There are folks who have discovered through trial and error that they have food sensitivities or incompatibilities. I'm one of them. I have to avoid animal products, oils in large quantities, and fats that are solid or semisolid at high room temperatures (30-35F) because I can't digest them and would get very sick if I ate them. (It is unclear to me whether natural fats like coconut oil or cocoa butter are safe for me; I know that small quantities of nuts are OK, hydrogenated oils are not, and large quantities of any fat or oil are not.) There is no known biological cause, although I suspect my gallbladder and liver may be a bit off. I also choose to avoid HFCS, and to try to limit consumption of refined sugars and flours because I believe them to be bad for my long-term health. I am left with the possibility of a very healthy and balanced diet of whole grains, veggies, fruits, soy products (including milk, meat and cheese substitutes) and whatnot. Some people believe it is all in my head. I don't think so, especially since my children and my wife, after having been on a mostly-vegan diet for several years, have developed similar (though much less severe) sensitivities. BTW, I'm overweight (borderline obese) and only became so after eliminating the "bad" foods from my diet, and, thus, the constant nausea and pain and fatigue that they caused. My problem is that I don't have a lot of time to cook, and thus I tend to eat one big meal per day instead of several smaller ones. Plus, like most Slashdotters, I spend way too much time sitting on my a** and way too little exercising.
Many countries with high rates of consumption of HFCS and corn in general also have high rates of obesity, metabolic syndrome, and related problems. This alone doesn't prove causation, but, in conjunction with other studies which do implicate at least HFCS as causative through various mechanisms (leptin suppression, contamination with mercury, bioaccumulation of the enzymes used to produce it, etc.), I believe significant caution is in order. We don't know what effect Monsanto's genes have on us, or on the environment. They may be harmless, but we do not know that. Even if we did not know that its "business" practices are extortionate if not genocidal, there would still be sufficient reason for caution. Factor in this knowledge, and I think it makes sense to avoid their crap at least until such time as all the evidence is out and sufficiently studied, which I do realize could take years or even decades.
I stopped eating HFCS (but not corn in general) about half a year ago and while I did not lose the weight I had hoped to, I definitely notice fewer problems with hemorrhoids, as well as reduced cravings of varying types, less back pain, and less trouble sleeping.
Excellent idea, except for one problem: the "welfare" is what keeps the current political class in power, and they know it, and would regard your (or my) suggestions as political suicide. You can only implement limited government if you get the totalitarian thugs who are there now out of power, and they have rigged the system so as to make that very, very difficult. And then you have to keep the new political class from lapsing into the same behavior as the old one. In my view, the system itself is broken, exactly as many of those who have studied "democracy" have long predicted. When people get to vote themselves largesse at the expense of others, they will do so, eventually causing their own destruction. The only real alternative that I see is anarchism, which is not the absence of law but rather the absence of rulers who place themselves above it, and which recognizes that people are entitled to rule themselves but NOT to rule others without the latter's consent.
If it had been, the thousands of manuscripts and versions (translations) that had spread across the entire known world a thousand years previously would significantly differ from the "approved by kings and religious leaders" version. They don't. The biggest textual differences are between the Alexandrian (very few/very old) family of codices, and all the rest. Those differences are not trivial, but they are not so significant as to impact any core Christian doctrine, and, with very few exceptions, all major branches of Christianity use both. Remember that during the Middle Ages (a) most people could not read Latin; (b) translations into other languages were not widely available; (c) printing presses did not exist so copies in any language were rare; and (d) the Bible was rarely read by people, but more commonly by priests and other members of the small but powerful literate class, so they did not need to change the text of the Bible to use it to manipulate people if that was their goal; there were many much better ways to do so.
Nope. His claims are slightly exaggerated, but there is recent research strongly suggesting that the deposition of fatty plaques on the arteries are much more related to calcium and sugar overconsumption, and specifically the "fatty liver" that results from the latter. And now that researchers do make the distinction between trans-fats and naturally occurring saturated fats, they are finding a paucity of evidence implicating the latter in anything. GP has somewhat oversimplified but basically he is correct: moderate amounts of saturated fat from natural sources seem very unlikely, in an otherwise healthy individual, to cause problems, whereas high-glycemic carbohydrates are known beyond reasonable doubt to screw up metabolism and to cause obesity.
(Not that I have much room to make fun of your town; I'm in Cleveland, fast becoming both the emptiest town in the allegedly developed world, as well as the stoooopidest. And yes, many people felt it here, although for some reason I didn't. Some of the morons here are insisting that since the Canada quake happened around 1:45 and they felt something around 2:05, it must have been a separate, unrelated incident, and some of the news media are even reporting it as such. Apparently no one here has ever heard of the speed of sound.)
Geological conditions are different east of the Rockies. A 5.5 in this region is not unprecedented but it is not expected more than once every decade or so. And a 5.5 here can be felt for hundreds of kilometers away, as opposed to SCal where it would likely not be noticed even directly above.:)
One thing most people currently don't realize is that non-financial indicators of a nation's overall well-being, such as infant and maternal mortality, literacy, crime rates, longevity, etc. tend to place both the US, and the EU as a whole, far behind other developed and many developing places in the world. I suspect much of the alleged prosperity, especially here in the U.S., is derived from the current valuation of the dollar, which has absolutely noplace to go but down since there is no way for the US government to meet its current financial obligations unless it devalues the currency in some way (by letting it fall, by printing more currency, or by some other means of renegotiating or even repudiating its debt). We are a moderately developed, but rapidly deteriorating and de-industrializing, corrupt, and unsustainable economy, which, in the end, will fall FAR behind many countries we currently consider third-world unless we smarten up and get the government (and corporations) out of the way of sustainable, market-oriented growth.
Thank you for acknowledging that "religious" and "nutjob" are not identical sets.:) But even I would have to admit that there is more overlap between the two than what would be ideal.
"Religious nutjob" here. And in my opinion, which is strongly influenced by biblical, historical Christianity as well as libertarian and anarcho-capitalist theory and also being a semi-trained musician:
Sex within marriage is fine. I don't recommend it outside marriage for many reasons, but, as long as no one is getting hurt, it's none of my business and I won't try to hassle anyone about it.
Drugs are fine as long as no one is getting hurt. Most if not all naturally-occurring drugs have legitimate uses. I don't recommend abusing any of them, but again, as long as no one is getting hurt, it's none of my business and I won't try to hassle anyone about it.
Rock and roll, metal, and most other forms of music are fine with me. As a musician, though I write and perform mostly in the neo-Baroque style, almost all of the others influence it to at least some extent. However . . . and this is really important . . . .
Rap and hip hop is of the devil!!!!!!!
(Disclaimer: I don't really believe any musical genre is inherently evil. But I really do wish there were less violence and misogyny in a lot of the lyrics of rap, hip hop, and similar genres. Yes, I know, they're trying to accurately depict the experience of the urban jungle. I get it. I live in one. I still don't understand why so many people think it necessary to refer to all women as "bitches" and "hos" and to say they're going to "187" all the cops.)
I know this will be interpreted as a troll, but I'm asking, in all seriousness, in what way(s) is the current production version of PostgreSQL NOT a better RDBMS than the current production version of MySQL? Or, in other words, where does PG need to improve in order to match MySQL?
Good points. Much of the current U.S. standard of living is ultimately unsustainable due to debt among other reasons. Meanwhile, the Chinese continue to save and to live within their means, accumulating capital that will increase their productivity going forward. While I still think we are way ahead, for now, that will change over time as the Chinese continue to become more prosperous through their own efforts, while we continue to consume our seed capital and demand that the world hand us a living, which, until and unless we start producing more and/or consuming less, it most certainly will not.
While your point is valid overall, I would point out that the definition of "middle class" in China or any developing country is not the same as in the West. The whole structure of production and prices of available goods and costs of living is wildly different. For instance, middle-class workers in China or India are very unlikely to be able to afford two cars, a huge house in the suburbs, and wide screen TVs in every room. On the other hand they are much more likely than we are to be able to afford nannys, maids, drivers, etc., because the cost of domestic labor is much cheaper there compared to here. These differences make it very difficult to compare purchasing power, especially when currency exchange rates, interest rates, and labor costs are not allowed to clear in most countries for political reasons.
What are your thoughts regarding a Soviet-style collapse? I've always hoped for this outcome as probably the best one possible in terms of minimizing suffering and loss of life. Do you think this is still possible? Can states that are close enough to solvency today shrink enough to be able to borrow money on world markets and thus operate credibly? Alternatively, could the American people be trusted to start over, to create something resembling lawful, Constitutional government(s), free of all the cruft that accumulated over the years and ultimately killed it?
The fact that gold is near or at an all-time high in dollar terms does not mean gold is in a bubble. It means that a lot of folks, myself included, have more confidence in gold than in dollars or other paper currencies as a long-term store of value, especially when the issuers of said currency have found themselves both massively indebted, and in control of a printing press that would allow them to inflate their way out of that debt. By now it should be obvious to everyone that both the dollar and euro fall into that category, and that, barring unprecedented levels of economic growth and redevelopment on both continents, there is no longer any other way out.
Nothing we know about the universe or any part of it is in fundamental conflict or contradiction with the Biblical creation story. It's just that there is an awful lot we do not know, about pretty much everything. We speculate based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable (e.g., the speed of light being more or less constant, and other physical laws remaining somewhat constant throughout the universe). That's fine, as long as we remember that this is speculation, not fact. We continue to experiment, and to use some approximation of the scientific method (heavily biased by politics, of course) to try to learn more. That's also fine, as long as we regard what we learn as being always tentative, and always subject to refinement, or even outright abandonment, if further evidence or experimentation renders our original tentative findings invalid.
SCOTUS, out of control, still. Or again. However you want to put it. There's no way to rein in these traitors to their oaths either -- the system as designed is outright broken. The constitution has zero legal teeth.
Which is exactly why we have the Second Amendment. It is time to start organizing and preparing to defend (lawfully, and peacefully where possible) against tyranny. Some folks are already doing this, though quietly and cautiously. Anyone who isn't should strongly consider it. It really is true that freedom isn't free; it must be defended, although the biggest threats to freedom at this time are most definitely not foreign but domestic in nature.
At a minimum, every holder of elected office who has violated his or her oath to uphold and defend the Constitution should be removed from office, and prosecuted if they violated other laws in the process (particularly 18 USC 242). Those on the Court can be removed through impeachment once a lawful Congress is restored, assuming we are still pretending that the Constitution is valid. If it is not, then, of course, no part of the federal government has any justification for its existence, and no one is bound by its so-called "laws," and, furthermore, its agents are subject to prosecution under state laws for violating the civil rights of everyone it pretends to be under its jurisdiction. Its agents also are subject to any lawful action that any citizen or group of citizens, or any state Militia, might take in individual or collective self-defense, or to enforce valid State laws.
Slashdot Mirror
Most of the corn in the U.S., one of the top nations in both categories, is GM.
There are folks who have discovered through trial and error that they have food sensitivities or incompatibilities. I'm one of them. I have to avoid animal products, oils in large quantities, and fats that are solid or semisolid at high room temperatures (30-35F) because I can't digest them and would get very sick if I ate them. (It is unclear to me whether natural fats like coconut oil or cocoa butter are safe for me; I know that small quantities of nuts are OK, hydrogenated oils are not, and large quantities of any fat or oil are not.) There is no known biological cause, although I suspect my gallbladder and liver may be a bit off. I also choose to avoid HFCS, and to try to limit consumption of refined sugars and flours because I believe them to be bad for my long-term health. I am left with the possibility of a very healthy and balanced diet of whole grains, veggies, fruits, soy products (including milk, meat and cheese substitutes) and whatnot. Some people believe it is all in my head. I don't think so, especially since my children and my wife, after having been on a mostly-vegan diet for several years, have developed similar (though much less severe) sensitivities. BTW, I'm overweight (borderline obese) and only became so after eliminating the "bad" foods from my diet, and, thus, the constant nausea and pain and fatigue that they caused. My problem is that I don't have a lot of time to cook, and thus I tend to eat one big meal per day instead of several smaller ones. Plus, like most Slashdotters, I spend way too much time sitting on my a** and way too little exercising.
Many countries with high rates of consumption of HFCS and corn in general also have high rates of obesity, metabolic syndrome, and related problems. This alone doesn't prove causation, but, in conjunction with other studies which do implicate at least HFCS as causative through various mechanisms (leptin suppression, contamination with mercury, bioaccumulation of the enzymes used to produce it, etc.), I believe significant caution is in order. We don't know what effect Monsanto's genes have on us, or on the environment. They may be harmless, but we do not know that. Even if we did not know that its "business" practices are extortionate if not genocidal, there would still be sufficient reason for caution. Factor in this knowledge, and I think it makes sense to avoid their crap at least until such time as all the evidence is out and sufficiently studied, which I do realize could take years or even decades.
I stopped eating HFCS (but not corn in general) about half a year ago and while I did not lose the weight I had hoped to, I definitely notice fewer problems with hemorrhoids, as well as reduced cravings of varying types, less back pain, and less trouble sleeping.
Excellent idea, except for one problem: the "welfare" is what keeps the current political class in power, and they know it, and would regard your (or my) suggestions as political suicide. You can only implement limited government if you get the totalitarian thugs who are there now out of power, and they have rigged the system so as to make that very, very difficult. And then you have to keep the new political class from lapsing into the same behavior as the old one. In my view, the system itself is broken, exactly as many of those who have studied "democracy" have long predicted. When people get to vote themselves largesse at the expense of others, they will do so, eventually causing their own destruction. The only real alternative that I see is anarchism, which is not the absence of law but rather the absence of rulers who place themselves above it, and which recognizes that people are entitled to rule themselves but NOT to rule others without the latter's consent.
My electronics knowledge is a bit rusty but how do you solve the problem of the forward voltage drop across the diode?
If it had been, the thousands of manuscripts and versions (translations) that had spread across the entire known world a thousand years previously would significantly differ from the "approved by kings and religious leaders" version. They don't. The biggest textual differences are between the Alexandrian (very few/very old) family of codices, and all the rest. Those differences are not trivial, but they are not so significant as to impact any core Christian doctrine, and, with very few exceptions, all major branches of Christianity use both. Remember that during the Middle Ages (a) most people could not read Latin; (b) translations into other languages were not widely available; (c) printing presses did not exist so copies in any language were rare; and (d) the Bible was rarely read by people, but more commonly by priests and other members of the small but powerful literate class, so they did not need to change the text of the Bible to use it to manipulate people if that was their goal; there were many much better ways to do so.
Nope. His claims are slightly exaggerated, but there is recent research strongly suggesting that the deposition of fatty plaques on the arteries are much more related to calcium and sugar overconsumption, and specifically the "fatty liver" that results from the latter. And now that researchers do make the distinction between trans-fats and naturally occurring saturated fats, they are finding a paucity of evidence implicating the latter in anything. GP has somewhat oversimplified but basically he is correct: moderate amounts of saturated fat from natural sources seem very unlikely, in an otherwise healthy individual, to cause problems, whereas high-glycemic carbohydrates are known beyond reasonable doubt to screw up metabolism and to cause obesity.
You live near Detroit, and you're still alive????
(Not that I have much room to make fun of your town; I'm in Cleveland, fast becoming both the emptiest town in the allegedly developed world, as well as the stoooopidest. And yes, many people felt it here, although for some reason I didn't. Some of the morons here are insisting that since the Canada quake happened around 1:45 and they felt something around 2:05, it must have been a separate, unrelated incident, and some of the news media are even reporting it as such. Apparently no one here has ever heard of the speed of sound.)
Geological conditions are different east of the Rockies. A 5.5 in this region is not unprecedented but it is not expected more than once every decade or so. And a 5.5 here can be felt for hundreds of kilometers away, as opposed to SCal where it would likely not be noticed even directly above. :)
One thing most people currently don't realize is that non-financial indicators of a nation's overall well-being, such as infant and maternal mortality, literacy, crime rates, longevity, etc. tend to place both the US, and the EU as a whole, far behind other developed and many developing places in the world. I suspect much of the alleged prosperity, especially here in the U.S., is derived from the current valuation of the dollar, which has absolutely noplace to go but down since there is no way for the US government to meet its current financial obligations unless it devalues the currency in some way (by letting it fall, by printing more currency, or by some other means of renegotiating or even repudiating its debt). We are a moderately developed, but rapidly deteriorating and de-industrializing, corrupt, and unsustainable economy, which, in the end, will fall FAR behind many countries we currently consider third-world unless we smarten up and get the government (and corporations) out of the way of sustainable, market-oriented growth.
Thank you for acknowledging that "religious" and "nutjob" are not identical sets. :) But even I would have to admit that there is more overlap between the two than what would be ideal.
"Religious nutjob" here. And in my opinion, which is strongly influenced by biblical, historical Christianity as well as libertarian and anarcho-capitalist theory and also being a semi-trained musician:
(Disclaimer: I don't really believe any musical genre is inherently evil. But I really do wish there were less violence and misogyny in a lot of the lyrics of rap, hip hop, and similar genres. Yes, I know, they're trying to accurately depict the experience of the urban jungle. I get it. I live in one. I still don't understand why so many people think it necessary to refer to all women as "bitches" and "hos" and to say they're going to "187" all the cops.)
OK, who is the Dummkopf that went and translated the GNU long version of getopt(1) into Klingon??? (or is that German?)
I know this will be interpreted as a troll, but I'm asking, in all seriousness, in what way(s) is the current production version of PostgreSQL NOT a better RDBMS than the current production version of MySQL? Or, in other words, where does PG need to improve in order to match MySQL?
Good points. Much of the current U.S. standard of living is ultimately unsustainable due to debt among other reasons. Meanwhile, the Chinese continue to save and to live within their means, accumulating capital that will increase their productivity going forward. While I still think we are way ahead, for now, that will change over time as the Chinese continue to become more prosperous through their own efforts, while we continue to consume our seed capital and demand that the world hand us a living, which, until and unless we start producing more and/or consuming less, it most certainly will not.
While your point is valid overall, I would point out that the definition of "middle class" in China or any developing country is not the same as in the West. The whole structure of production and prices of available goods and costs of living is wildly different. For instance, middle-class workers in China or India are very unlikely to be able to afford two cars, a huge house in the suburbs, and wide screen TVs in every room. On the other hand they are much more likely than we are to be able to afford nannys, maids, drivers, etc., because the cost of domestic labor is much cheaper there compared to here. These differences make it very difficult to compare purchasing power, especially when currency exchange rates, interest rates, and labor costs are not allowed to clear in most countries for political reasons.
What are your thoughts regarding a Soviet-style collapse? I've always hoped for this outcome as probably the best one possible in terms of minimizing suffering and loss of life. Do you think this is still possible? Can states that are close enough to solvency today shrink enough to be able to borrow money on world markets and thus operate credibly? Alternatively, could the American people be trusted to start over, to create something resembling lawful, Constitutional government(s), free of all the cruft that accumulated over the years and ultimately killed it?
The fact that gold is near or at an all-time high in dollar terms does not mean gold is in a bubble. It means that a lot of folks, myself included, have more confidence in gold than in dollars or other paper currencies as a long-term store of value, especially when the issuers of said currency have found themselves both massively indebted, and in control of a printing press that would allow them to inflate their way out of that debt. By now it should be obvious to everyone that both the dollar and euro fall into that category, and that, barring unprecedented levels of economic growth and redevelopment on both continents, there is no longer any other way out.
Nothing we know about the universe or any part of it is in fundamental conflict or contradiction with the Biblical creation story. It's just that there is an awful lot we do not know, about pretty much everything. We speculate based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable (e.g., the speed of light being more or less constant, and other physical laws remaining somewhat constant throughout the universe). That's fine, as long as we remember that this is speculation, not fact. We continue to experiment, and to use some approximation of the scientific method (heavily biased by politics, of course) to try to learn more. That's also fine, as long as we regard what we learn as being always tentative, and always subject to refinement, or even outright abandonment, if further evidence or experimentation renders our original tentative findings invalid.
SCOTUS, out of control, still. Or again. However you want to put it. There's no way to rein in these traitors to their oaths either -- the system as designed is outright broken. The constitution has zero legal teeth.
Which is exactly why we have the Second Amendment. It is time to start organizing and preparing to defend (lawfully, and peacefully where possible) against tyranny. Some folks are already doing this, though quietly and cautiously. Anyone who isn't should strongly consider it. It really is true that freedom isn't free; it must be defended, although the biggest threats to freedom at this time are most definitely not foreign but domestic in nature.
At a minimum, every holder of elected office who has violated his or her oath to uphold and defend the Constitution should be removed from office, and prosecuted if they violated other laws in the process (particularly 18 USC 242). Those on the Court can be removed through impeachment once a lawful Congress is restored, assuming we are still pretending that the Constitution is valid. If it is not, then, of course, no part of the federal government has any justification for its existence, and no one is bound by its so-called "laws," and, furthermore, its agents are subject to prosecution under state laws for violating the civil rights of everyone it pretends to be under its jurisdiction. Its agents also are subject to any lawful action that any citizen or group of citizens, or any state Militia, might take in individual or collective self-defense, or to enforce valid State laws.
The National Lice League is demanding an apology.
the disappearance of several very large numbers from a location within the BSA, believed, pending further investigation, to be its ass.
Stop picking nits!
OK, fair enough. You can get rid of public lice!