there, he doesn't know what to do with it. It is in many ways the most typical Neal Stephenson book: brilliant ideas, vibrant world, no ending.
Cryptonomicon is much more well-rounded. Every single one of its 1100 pages is filled with excitement (except for the two arrivals in Manilla in a row), it's full of interesting and complex logical and mathematical ideas, many of them explained very well, and it even has some sort of an ending.
Cryptonomicon has dethroned Lord of the Rings as "Best book ever" in my opinion. I haven't read the Baroque cycle yet.
The definition of the word literally is as I said. The commonly accepted definition of the word is like I said.
Good lord, man. You're stubborn. Look it up. Lots of people of people have very different definitions of creationism. In fact, lots of people disagree with you on quite a lot of topics. I assure you that your life will become a lot easier once you accept that simple fact.
If you can't accept the world isn't going to change just to make you right, then you deserve to call yourself a creationist.
Wait, now creationism is suddenly about believing that the world will change to make you right? That's the widest and most irrelevant definition I've encountered so far. Looks like you are a creationist according to your own definition, then.
Wow, where do you get 5 weeks? 2 weeks is standard in the US unless you have seniority. For example at the law firm I work for you get 2 weeks your first year, 3 weeks the next and 4 weeks every year after that. you CAN get 5 weeks, but only after 20yrs with the firm.
How can you ever go on vacation like that? Don't American children have about a dozen weeks vacation from school? How do you deal with that? How do you visit family around christmas, have a 3 week vacation in summer, and still have some days left for random other stuff? Or a week away in spring or something?
Less than 5 weeks vacation would be a deal breaker for me. I'd rather accept a lot less pay than sacrifice what little free time I still have.
forgive my ignorance, but if you are in a closed loop, would you not end up at the same point if you followed left vs right?
If the right wall is a closed loop, the left wall doesn't have to be.
They want more time off because they've been around longer (2 weeks for new hires don't cut it).
Wow. I wouldn't take a job fresh out of college that only gave 2 weeks of vacation. When I started, 3 weeks was standard, and I thought that was merely 'acceptable'.
It's 5 weeks here, and I definitely wouldn't have taken a job that offered less than 4 weeks vacation. Even 5 weeks is barely enough.