I'd guess the district cares because, while many parents appear not to care they also don't want to be responsible for their kid during school hours. It's the "Schools as public baby-sitter" mentality. They may not care if the kid learns, but they don't want the hassle of keeping track of the child either.
Also, in many places (everyone I lived in) truancy is the school districts problem, because it is one of the metrics by which they are evaluated. Schools with high truancy rates can see funding cuts, lower test scores (again with further funding cuts as "under performing" schools), and find themselves being used as examples of "What's wrong with American Education" despite having little control over the root causes of the truancy.
I imagine that the parent I described above would be in favor of is, as long as it didn't inconvenience them too much. Not saying I agree with those parents rationale, but it just might help some students avoid dropping out entirely. Whether the cost is worth the dubious gain is a different question that probably can't be answered until the program get's off of the ground and a couple of years under its belt.
I'd like to see the reaction of the parents. If my child were going truant a lot, I'd approve. Education is important, and it's hard to get that education if you avoid spending any time in the presence of your assigned educators. However, if I don't believe my child is being truant, then I'd be outraged. I can't see how the school can enforce this without parental cooperation. Especially the 8PM entry. That's essentially tracking what the parents do with their child, and when they send them to bed. Is the child going to be in trouble because he fell asleep on the couch at 7 and Dad carried him to bed without entering the ping at 8? What about when the parents decide to treat them to a movie that gets out at 8:15 at a theatre half an hour from home?
Texas has very little "New" oil. The oil discovered in North Dakota is recent. They're still determining the size of the deposits and drilling far more wells than are currently producing. In Texas, the oil fields are pretty well known, and have been worked for generations. The number of wells going dry or tapering off of production is far more substantial than in North Dakota (if any are old enough for that).
How is sales tax regressive?? Someone making 40k/yr can only spend (not counting credit) $40k per year. Assuming half of that is on taxable items, a 6.5% sales taxs works out to a total of $1,300. Now, those with less income are going to spend a larger proportion of their salary on untaxible items (food, medicine, etc.) and less on taxible (car, tv, services, etc.). So for someone making $60k, assuming even 30k (half again as much) is on tax exempt items, that works out to an annual tax burden of $1,950. Last I checked $1,950 is more than $1,300.
Furthermore, from my own experience as the "Keeper of the Checkbook" in my house, The total amount of Tax exempt purchases made each year is not increasing as proportionaly with my salary. My salary doubled since last year (new job), but my tax exempt purchases only increased by around 10%, so I'm paying quite a bit more in both real dollars, and as percent of my gross salary on sales tax this year than I did last year.
The wealthy on the other hand will spend a MUCH larger proportion of their annual salary on items for which they can be taxed (Homes, boats, nicer cars, bigger TV's, etc.) there by paying a much larger quantitative amount (6.5% * a larger amount on purchases), and a much larger true percentage after accounting for tax exempt items.
Sales taxes are the MOST equitable means I've seen. Income taxes and corporate taxes can always be dodged via loopholes, but you pay sales tax at the time of purchase, making it much harder to insert a loophole.
North Dakota is doing well for a variety of reasons, paramount being that they've got oil. Money from the oil companies is being poured into the state coffers as they get licenses and permits to drill, as well as all the normal tax revenue from the new jobs.
but Google has effectively put its patents into the public domain
When did this happen??
AFAIK, they open sourced the IMPLEMENTATION, not the underlying rights granted by patents. Now, I don't EXPECT them to be suing anyone over the relevant patents they purchased from the original developers when they bought VP8, but that doesn't mean that they can't.
Since when does the MPEG LA have the legal right to form a pool around the patents?
As soon as any holder of a patent that applies to VP8 decides that they want to join the MPEG LA patent pool.
The right belongs to the patent holder, MPEG LA is just offering to help them monetize their rights. That's all MPEG LA ever does. They are a one stop shop for licensing patents in pools at "Fair and Reasonable Prices". Nothing stops a patent holder from excluding their patent from the pool and pursuing licensing deals, and lawsuits against all possible infringers on their own. It's just much easier to let MPEG LA handle all of the bloody details for a small cut of the profits from the patent.
They are just a middle man. This is simply a solicitation to possible customers for their services. If no one bites, then nothing will happen and VP8 (WebM) will continue to be royalty free (unless individual patent holders decide to pursue action against Google on their own).
I expect the patent pool to form, Google to get sued, and then Google to pay the licensing fees to MPEG LA out of their own pocket to make WebM truely royalty free for users. I don't think they are promising indemnification now becuase they want to keep the final bill as small as possible, and revealing their intentions would make final negotiations more difficult.
Ultimately though, I don't care. Neither technology costs me anything (directly), in the handful of comparisons I've looked at H.264 trumps WebM, I've got a huge library of H.264 content already, and all of my hardware supports H.264 and not WebM. I'm not into technology for the ideology (that's why I'm into politics;).
"All models are wrong, some models are useful (my experimental design professor)", but this is not one of them.
This is pure, unadulterated BS. Religiosity Gene? This is not really science, it is speculation and bigotry (religion only makes sense if you have a genetically inherited mental disorder).
The number of Amish is growing because of the social obligation to have as many children as God gives you. It's the same reason that Catholics have a reputation for large families. The "non-religious" have no similar social pressure to avoid contraception, and plenty of other pressures (economic, stress, selfishness, etc.) to keep their families small. There is no need to invent a Gene for which there is no other evidence than the authors desire to explain a culture he does not understand using the wrong tools (biology, instead of sociology).
Ok, so if Chrome is no longer going to support H.264 then it won't be able to support YouTube except via Flash. Google already has to pay the maximum licensing fee's possible to MPEG-LA for the H.264 encoded YouTube video, so dropping support in Chrome won't save them any money unless they also replace all of their streaming video with WebM transcodes. If they require all YouTube streaming to be done in WebM, I certainly won't be going there.
Chrome for Mac, at least in my experience, does not perform as I expect any program to on my platform (mac). Most keyboard short-cuts (Command + H to Hide, Command + M to minimize the window, etc.) don't work for me. That's very basic, and universal functionality that is broken on a platform that prides itself on polish. (I admit that I'm probably the minority in noticing this, most people I know don't use many keyboard shortcuts, instead favoring the mouse for EVERYTHING.)
I see this as blantant and Microsoftesque attempt to control the standards process for their own gain. I don't take moral umbrage with that kind of manuver like many/. denizens, but I can't see how anyone can pretend that Google is trying to be altruistic, and doing things for the "Good of the Open Net". As the Arstechinica article on the topic points out, H264 is an open (although not royalty-free) standard, whereas WebM is royalty-free (for the moment), but not an open standard.
P.S. is anyone else having trouble pasting url's into the editing window? I tried in 2 different browsers unsuccessfully to past the url for the arstechnica piece. Instead of accepting the Paste the cursor jumped ahead the appropriate number of characters without changing the text inside the editor window.
The problem is not the fuel, but how the fuel is produced. Ethanol can be viable as long as it is produced efficiently enough. Corn based ethanol production is not a viable replacement for $4/gal gasoline. It can be viable either by fuel prices increasing, or ethanol production being produced more efficiently. Cellulosic biomass fermentation has the potential to produce fuel efficiently enough to be viable. However, the technology is not mature, and politicians like Gore decided to force the issue with mandates that couldn't be met any other way than by building out corn-ethanol production. Short-sighted and stupid. And now, the pendulum is going to turn the other way and ethanol is going to become a bad guy, so that if/when cellulosic fermentation becomes viable, it's going to have to fight against the perception that ethanol is simply a hand out to farmers and a technological dead end.
This is completely contrary to my experience. We have union workers at our university farm, and their major job appears to be to try and avoid doing anything that they haven't done at least 1,000 times before. They loath change, even change that is in their best interest. Heaven forbid they need to adapt to a changing workplace environment like the rest of the Freakin' world.
Unions began to protect labor from aggressive management, but most unions I've run across have long ago abandoned that goal in favor of simply increasing the power of the union's top echelon. I'm sure that their are good, and effective unions out there, but they are the exception and not the rule in my (admitedly anecdotal) experience.
The solution to high risk situations like a nuclear power plant are not unions, but comprehensive regulation with frequent, random, and invasive assessments to ensure that the regulations are being met. However, that is expensive, and when Senator XYZ needs money to fund a pet project that'll increase their chances of successfully being re-elected, necessary regulation gets short-changed in favor of something best funded by state and local governments, if at all.
I think that race helped Obama more than it hurt. Sure, I know there were people that could not consider voting for him based on his race, but what were the odds that they were going to vote Democrate anyway? If he hadn't won the primary, it would have been Mrs. Clinton, and Racists are frequently also sexists in my experience. OTOH, I know of quite a few who supported him in the primaries in large part Because he was black, even if they wouldn't admit it to themselves. They helped him win the Primaries, and the hostility agains the Republicans helped him win the Election. A lot of people who were too conservative to vote for him at least half hoped that he would win for what electing a black president would mean to the country, symbolically if nothing else.
As to his location on the spectrum, I have to disagree with you. He presented himself as being left of center within the range of democratic candidates, but on the national spectrum he is firmly ensconsed on the left. He is not even as centrist as Bill Clinton was during his second term, Obama (so far) is more like Bill in his first term. They both paid only lip service to the ideas of "Bipartisanship" and "reaching across the isle." I'm not saying I expected him to give Republicans everything they wanted, but his biggest hurdles came from disent within his party. The Blue Dog Democrats were the conservative wing of his own party, but still liberal in comparison to both the national center and the Republicans. He was unwilling to move enough to the Right to satisfy them (who he needed), never mind enough to satisfy the Republicans (who he did not need). I hope that in the wake of the midterm elections he takes a page from Bill's book and moves more to the center he claimed to campaign from. With opposite parties in control of the legislative and executive branches, it is the only way to get anything done. Unfortunately, his response to his "Shelacking" appeared to be mostly quite distain for those that abandoned him, combined with remarks suggesting he will move to the Left instead of to the Right (toward the center).
As to the claim that racism was the primary attack against him, you appear to have only read liberal sites. One obvious limitation that he had, and is currently being leveled against Palin (whom I don't like or support, BTW) is the question of experience. He has it now, but 2 years ago he was largely lacking in executive experience, and I think that lack is why he was unable to bend enough for the Blue Dogs to get in behind him. What I found particularly funny, was that Palin was criticized for a lack of experience 2 years ago, despite having similar levels of political experience that was more relevant (The governor of Alaska is an Executive like the president, and unlike a Freshman Senator). I'm not going to dig into all of my problems with him from 2 years ago. However, I could if you really need proof that there were relevant and real criticism of his candidacy outside of race.
I said much the same thing about Hillary. She ran in, and lost the Democratic Primary. I expect that Palin will do much the same thing. I only hope that whomever does win the Republican primary is smart enough to not offer Palin the state department as a consolation prize. She's very good at being a personality, in much the same way (from the opposite end obviously) as Bill Clinton or President Obama. I do believe that she gets a disproportionate amout of attention, but I'm not really sure who to blame. Could be that its the "Liberal Media" trying to build her up so that they can later tear her down thus helping Obama indirectly (if you like conspiracy theories), or it could be that she's just a shrewd manipulator of the media and smarter than people give her credit for.
Eitherway I don't like her and won't be voting for her in the primaries. If Mitt didn't have such a horrible plan for the Mexican boarder, I'd hope he was running again. As a former Baystater, I really liked him as MA Governor. I also find it too bad that McCain probably won't run. I was more excited about him than any other Republican primary candidate (regardless of race) in my entire voting history.
When you publish in a scientific journal you hand over the copyright to the work. Therefore if you publish those results again, without citing the previous publication, you can be sued for copyright violations by the original publishing journal. I've heard of authors being banned from a specific journal for such behavior. It is not "Plaigarism" in that you are not taking credit for someone elses work, but it is academic dishonesty of the sort that can ruin a career.
For example, my advisor gave a (Review) presentation at a scientific meeting (complete with manuscript for the Conference Proceedings). It was well recieved so he was then asked by the society holding the conference to submit the proceeding mansucript to their scientific journal. They wanted to make sure that it could be read by their subscribers even if they couldn't make it to the confernce. My advisor spent a lot of time on the phone with them making sure that they would prominently denote that the second publication was a re-print with a reference to the original conference proceedings. He didn't want to be accused of this "Recycling" that you are referring to. I won't pretend some don't do it, but no one at a respectable university.
Besides, most researchers work in one small area. Usually the number of interested individuals is small enough where everyone knows everyone else. If I tried what you describe, I know a lot of people that would catch it in short order. It would be career suicide.
Thank you. You are correct, and I am wrong about the relative difference in total antibiotic use in Denmark since 1994.
Now, was that so hard? All I wanted was to be shown what I was missing. I never claimed to be infallible. In fact I admitted that I could be misreading the document:
Comment #33794790
If you can find the section of the report that the House committee is referring to, I'm more than willing to admit that I'm wrong.
Either I missed it (entirely possible), the author of the House report misread something (also entirely possible), or they attributed the wrong source (also entirely possible).
All you had to say was "look at table 43 on Page 95". You would have saved us both the time spent writing and reading half a dozen posts on this forum. Graduate degrees are not a guarantee against missing a figure in a 100+ page document. The do however, instill a certain amount of skepticism and a requirement that evidence be presented before belief is given. At every step in this argument I requested you present the evidence and you refused up until now. Now that you have, I have no problem admitting I was wrong. In fact, I'm thankful that you corrected me. I don't like having the wrong information when making decisions.
If you care about the reason, I was under the (admittedly false) impression that antibiotics were only administered under veterinary prescription in Denmark as as early as 1994, which (if correct) would have meant that Table 5 was the appropriate place to look for the source of the 60% comparison. One error led to the other, so I'm admiting to 2 mistakes, not only 1.
Please, if we argue again in the future, I ask that you get to the point faster next time. "If you can't see it, then I'm not going to tell you" is infuriating beyond belief.
Nice, reply as an AC so that I don't get a notification of your response. That way you get the last word. Sneaky!
The Congressional summary is obviously right, and it's what our politicians use for decision making anyway.
That's an unusual sentiment for this site. No matter what your political leaning, the majority of/. members are decidedly skeptical of anything the government has a hand in. I tend to be less skeptical than the average here, but when they are dealing with my industry, I take particular note of their decisions and methods for reaching those decisions.
Assuming that Congress gets things right is stupid. They get lots of things wrong, all of the time. The people that write these reports are exactly that, PEOPLE. It is generally accepted that people are fallible, and that does apply to congressional report writers as well as arrogant loudmouths on the internet (I'm referring to you, btw). I'm not saying that the 60% number has no basis, just not in the report it was attributed to.
So, I say again. Either demonstrate where that number comes from, or admit that it's not in there. You don't win arguments simply by saying "I'm right and you are wrong!" You need to back that up with EVIDENCE. I say that the 60% number is not supported by the attribution given. Furthermore, I stated my evidence for that claim in several long posts. Either have the common decency to do the same for your claim, or admit that you are wrong. The "If you don't know, then I'm not going to tell you!" defense doesn't fly when it's coming from my wife, and I'll be damned if I'm going to take it from some troll on the internet who has found himself speaking outside of his knowledge base and is now trying to avoid demonstrating that he's an incompetent fool.
The information is all there in the primary source.
Please enlighten me by showing me where. Which page? Which paragraph? Which table? Which part of the table. You appear to simultaneously believe that I'm too stupid to see the obvious and yet I should be smart enough to find it on my own without any assistance. your argument is paradoxical.
I'm going to guess that you are a woman, because only women seem to get away with the "Well if you don't know, then I'm not going to tell you!" argument, and that is exactly what you are saying. I don't see any support for the claim of 60% anywhere in the document. You tell me it's there, but since I can't find it on my own, you are not going to bother showing me where it is.
At this point I feel confident in call your entire argument "Bullshit"!. The number isn't there and you are talking around the issue so that you won't have to admit that fact. Otherwise you'd have pointed it out to me so that I would have to admit that I was wrong. What would have been the point of replying to me 7 times if not to prove that you are right and I am wrong? The answer is "there is no other reason", and you are simply dodging my questions.
You then respond with an experiment that eliminates satiety as an experimental factor.
No I didn't. Pigs in that study were fed Ad Libitum access to feed regardless of the diet they were fed. Satiety is only a relevant factor in animals that are limited in the amount of feed presented to them. I gave you specific examples of when that does happen as well as the rational for why it happens. The rest of the time, satiety is not a relevant consideration because the animals are free (and are in fact encouraged) to eat as much as they can.
Other nations have better nutrition and less obesity because foods like meat are more expensive, sold in smaller portions, and discouraged by culture and education.
Sounds like you've found the appropriate solution. American culture is very malleable. The culture I grew up with is very different from the culture that my parents grew up with, which in turn is very different from the culture my grandparents grew up with. Changing culture is going to be a far better solution in the long run. Land Grant colleges will do the research to improve production in the long run no matter what legal limits are imposed on it in the short term. It is their primary reason for existing. But, if the culture changes so that meat is not in such high demand, then you'll have achieved your goal and that change will probably be more permanent.
Well, apparently I do know what I am talking about, since you just said that both my points are true. The fact that you consider them "irrelevant" is just a result of your inability to follow an argument.
I admitted that I used the wrong word when describing HFCS. It's an easy enough mistake, and I claimed that. An error of vocabulary does not invalidate the point I was making, that HFCS presents the intestine with a 60:40 ratio of Fructose to Glucose. Table sugar (sucrose) can only be absorbed after it has been broken down into its component monosaccharides Fructose and Glucose in a 50:50 ratio. Either way, there is a lot of fructose in either sweetener.
My point was that, although two food items may be nutritionally equivalent, they are not equivalent as foods once behavior and other factors enter the equation.
No that was not what you claimed. This is what you claimed:
Animals and their digestive systems are highly adapted to how those nutrients are delivered, as well as to the other "micronutrients" that come along with specific food sources.
You made no allowance for the diets being nutritionally adequate, nor did you make any reference to "Behavioral or other factors". You stated categorically that I was wrong when I said that animals had a requirement for specific nutrients, and not for specific feedstuffs.
For humans, less nutritious foods are often healthier foods.
That is a drastic over simplification. Food cannot be taken individually, because their is nothing unhealthy about a single food. It is the diet that needs to be considered. Diets need to be tailored to the activity level, age, and desired outcome. Most people don't have a nutritionist, and make little attempt to consider their diet as a whole. There is nothing inherently unhealthy about a hamburger, but a diet based largely on hamburgers is indeed unhealthy. OTOH, their is nothing inherently unhealthy about apples, but a diet based primarily on apples is also unhealthy, just for different reasons.
For animals, how and what they eat and how they are raised affects texture and flavor.
I never claimed otherwise. I recently fed a pig a diet with 10% flax meal because I like the flavor it adds to the ham. That is completely irrelevant to the argument you and I are having.
What the US needs to do is to produce foods that encourage people to eat healthy despite their (as you put it) "character flaws".
When was the last time you went to the grocery store? I went today and my store has this section called the "Produce Department" that was chock full of fruits and vegetables. There was also an isle devoted to canned goods, of which most were canned fruits and vegetables. In yet another isle there were bags and bags of frozen vegetables. The problem is not production levels, it is demand. I've worked in grocery stores and produce gets thrown away every day because no one wants to buy it.
(And maximizing nutrient production isn't really even the issue in countries with famine, but that's a different story.)
For those that are starving it is. I agree that it is not the root cause, but as a Nigerian friend of mine from grad school said: "If you can't get enough to eat, then nothing else matters."
ok, As I repeated and explained previously, I can't find the PRIMARY source for that claim. Citations can be misread, misattributed, or misunderstood. That is why I tried to find the original claim to which your House report is refering. I can find the report, but claim in that report that supports the claims of the House document. Either I missed it (entirely possible), the author of the House report misread something (also entirely possible), or they attributed the wrong source (also entirely possible). Repeating a claim that can not be verified is akin to explaining the creation of the universe using the Bible as your only citation. Either back up that number (60%) with a citation I can read for myself or stop citing it.
Trends in the estimated total consumption (kg active compound) of prescribed antimicrobials for production animals, Denmark
This is not a complete sentence. It is missing a verb. The Table that title is attached to refutes your claim of 60%, it does not support it. look at the DANMAP 2008 report that the HOUSE report is citing. That table is on page 31 of the report. Do the math yourself, I already did it once for you.
If you cannot provide me with a PRIMARY reference for that 60% number, or explain to me how 120,200 kg of active antibiotics is only 60% of 89,900 kg of active compound, then don't bother responding. Simply repeating the exact same paragraph repeatedly, without any attempt to answer the valid criticism of it is not debating. It is taking things on faith. That is acceptable in many circles, but not in science.
HFCS is a mixture of monosaccharides, while granulated sugar is a disaccharide
First, I misspoke. HFCS is a combination of fructose and glucose, not sucrose. Sucrose is a disaccharide containing one fructose and one glucose molecule (hence the 50:50 ratio I mentioned).
Second, while your comment is technically true it misses the point. Disaccharides are not absorbed intact. They must first be hydrolyzed to monosaccharides by enzyme before they can be absorbed. Therefore, feeding 1 mole of sucrose is equivalent to feeding 1 mole of fructose and 1 mole of glucose.
For identical amounts of calories, HFCS appears to be significantly worse than granulated sugar according to recent studies; go check the literature.
I have checked the literature. The only studies I've been able to find involve massive doses of either sucrose or HFCS. Furthermore, they are almost exclusively studies involving lower vertebrates like rats and mice. Rodents are great for finding pathways and proving the initial concept, but there remains mountains of work to be done before rodent evidence can be validated in humans. That is why I used the term "Moderation". One glass of soda a month can't make you obese just because it has HFCS in it.
False as well. Animals and their digestive systems are highly adapted to how those nutrients are delivered, as well as to the other "micronutrients" that come along with specific food sources. For example, if you deliver the same amount of nutrients in highly concentrated form (to an animal or human), they won't feel satiated as much as when you deliver them in more natural, less accessible forms.
I always find it interesting to be told that the information I spend 8 years in graduate school acquiring from some of the greatest scientists in my field are wrong. Not only that, but I'm being told I'm wrong by a lay person. For the Record, I have an MS and PhD in animal science, with a focus on non-ruminant nutrition from Purdue University. What exactly are your qualifications? In the absence of qualifications I'll accept some relevant primary citations (I mean journal articles, not wikipedia pages or other "summary" websites).
Animals eat first to meet their energy requirements. That is taught in every introduction to animal science class in the world. It's a bit of an over simplification, but still largely true. Even if your assertion that nutritionally adequate but concentrated food can leave an animal hungry is true, it is largely irrelevant. Growing animals are almost never intentionally feed restricted. They are given as much as they will consume because the more they eat the faster they grow. The faster they grow, the quicker they hit market weight, and you can fill the barn again with another batch of animals. The notable exceptions are gestating sows (to prevent them from getting too fat and experiencing dystocia or low conception rates), boars (to prevent them from getting too massive and either crushing the sows or injuring a human handler), and molting laying hens (the practice is being slowly replaced with feeding ad libitum access to very poor quality food). In each of those cases, there is a reason (you can debate the soundness of that reason either way, that is irrelevant to the current discussion).
You appear to be basing your assertion on the idea of "Gut Fill" and Vagus nerve stimulation, which is frequently taught as a method by which animals decide they are satiated. It is true that gut fill does contribute to the feeling of satiety, but it is by no means the primary mechanism (drinking a gallon of water will fill you up, but not as much as a small hamburger of lesser volume and weight). Much work is still being done with this, and it appears as though the hormone Ghrelin is the key regulator of "Hunger". One of my colleges has designed a 5 year project which is currently being considered for funding by the USDA to develop a
Usage has increased somewhat since 2001, but in 2008 was still only 60% of 1994 levels. 18
That '18' is a footnote which attributes that claim to
18 DANMAP 2008, supra note 16, at 31.
The DANMAP 2008 report is available from the official DANMAP.org website. I previously provided a direct link to the report on their website. On page 31 of the report is a section titled Antimicrobial consumption. Nowhere on that page does the number 60% appear. On that same page is a table titled Trends in the estimated total consumption (kg active compound) of prescribed antimicrobials for production animals, Denmark, which provides a breakdown of 6 different antibiotic groups by year. The sum total for 1994 is 89,900 kg of active compound. The sum total for 2008 is 120,200 kg of active compound. That works out to a 33.7% increase in total kg of active compound used. Now, I'm fully aware that total kg of active compound is not the best metric. The best would be if they provided the ADD or ADDx, defined on page 31 as:
In DANMAP, the consumption is measured both in kg active substance and as a National Animal Defined Daily Dose, the latter either as the dose for one kg animal bodyweight (ADDkg) or as the dose for a defined animal body weight x (ADDx), depending on species and age group.
However, they do not provide that information in this report, and I've not been able (yet at least) to find it in the earlier reports. The ADD metric is better because it would account for the increased total production of pigs that has occurred since the DANMAP monitoring began.
It's entirely possible that there was an update to the report called the "Supra Note 16". However, I can't find it, and the words "Supra" or "Note 16" do not appear in the 2008 DANMAP report. I cannot verify the accuracy of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce reports interpretation of a document I cannot read for myself. Therefore, I base my interpretation on the data I can get my hands on.
I'm a trained researcher. I make it a point to find the "PRIMARY" sources for information that I find dubious before accepting it. As nice and official as the House report is, it is not a primary source. The DANMAP website and their official annual reports ARE primary sources. If you can find the section of the report that the House committee is referring to, I'm more than willing to admit that I'm wrong. In fact, I wish I were wrong. It would be far better for human medicine if an EU style ban worked as expected. I just don't believe it has, and I base that on what I've been able to read in the official reports and research published in journal articles. Until you present me with new primary data (preferably the "Supra Note 16"), I stand by interpretation of the data supplied in the 2008 report.
No, I have never knowingly provided false information, or presented valid information incorrectly. That is the definition of lying. If I'm wrong, that is another issue entirely. People are too free with that label these days. Saying something someone does not agree with or stating something believed to be accurate but later found not to be so is not lying. I could very well be wrong. It has happened before and will certainly happen again. If you want to convince me that I'm wrong this time, then you are going to need to provide me with data that I find satisfactory. Just because you find the evidence acceptable, does not mean it satisfies my requirements. Besides, name calling is not a horribly effective way to win an argument. I'd appreciate it if you would refrain from that in future responses.
Maybe we could take the corn being used for high fructose corn syrup and make something nutritional out of it.
Corn is fractionated to make HFCS, with the other components being used to make other products such as corn oil, protein isolates, etc. Virtually the whole plant is used. If HFCS is not made from the corn, those very same carbohydrates are present in some other product. Also as an aside, HFCS is 60% fructose and 40% sucrose where as normal granulated sugar is 50% of each. In moderation there is nothing wrong with HFCS. The problem is that Americans are not good at doing anything in moderation. That goes for meat consumption as well. However that national character flaw is not the fault of the industries trying to meet our demand. Demand precedes supply, because over supply leeds to low product prices, and a lot of smaller farms go out of business waiting for the prices to correct themselves (the last time ended in march and lasted for over 18 months.)
I honestly thought this practice was banned after the Mad Cow outbreak.
It was for non-omnivorous species. Meat and bone meal is still fed to swine and poultry because they don't have a prion protein in their brains. There is nothing for the Mad Cow or Scrapie protein to interact with in those species.
And cows are herbivores, so why would they need to eat animal-based protein? Unless they're being deprived of something else.
They are not being deprived of anything. Their needs can be met with other feedstuffs, but the cost of the feed becomes a factor. Depending on the operation, 60 to 80% of input costs of growing an animal come from feed. Saving even 10 cents a ton on your feed translates into a lot of money when amortized over a herd of 5,000 animals. Feeding non-rumnant species (Swine, poultry, dogs, cats, humans, etc.) is fairly easy. Once you know the animals requirements and the digestible nutrient content of the feedstuffs available, it is easy to formulate a diet that should capture most of the animals potential. However, for ruminants (Cattle, sheep, goats, deer, etc.) there is the complication of the 4 chambered stomach. The first chamber contains very little by the way of absorptive capacity, but is chock-full of microbes that will break down and remodel what ever it is you feed them. I don't remember the percentages exactly (not a ruminant nutritionist), but its somewhere on the order of 40 to 60 percent of the protein leaving the rumen is of microbial origin. That includes both protein that was broken down and reused as well as protein that was synthesized de novo by the rumen microbes.
Either way, no animal has a requirement for corn, or grass, or hay, or whatever. What they have is a requirement for specific nutrients. The source of those nutrients is largely irrelevant. As for protein (the primary value behind meat and bone meal), that is a broad simplification. Protein is made up from 20 different amino acids. Some the animals can synthesize on their own in sufficient quantities no matter what (dispensable), some that they can synthesize, but many not have sufficient capacity to meet requirement depending on the circumstances (production phase, disease state, etc.; conditionally dispensable), and those that the animal can never synthesize fast enough to meet their requirements for optimal growth/production (indispensable or essential). Plant protein sources like soybean meal are rich in primarily the dispensable and conditionally dispensable amino acids. Animal proteins on the other hand are rich in the indispensable amino acids. Therefore a pound of animal protein from meat and bone meal goes much farther than a pound of soy protein. When feeding the traditional corn & soybean meal diet, much of the present protein is wasted. The amino acids that the animals don't need (either because they are dispensable, conditionally dispensable, or surfeit to requirement) are degraded, the Carb
Sorry, I did not realize that I was talking to someone different. My bad.
The second sentence says "Essentially to compensate for industrial farming practices which are more or less awful conditions (cows enclosed in a stall standing in their own shit for hours at a stretch) they inoculate them against everything."
Ok, I was referring to the italicized section. As I pointed out in a different post, animals don't care about the same things we do. They don't know that shit is full of bacteria and unsanitary. I used to work on a dairy that pastured all of their milking cows, only bringing them into the barn long enough to be milked 2x a day. I would arrive at work, round up the cows, milk them, and then turn them back out to pasture. There were always at least a couple of cows that had shit on themselves when I went to fetch them. They'd just lay down in it, despite having more than enough land to spread out and avoid it. This wasn't a dry feed lot either, it was a grassy pasture with the only mud being right next to the barn. Animals are very frequently indifferent to things that drive humans crazy.
That is exactly why factory farmed animals are shot with antibiotics.
Animals are not routinely "Shot with antibiotics". Routine antibiotic administration is done by adding them to the feed. Injections are only used when a small handful of animals are sick, or likely to get sick. For example, one of the pigs I'm using for a research trial managed to cut himself while trying to squeeze through his feeder and escape. I gave him penicillin to prevent the cut from getting infected. However, when we had an outbreak of scours (post-weaning diarrhea) we added antibiotics to the waters so that they all got them. Injecting an entire 5000 pig barn with antibiotics is virtually unthinkable. Furthermore, as I've pointed out before antibiotics are expensive. If the benefits they grant are not cost effective, then they are not used. The only growth period in which they are routinely used on any of the farms I've work on is in the nursery period because of the stress caused by weaning and being moved to a new barn.
Cattle, sheep, pigs, and other livestock raised in pastures or other open spaces generally are not shot up with antibiotic cocktails.
neither are those raised in barns.
As to the third component. This is the fairy tale:
The prions in the sheep brain crossed into the cow in a way that would never have happened without people intervening
In my response to you I elaborated on how the transmission of prion diseases is far more complicated than gstoddart realized. That I confused you with gstoddart was my mistake, but my points still stand.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd guess the district cares because, while many parents appear not to care they also don't want to be responsible for their kid during school hours. It's the "Schools as public baby-sitter" mentality. They may not care if the kid learns, but they don't want the hassle of keeping track of the child either.
Also, in many places (everyone I lived in) truancy is the school districts problem, because it is one of the metrics by which they are evaluated. Schools with high truancy rates can see funding cuts, lower test scores (again with further funding cuts as "under performing" schools), and find themselves being used as examples of "What's wrong with American Education" despite having little control over the root causes of the truancy.
I imagine that the parent I described above would be in favor of is, as long as it didn't inconvenience them too much. Not saying I agree with those parents rationale, but it just might help some students avoid dropping out entirely. Whether the cost is worth the dubious gain is a different question that probably can't be answered until the program get's off of the ground and a couple of years under its belt.
I'd like to see the reaction of the parents. If my child were going truant a lot, I'd approve. Education is important, and it's hard to get that education if you avoid spending any time in the presence of your assigned educators. However, if I don't believe my child is being truant, then I'd be outraged. I can't see how the school can enforce this without parental cooperation. Especially the 8PM entry. That's essentially tracking what the parents do with their child, and when they send them to bed. Is the child going to be in trouble because he fell asleep on the couch at 7 and Dad carried him to bed without entering the ping at 8? What about when the parents decide to treat them to a movie that gets out at 8:15 at a theatre half an hour from home?
Texas has very little "New" oil. The oil discovered in North Dakota is recent. They're still determining the size of the deposits and drilling far more wells than are currently producing. In Texas, the oil fields are pretty well known, and have been worked for generations. The number of wells going dry or tapering off of production is far more substantial than in North Dakota (if any are old enough for that).
How is sales tax regressive?? Someone making 40k/yr can only spend (not counting credit) $40k per year. Assuming half of that is on taxable items, a 6.5% sales taxs works out to a total of $1,300. Now, those with less income are going to spend a larger proportion of their salary on untaxible items (food, medicine, etc.) and less on taxible (car, tv, services, etc.). So for someone making $60k, assuming even 30k (half again as much) is on tax exempt items, that works out to an annual tax burden of $1,950. Last I checked $1,950 is more than $1,300.
Furthermore, from my own experience as the "Keeper of the Checkbook" in my house, The total amount of Tax exempt purchases made each year is not increasing as proportionaly with my salary. My salary doubled since last year (new job), but my tax exempt purchases only increased by around 10%, so I'm paying quite a bit more in both real dollars, and as percent of my gross salary on sales tax this year than I did last year.
The wealthy on the other hand will spend a MUCH larger proportion of their annual salary on items for which they can be taxed (Homes, boats, nicer cars, bigger TV's, etc.) there by paying a much larger quantitative amount (6.5% * a larger amount on purchases), and a much larger true percentage after accounting for tax exempt items.
Sales taxes are the MOST equitable means I've seen. Income taxes and corporate taxes can always be dodged via loopholes, but you pay sales tax at the time of purchase, making it much harder to insert a loophole.
North Dakota is doing well for a variety of reasons, paramount being that they've got oil. Money from the oil companies is being poured into the state coffers as they get licenses and permits to drill, as well as all the normal tax revenue from the new jobs.
but Google has effectively put its patents into the public domain
When did this happen??
AFAIK, they open sourced the IMPLEMENTATION, not the underlying rights granted by patents. Now, I don't EXPECT them to be suing anyone over the relevant patents they purchased from the original developers when they bought VP8, but that doesn't mean that they can't.
Since when does the MPEG LA have the legal right to form a pool around the patents?
As soon as any holder of a patent that applies to VP8 decides that they want to join the MPEG LA patent pool.
;).
The right belongs to the patent holder, MPEG LA is just offering to help them monetize their rights. That's all MPEG LA ever does. They are a one stop shop for licensing patents in pools at "Fair and Reasonable Prices". Nothing stops a patent holder from excluding their patent from the pool and pursuing licensing deals, and lawsuits against all possible infringers on their own. It's just much easier to let MPEG LA handle all of the bloody details for a small cut of the profits from the patent.
They are just a middle man. This is simply a solicitation to possible customers for their services. If no one bites, then nothing will happen and VP8 (WebM) will continue to be royalty free (unless individual patent holders decide to pursue action against Google on their own).
I expect the patent pool to form, Google to get sued, and then Google to pay the licensing fees to MPEG LA out of their own pocket to make WebM truely royalty free for users. I don't think they are promising indemnification now becuase they want to keep the final bill as small as possible, and revealing their intentions would make final negotiations more difficult.
Ultimately though, I don't care. Neither technology costs me anything (directly), in the handful of comparisons I've looked at H.264 trumps WebM, I've got a huge library of H.264 content already, and all of my hardware supports H.264 and not WebM. I'm not into technology for the ideology (that's why I'm into politics
"All models are wrong, some models are useful (my experimental design professor)", but this is not one of them.
This is pure, unadulterated BS. Religiosity Gene? This is not really science, it is speculation and bigotry (religion only makes sense if you have a genetically inherited mental disorder).
The number of Amish is growing because of the social obligation to have as many children as God gives you. It's the same reason that Catholics have a reputation for large families. The "non-religious" have no similar social pressure to avoid contraception, and plenty of other pressures (economic, stress, selfishness, etc.) to keep their families small. There is no need to invent a Gene for which there is no other evidence than the authors desire to explain a culture he does not understand using the wrong tools (biology, instead of sociology).
Ok, so if Chrome is no longer going to support H.264 then it won't be able to support YouTube except via Flash. Google already has to pay the maximum licensing fee's possible to MPEG-LA for the H.264 encoded YouTube video, so dropping support in Chrome won't save them any money unless they also replace all of their streaming video with WebM transcodes. If they require all YouTube streaming to be done in WebM, I certainly won't be going there.
/. denizens, but I can't see how anyone can pretend that Google is trying to be altruistic, and doing things for the "Good of the Open Net". As the Arstechinica article on the topic points out, H264 is an open (although not royalty-free) standard, whereas WebM is royalty-free (for the moment), but not an open standard.
Chrome for Mac, at least in my experience, does not perform as I expect any program to on my platform (mac). Most keyboard short-cuts (Command + H to Hide, Command + M to minimize the window, etc.) don't work for me. That's very basic, and universal functionality that is broken on a platform that prides itself on polish. (I admit that I'm probably the minority in noticing this, most people I know don't use many keyboard shortcuts, instead favoring the mouse for EVERYTHING.)
I see this as blantant and Microsoftesque attempt to control the standards process for their own gain. I don't take moral umbrage with that kind of manuver like many
P.S. is anyone else having trouble pasting url's into the editing window? I tried in 2 different browsers unsuccessfully to past the url for the arstechnica piece. Instead of accepting the Paste the cursor jumped ahead the appropriate number of characters without changing the text inside the editor window.
The problem is not the fuel, but how the fuel is produced. Ethanol can be viable as long as it is produced efficiently enough. Corn based ethanol production is not a viable replacement for $4/gal gasoline. It can be viable either by fuel prices increasing, or ethanol production being produced more efficiently. Cellulosic biomass fermentation has the potential to produce fuel efficiently enough to be viable. However, the technology is not mature, and politicians like Gore decided to force the issue with mandates that couldn't be met any other way than by building out corn-ethanol production. Short-sighted and stupid. And now, the pendulum is going to turn the other way and ethanol is going to become a bad guy, so that if/when cellulosic fermentation becomes viable, it's going to have to fight against the perception that ethanol is simply a hand out to farmers and a technological dead end.
This is completely contrary to my experience. We have union workers at our university farm, and their major job appears to be to try and avoid doing anything that they haven't done at least 1,000 times before. They loath change, even change that is in their best interest. Heaven forbid they need to adapt to a changing workplace environment like the rest of the Freakin' world.
Unions began to protect labor from aggressive management, but most unions I've run across have long ago abandoned that goal in favor of simply increasing the power of the union's top echelon. I'm sure that their are good, and effective unions out there, but they are the exception and not the rule in my (admitedly anecdotal) experience.
The solution to high risk situations like a nuclear power plant are not unions, but comprehensive regulation with frequent, random, and invasive assessments to ensure that the regulations are being met. However, that is expensive, and when Senator XYZ needs money to fund a pet project that'll increase their chances of successfully being re-elected, necessary regulation gets short-changed in favor of something best funded by state and local governments, if at all.
I think that race helped Obama more than it hurt. Sure, I know there were people that could not consider voting for him based on his race, but what were the odds that they were going to vote Democrate anyway? If he hadn't won the primary, it would have been Mrs. Clinton, and Racists are frequently also sexists in my experience. OTOH, I know of quite a few who supported him in the primaries in large part Because he was black, even if they wouldn't admit it to themselves. They helped him win the Primaries, and the hostility agains the Republicans helped him win the Election. A lot of people who were too conservative to vote for him at least half hoped that he would win for what electing a black president would mean to the country, symbolically if nothing else.
As to his location on the spectrum, I have to disagree with you. He presented himself as being left of center within the range of democratic candidates, but on the national spectrum he is firmly ensconsed on the left. He is not even as centrist as Bill Clinton was during his second term, Obama (so far) is more like Bill in his first term. They both paid only lip service to the ideas of "Bipartisanship" and "reaching across the isle." I'm not saying I expected him to give Republicans everything they wanted, but his biggest hurdles came from disent within his party. The Blue Dog Democrats were the conservative wing of his own party, but still liberal in comparison to both the national center and the Republicans. He was unwilling to move enough to the Right to satisfy them (who he needed), never mind enough to satisfy the Republicans (who he did not need). I hope that in the wake of the midterm elections he takes a page from Bill's book and moves more to the center he claimed to campaign from. With opposite parties in control of the legislative and executive branches, it is the only way to get anything done. Unfortunately, his response to his "Shelacking" appeared to be mostly quite distain for those that abandoned him, combined with remarks suggesting he will move to the Left instead of to the Right (toward the center).
As to the claim that racism was the primary attack against him, you appear to have only read liberal sites. One obvious limitation that he had, and is currently being leveled against Palin (whom I don't like or support, BTW) is the question of experience. He has it now, but 2 years ago he was largely lacking in executive experience, and I think that lack is why he was unable to bend enough for the Blue Dogs to get in behind him. What I found particularly funny, was that Palin was criticized for a lack of experience 2 years ago, despite having similar levels of political experience that was more relevant (The governor of Alaska is an Executive like the president, and unlike a Freshman Senator). I'm not going to dig into all of my problems with him from 2 years ago. However, I could if you really need proof that there were relevant and real criticism of his candidacy outside of race.
I said much the same thing about Hillary. She ran in, and lost the Democratic Primary. I expect that Palin will do much the same thing. I only hope that whomever does win the Republican primary is smart enough to not offer Palin the state department as a consolation prize. She's very good at being a personality, in much the same way (from the opposite end obviously) as Bill Clinton or President Obama. I do believe that she gets a disproportionate amout of attention, but I'm not really sure who to blame. Could be that its the "Liberal Media" trying to build her up so that they can later tear her down thus helping Obama indirectly (if you like conspiracy theories), or it could be that she's just a shrewd manipulator of the media and smarter than people give her credit for.
Eitherway I don't like her and won't be voting for her in the primaries. If Mitt didn't have such a horrible plan for the Mexican boarder, I'd hope he was running again. As a former Baystater, I really liked him as MA Governor. I also find it too bad that McCain probably won't run. I was more excited about him than any other Republican primary candidate (regardless of race) in my entire voting history.
When you publish in a scientific journal you hand over the copyright to the work. Therefore if you publish those results again, without citing the previous publication, you can be sued for copyright violations by the original publishing journal. I've heard of authors being banned from a specific journal for such behavior. It is not "Plaigarism" in that you are not taking credit for someone elses work, but it is academic dishonesty of the sort that can ruin a career.
For example, my advisor gave a (Review) presentation at a scientific meeting (complete with manuscript for the Conference Proceedings). It was well recieved so he was then asked by the society holding the conference to submit the proceeding mansucript to their scientific journal. They wanted to make sure that it could be read by their subscribers even if they couldn't make it to the confernce. My advisor spent a lot of time on the phone with them making sure that they would prominently denote that the second publication was a re-print with a reference to the original conference proceedings. He didn't want to be accused of this "Recycling" that you are referring to. I won't pretend some don't do it, but no one at a respectable university.
Besides, most researchers work in one small area. Usually the number of interested individuals is small enough where everyone knows everyone else. If I tried what you describe, I know a lot of people that would catch it in short order. It would be career suicide.
Now, was that so hard? All I wanted was to be shown what I was missing. I never claimed to be infallible. In fact I admitted that I could be misreading the document: Comment #33794790
If you can find the section of the report that the House committee is referring to, I'm more than willing to admit that I'm wrong.
Comment #33815968
Either I missed it (entirely possible), the author of the House report misread something (also entirely possible), or they attributed the wrong source (also entirely possible).
All you had to say was "look at table 43 on Page 95". You would have saved us both the time spent writing and reading half a dozen posts on this forum. Graduate degrees are not a guarantee against missing a figure in a 100+ page document. The do however, instill a certain amount of skepticism and a requirement that evidence be presented before belief is given. At every step in this argument I requested you present the evidence and you refused up until now. Now that you have, I have no problem admitting I was wrong. In fact, I'm thankful that you corrected me. I don't like having the wrong information when making decisions.
If you care about the reason, I was under the (admittedly false) impression that antibiotics were only administered under veterinary prescription in Denmark as as early as 1994, which (if correct) would have meant that Table 5 was the appropriate place to look for the source of the 60% comparison. One error led to the other, so I'm admiting to 2 mistakes, not only 1.
Please, if we argue again in the future, I ask that you get to the point faster next time. "If you can't see it, then I'm not going to tell you" is infuriating beyond belief.
Have a nice day.
The Congressional summary is obviously right, and it's what our politicians use for decision making anyway.
That's an unusual sentiment for this site. No matter what your political leaning, the majority of /. members are decidedly skeptical of anything the government has a hand in. I tend to be less skeptical than the average here, but when they are dealing with my industry, I take particular note of their decisions and methods for reaching those decisions.
Assuming that Congress gets things right is stupid. They get lots of things wrong, all of the time. The people that write these reports are exactly that, PEOPLE. It is generally accepted that people are fallible, and that does apply to congressional report writers as well as arrogant loudmouths on the internet (I'm referring to you, btw). I'm not saying that the 60% number has no basis, just not in the report it was attributed to.
So, I say again. Either demonstrate where that number comes from, or admit that it's not in there. You don't win arguments simply by saying "I'm right and you are wrong!" You need to back that up with EVIDENCE. I say that the 60% number is not supported by the attribution given. Furthermore, I stated my evidence for that claim in several long posts. Either have the common decency to do the same for your claim, or admit that you are wrong. The "If you don't know, then I'm not going to tell you!" defense doesn't fly when it's coming from my wife, and I'll be damned if I'm going to take it from some troll on the internet who has found himself speaking outside of his knowledge base and is now trying to avoid demonstrating that he's an incompetent fool.
The information is all there in the primary source.
Please enlighten me by showing me where. Which page? Which paragraph? Which table? Which part of the table. You appear to simultaneously believe that I'm too stupid to see the obvious and yet I should be smart enough to find it on my own without any assistance. your argument is paradoxical.
I'm going to guess that you are a woman, because only women seem to get away with the "Well if you don't know, then I'm not going to tell you!" argument, and that is exactly what you are saying. I don't see any support for the claim of 60% anywhere in the document. You tell me it's there, but since I can't find it on my own, you are not going to bother showing me where it is.
At this point I feel confident in call your entire argument "Bullshit"!. The number isn't there and you are talking around the issue so that you won't have to admit that fact. Otherwise you'd have pointed it out to me so that I would have to admit that I was wrong. What would have been the point of replying to me 7 times if not to prove that you are right and I am wrong? The answer is "there is no other reason", and you are simply dodging my questions.
Either put up or shut up.
You then respond with an experiment that eliminates satiety as an experimental factor.
No I didn't. Pigs in that study were fed Ad Libitum access to feed regardless of the diet they were fed. Satiety is only a relevant factor in animals that are limited in the amount of feed presented to them. I gave you specific examples of when that does happen as well as the rational for why it happens. The rest of the time, satiety is not a relevant consideration because the animals are free (and are in fact encouraged) to eat as much as they can.
Other nations have better nutrition and less obesity because foods like meat are more expensive, sold in smaller portions, and discouraged by culture and education.
Sounds like you've found the appropriate solution. American culture is very malleable. The culture I grew up with is very different from the culture that my parents grew up with, which in turn is very different from the culture my grandparents grew up with. Changing culture is going to be a far better solution in the long run. Land Grant colleges will do the research to improve production in the long run no matter what legal limits are imposed on it in the short term. It is their primary reason for existing. But, if the culture changes so that meat is not in such high demand, then you'll have achieved your goal and that change will probably be more permanent.
My bad. For whatever reason, I read the 3rd and 4th sentence as a single run-on sentence.
Well, apparently I do know what I am talking about, since you just said that both my points are true. The fact that you consider them "irrelevant" is just a result of your inability to follow an argument.
I admitted that I used the wrong word when describing HFCS. It's an easy enough mistake, and I claimed that. An error of vocabulary does not invalidate the point I was making, that HFCS presents the intestine with a 60:40 ratio of Fructose to Glucose. Table sugar (sucrose) can only be absorbed after it has been broken down into its component monosaccharides Fructose and Glucose in a 50:50 ratio. Either way, there is a lot of fructose in either sweetener.
My point was that, although two food items may be nutritionally equivalent, they are not equivalent as foods once behavior and other factors enter the equation.
No that was not what you claimed. This is what you claimed:
Animals and their digestive systems are highly adapted to how those nutrients are delivered, as well as to the other "micronutrients" that come along with specific food sources.
You made no allowance for the diets being nutritionally adequate, nor did you make any reference to "Behavioral or other factors". You stated categorically that I was wrong when I said that animals had a requirement for specific nutrients, and not for specific feedstuffs.
For humans, less nutritious foods are often healthier foods.
That is a drastic over simplification. Food cannot be taken individually, because their is nothing unhealthy about a single food. It is the diet that needs to be considered. Diets need to be tailored to the activity level, age, and desired outcome. Most people don't have a nutritionist, and make little attempt to consider their diet as a whole. There is nothing inherently unhealthy about a hamburger, but a diet based largely on hamburgers is indeed unhealthy. OTOH, their is nothing inherently unhealthy about apples, but a diet based primarily on apples is also unhealthy, just for different reasons.
For animals, how and what they eat and how they are raised affects texture and flavor.
I never claimed otherwise. I recently fed a pig a diet with 10% flax meal because I like the flavor it adds to the ham. That is completely irrelevant to the argument you and I are having.
What the US needs to do is to produce foods that encourage people to eat healthy despite their (as you put it) "character flaws".
When was the last time you went to the grocery store? I went today and my store has this section called the "Produce Department" that was chock full of fruits and vegetables. There was also an isle devoted to canned goods, of which most were canned fruits and vegetables. In yet another isle there were bags and bags of frozen vegetables. The problem is not production levels, it is demand. I've worked in grocery stores and produce gets thrown away every day because no one wants to buy it.
(And maximizing nutrient production isn't really even the issue in countries with famine, but that's a different story.)
For those that are starving it is. I agree that it is not the root cause, but as a Nigerian friend of mine from grad school said: "If you can't get enough to eat, then nothing else matters."
Trends in the estimated total consumption (kg active compound) of prescribed antimicrobials for production animals, Denmark
This is not a complete sentence. It is missing a verb. The Table that title is attached to refutes your claim of 60%, it does not support it. look at the DANMAP 2008 report that the HOUSE report is citing. That table is on page 31 of the report. Do the math yourself, I already did it once for you.
If you cannot provide me with a PRIMARY reference for that 60% number, or explain to me how 120,200 kg of active antibiotics is only 60% of 89,900 kg of active compound, then don't bother responding. Simply repeating the exact same paragraph repeatedly, without any attempt to answer the valid criticism of it is not debating. It is taking things on faith. That is acceptable in many circles, but not in science.
HFCS is a mixture of monosaccharides, while granulated sugar is a disaccharide
First, I misspoke. HFCS is a combination of fructose and glucose, not sucrose. Sucrose is a disaccharide containing one fructose and one glucose molecule (hence the 50:50 ratio I mentioned).
Second, while your comment is technically true it misses the point. Disaccharides are not absorbed intact. They must first be hydrolyzed to monosaccharides by enzyme before they can be absorbed. Therefore, feeding 1 mole of sucrose is equivalent to feeding 1 mole of fructose and 1 mole of glucose.
For identical amounts of calories, HFCS appears to be significantly worse than granulated sugar according to recent studies; go check the literature.
I have checked the literature. The only studies I've been able to find involve massive doses of either sucrose or HFCS. Furthermore, they are almost exclusively studies involving lower vertebrates like rats and mice. Rodents are great for finding pathways and proving the initial concept, but there remains mountains of work to be done before rodent evidence can be validated in humans. That is why I used the term "Moderation". One glass of soda a month can't make you obese just because it has HFCS in it.
False as well. Animals and their digestive systems are highly adapted to how those nutrients are delivered, as well as to the other "micronutrients" that come along with specific food sources. For example, if you deliver the same amount of nutrients in highly concentrated form (to an animal or human), they won't feel satiated as much as when you deliver them in more natural, less accessible forms.
I always find it interesting to be told that the information I spend 8 years in graduate school acquiring from some of the greatest scientists in my field are wrong. Not only that, but I'm being told I'm wrong by a lay person. For the Record, I have an MS and PhD in animal science, with a focus on non-ruminant nutrition from Purdue University. What exactly are your qualifications? In the absence of qualifications I'll accept some relevant primary citations (I mean journal articles, not wikipedia pages or other "summary" websites).
Animals eat first to meet their energy requirements. That is taught in every introduction to animal science class in the world. It's a bit of an over simplification, but still largely true. Even if your assertion that nutritionally adequate but concentrated food can leave an animal hungry is true, it is largely irrelevant. Growing animals are almost never intentionally feed restricted. They are given as much as they will consume because the more they eat the faster they grow. The faster they grow, the quicker they hit market weight, and you can fill the barn again with another batch of animals. The notable exceptions are gestating sows (to prevent them from getting too fat and experiencing dystocia or low conception rates), boars (to prevent them from getting too massive and either crushing the sows or injuring a human handler), and molting laying hens (the practice is being slowly replaced with feeding ad libitum access to very poor quality food). In each of those cases, there is a reason (you can debate the soundness of that reason either way, that is irrelevant to the current discussion).
You appear to be basing your assertion on the idea of "Gut Fill" and Vagus nerve stimulation, which is frequently taught as a method by which animals decide they are satiated. It is true that gut fill does contribute to the feeling of satiety, but it is by no means the primary mechanism (drinking a gallon of water will fill you up, but not as much as a small hamburger of lesser volume and weight). Much work is still being done with this, and it appears as though the hormone Ghrelin is the key regulator of "Hunger". One of my colleges has designed a 5 year project which is currently being considered for funding by the USDA to develop a
Usage has increased somewhat since 2001, but in 2008 was still only 60% of 1994 levels. 18
That '18' is a footnote which attributes that claim to
18 DANMAP 2008, supra note 16, at 31.
The DANMAP 2008 report is available from the official DANMAP.org website. I previously provided a direct link to the report on their website. On page 31 of the report is a section titled Antimicrobial consumption. Nowhere on that page does the number 60% appear. On that same page is a table titled Trends in the estimated total consumption (kg active compound) of prescribed antimicrobials for production animals, Denmark, which provides a breakdown of 6 different antibiotic groups by year. The sum total for 1994 is 89,900 kg of active compound. The sum total for 2008 is 120,200 kg of active compound. That works out to a 33.7% increase in total kg of active compound used. Now, I'm fully aware that total kg of active compound is not the best metric. The best would be if they provided the ADD or ADDx, defined on page 31 as:
In DANMAP, the consumption is measured both in kg active substance and as a National Animal Defined Daily Dose, the latter either as the dose for one kg animal bodyweight (ADDkg) or as the dose for a defined animal body weight x (ADDx), depending on species and age group.
However, they do not provide that information in this report, and I've not been able (yet at least) to find it in the earlier reports. The ADD metric is better because it would account for the increased total production of pigs that has occurred since the DANMAP monitoring began.
It's entirely possible that there was an update to the report called the "Supra Note 16". However, I can't find it, and the words "Supra" or "Note 16" do not appear in the 2008 DANMAP report. I cannot verify the accuracy of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce reports interpretation of a document I cannot read for myself. Therefore, I base my interpretation on the data I can get my hands on.
I'm a trained researcher. I make it a point to find the "PRIMARY" sources for information that I find dubious before accepting it. As nice and official as the House report is, it is not a primary source. The DANMAP website and their official annual reports ARE primary sources. If you can find the section of the report that the House committee is referring to, I'm more than willing to admit that I'm wrong. In fact, I wish I were wrong. It would be far better for human medicine if an EU style ban worked as expected. I just don't believe it has, and I base that on what I've been able to read in the official reports and research published in journal articles. Until you present me with new primary data (preferably the "Supra Note 16"), I stand by interpretation of the data supplied in the 2008 report.
No, I have never knowingly provided false information, or presented valid information incorrectly. That is the definition of lying. If I'm wrong, that is another issue entirely. People are too free with that label these days. Saying something someone does not agree with or stating something believed to be accurate but later found not to be so is not lying. I could very well be wrong. It has happened before and will certainly happen again. If you want to convince me that I'm wrong this time, then you are going to need to provide me with data that I find satisfactory. Just because you find the evidence acceptable, does not mean it satisfies my requirements. Besides, name calling is not a horribly effective way to win an argument. I'd appreciate it if you would refrain from that in future responses.
Maybe we could take the corn being used for high fructose corn syrup and make something nutritional out of it.
Corn is fractionated to make HFCS, with the other components being used to make other products such as corn oil, protein isolates, etc. Virtually the whole plant is used. If HFCS is not made from the corn, those very same carbohydrates are present in some other product. Also as an aside, HFCS is 60% fructose and 40% sucrose where as normal granulated sugar is 50% of each. In moderation there is nothing wrong with HFCS. The problem is that Americans are not good at doing anything in moderation. That goes for meat consumption as well. However that national character flaw is not the fault of the industries trying to meet our demand. Demand precedes supply, because over supply leeds to low product prices, and a lot of smaller farms go out of business waiting for the prices to correct themselves (the last time ended in march and lasted for over 18 months.)
I honestly thought this practice was banned after the Mad Cow outbreak.
It was for non-omnivorous species. Meat and bone meal is still fed to swine and poultry because they don't have a prion protein in their brains. There is nothing for the Mad Cow or Scrapie protein to interact with in those species.
And cows are herbivores, so why would they need to eat animal-based protein? Unless they're being deprived of something else.
They are not being deprived of anything. Their needs can be met with other feedstuffs, but the cost of the feed becomes a factor. Depending on the operation, 60 to 80% of input costs of growing an animal come from feed. Saving even 10 cents a ton on your feed translates into a lot of money when amortized over a herd of 5,000 animals. Feeding non-rumnant species (Swine, poultry, dogs, cats, humans, etc.) is fairly easy. Once you know the animals requirements and the digestible nutrient content of the feedstuffs available, it is easy to formulate a diet that should capture most of the animals potential. However, for ruminants (Cattle, sheep, goats, deer, etc.) there is the complication of the 4 chambered stomach. The first chamber contains very little by the way of absorptive capacity, but is chock-full of microbes that will break down and remodel what ever it is you feed them. I don't remember the percentages exactly (not a ruminant nutritionist), but its somewhere on the order of 40 to 60 percent of the protein leaving the rumen is of microbial origin. That includes both protein that was broken down and reused as well as protein that was synthesized de novo by the rumen microbes.
Either way, no animal has a requirement for corn, or grass, or hay, or whatever. What they have is a requirement for specific nutrients. The source of those nutrients is largely irrelevant. As for protein (the primary value behind meat and bone meal), that is a broad simplification. Protein is made up from 20 different amino acids. Some the animals can synthesize on their own in sufficient quantities no matter what (dispensable), some that they can synthesize, but many not have sufficient capacity to meet requirement depending on the circumstances (production phase, disease state, etc.; conditionally dispensable), and those that the animal can never synthesize fast enough to meet their requirements for optimal growth/production (indispensable or essential). Plant protein sources like soybean meal are rich in primarily the dispensable and conditionally dispensable amino acids. Animal proteins on the other hand are rich in the indispensable amino acids. Therefore a pound of animal protein from meat and bone meal goes much farther than a pound of soy protein. When feeding the traditional corn & soybean meal diet, much of the present protein is wasted. The amino acids that the animals don't need (either because they are dispensable, conditionally dispensable, or surfeit to requirement) are degraded, the Carb
First, it was NOT my post you replied to.
Sorry, I did not realize that I was talking to someone different. My bad.
The second sentence says "Essentially to compensate for industrial farming practices which are more or less awful conditions (cows enclosed in a stall standing in their own shit for hours at a stretch) they inoculate them against everything."
Ok, I was referring to the italicized section. As I pointed out in a different post, animals don't care about the same things we do. They don't know that shit is full of bacteria and unsanitary. I used to work on a dairy that pastured all of their milking cows, only bringing them into the barn long enough to be milked 2x a day. I would arrive at work, round up the cows, milk them, and then turn them back out to pasture. There were always at least a couple of cows that had shit on themselves when I went to fetch them. They'd just lay down in it, despite having more than enough land to spread out and avoid it. This wasn't a dry feed lot either, it was a grassy pasture with the only mud being right next to the barn. Animals are very frequently indifferent to things that drive humans crazy.
That is exactly why factory farmed animals are shot with antibiotics.
Animals are not routinely "Shot with antibiotics". Routine antibiotic administration is done by adding them to the feed. Injections are only used when a small handful of animals are sick, or likely to get sick. For example, one of the pigs I'm using for a research trial managed to cut himself while trying to squeeze through his feeder and escape. I gave him penicillin to prevent the cut from getting infected. However, when we had an outbreak of scours (post-weaning diarrhea) we added antibiotics to the waters so that they all got them. Injecting an entire 5000 pig barn with antibiotics is virtually unthinkable. Furthermore, as I've pointed out before antibiotics are expensive. If the benefits they grant are not cost effective, then they are not used. The only growth period in which they are routinely used on any of the farms I've work on is in the nursery period because of the stress caused by weaning and being moved to a new barn.
Cattle, sheep, pigs, and other livestock raised in pastures or other open spaces generally are not shot up with antibiotic cocktails.
neither are those raised in barns.
As to the third component. This is the fairy tale:
The prions in the sheep brain crossed into the cow in a way that would never have happened without people intervening
In my response to you I elaborated on how the transmission of prion diseases is far more complicated than gstoddart realized. That I confused you with gstoddart was my mistake, but my points still stand.