Relative availability of food nowadays and sustainable ways of producing it are two different things. So what that "for the most part the majority of land (especially in America) are completely empty and undeveloped" - have you seen the diagram? (and its sources) It doesn't stop a given place from using way more than is available, long term (without compromising future viability and/or taking hectares from the past)
Hypocrisy is probably a good description if somebody wants to ignore already present anyway eating of insects, every day. Particularly if choosing to eat other invertebrates.
In "attacking real sources" you forget that agriculture is in fact a massive one.
Technically, an average human has more hair follicles on his or her body than an average chimpanzee. The type of hair is responsible for visible differences, for "nakedness".
Eating insects is quite widespread, apart from few areas of cultural oddity (highly visible though; and we do eat other invertebrates), not to mention at least an order of magnitude more efficient from vertebrate farm animals when it comes to transformation of resources into meat.
In the form of industrially-produced meat paste (for a start) it would be probably hard or impossible to taste a difference; maybe military could introduce it to its diets - I imagine grunts can't whine quite as much as a typical consumer, and it would be one good part of the puzzle towards solving this, might get acceptance from there.
As a matter of fact - you all eat insects every day; standards for grain, flour, vegetables, etc. generally speak of "maximum number of insect body parts per unit"
(and feeding the world in a sustainable way - not exactly an Idle-grade material)
First, it was mostly a flick towards "fuck yeah, America!" AC; IMHO adequate, considering the X-37 and how excellent the main engine of Atlas V is...
Yes, excellent. You give it slightly too little credit. There's a lot more to it than price (though "price per excellence" in an item of such type is also telling) - most importantly, this particular engine was made specifically for Atlas family of rockets; not used by any other.
It's also the highest performance liquid propellant engine in service (apart from "doubled" version of...itself), with very efficient cycle made possible by advanced metallurgy (that nobody elsewhere chose to take at), not cheapness; overall design choices (say, channel wall design instead of tube wall design of combustion chamber; or ablative nozzles) perhaps hitting closer to sweet spots. Other examples could be "the most reliable... most frequently used launch vehicle in the world, or NK-33, even more efficient than RD-180 (too bad it had to be renamed, now that it will be produced in the US...)
For some reason this particular field is one where Russians are damn good.
Nice (especially possible testing of properties / blowtorch), even if I'm lost on the significance of it in context;)
(but you know, it's possible your money went towards Russian mafia - there were some accusations that the market of Russian space memorabilia (among many others...) at least was largely controlled by them; and 90s was the heyday)
Me obsessed? Just observant. Looking at worldwide prevalence of belief in some deity vs. generally dismissive attitudes towards "natural" (outside ours; which of course itself is far from being universally viewed as natural) forms of intelligence / civilizations (while all we know about Universe points towards serious possibility of their existence; unfortunately not towards "virtual certainty" like for life in general) - the former is a more, well, natural case scenario;p
Whether one holds that life begins at conception or sometime later, at some point before exiting the birth canal there is an unborn human, able to survive outside the womb.
The corollary to the above, as stated, is that at some point there is a biological formation (to be most generic) not fulfilling the requirements.
I said "~95%" BTW / this fact has been slightly refined numerous times / I'm most likely closer than you. But curious to see how you essentially end up with "human characteristics = DNA"...I'd say there's a lot more to it. Functional at all neural system would be a good start. Also, what of those with aneuploidy of the chromosomes?
Just to be clear - I do think that abortions in second trimester are at least controversial, and in the third - outright barbaric. Oh, and I also live in a place where all of them are illegal (yes, including first trimester), except for "medical reasons" or when the pregnancy itself is a result of illegal activity / crime (and even in those cases also generally limited to first trimester)...theoretically. I can clearly see what mess it gives (you know, "observable facts"). Not only women performing them anyway, in dangerous circumstances. Also, two recent illustrative cases:
1) A woman with children, at a risk of losing her sight if becoming pregnant again (oh, and permanent contraceptive methods are also illegal, together with emergency contraception; in fact, a recent parliament coalition - possible largely via this breakaway (in practice) sect, nationalists and neonazis - made allowed contraceptives less / not at all subsidized; together with giving poor families money for post-labour libation (Google Translate works decently); no other financial assistance / this amount given for birth is almost pocket change for anybody except very dysfunctional "families"). She does get pregnant. Encounters roadblocks, unable to get abortion in time. One of the first things told to her by ophthalmologist afterwards - "who the hell allowed you to remain pregnant?!" She now has to care for her family while essentially blind. At least Strasbourg Tribunal ordered my country to compensate her, in the end...
2) A 14-year old girl, pregnancy due to illegal act. Local hospital unwilling to perform abortion (they can deny it, but have to point to a suitable place). Shipped to one of major medical centers in the end. Her parents are denied access to her for most of the ordeal, while her local priest enjoys essentially unlimited one (WTF?! And in case you wonder - yes, he theoretically had no right at all / they had every). Media circus around what is her legal right. Essentially - every possible backstabbing / intimidation to pull that girl over into second trimester. At least in this case, eventually, the "rule of law" prevailed...
Yay for "every sperm is sacred" and how it ends up in practice!
Next step of nuttery - getting rid of quaint dietary taboos; greater utilization of animals with very basic brains as food sources, when there's no good reason to do otherwise. Insects are an excellent source of meat (very efficient - around an order of magnitude better, per resources used, than beef), and in things like mass-produced canned meat paste it would be even hard or impossible to taste a difference.
(in case somebody is not aware - you eat insects every day; the norms about their presence in grain / flour / fruits / etc. basically boil down to "maximum allowable number of insect body parts per unit of product")
One can ask - what such deity could get from a constant stream of preconditioned "souls"... flavored to its liking? Power? Pleasure? It certainly desires adulation, worship,... sustenance, food? (maybe, at best, as sensory organs for the "real world")
[humming "Every sperm is sacred"]...this stuff which is ~95% identical in chimps? "95% of human" - that's still more rights than adolescents, I think? Not to mention zygotes. [/humming "Every sperm is sacred"]
Well they do have relatively sizable Finnish Swede and Russian populations, some recent immigration, differences in military spending in percentage of GDP aren't very dramatic.,,
But most importantly, they have two times lower population density. Going from their 17 per sq km to 32 makes things easier when it comes to scaling. And, FYI, preventative healthcare is also part of healthcare, and isn't free (might very well be more efficient of course)
Finns present at US university level (you seem to almost assume lack of possibility of reverse situation? Heck, I had students from US at my uni in Poland, even in my dorm ("substandard", I'm sure...) - from Texas, to boot) don't tell much about condition of the whole system. Not when the US has (together with the UK) the lowest social mobility among developed nations.
Being beaten by South Korea is nothing to be ashamed of, but being beaten across all three categories by Poland has got to be embarassing.
Somewhat embarrassing, yes, considering the education reform a decade ago which actually did bring the system in Poland superficially closer to US one. With quite a few failures, complications, "unintended consequences" along the way - overall, it made things worse (still enough to beat, apparently)
Want to know what might kill the keyboard someday? Perfect speech recognition. On the average, that should be able to transcribe data about twice as fast as a fairly good typist. We're still a long way from that, though.
That's also debatable, and not strictly on a technical level. At least a long way off simply because it would need to coincide with major refactoring of how societies are laid out.
Imagine your bus, with fifty or sixty passengers (ok, half of them) using such method as input (for all the "those damn disrespectful new generation!" BS around, it's hard to not notice how unobtrusive texting is; how headphones replaced boomboxes). Imagine the same for cubicle farm. Any semi-public space, really.
So, after suggesting how some Sukhoi is a simple modification to MiG-35, or not being aware of typical rules of engagement in aerial combat and that Israel has a history of cooperation with Chinese and how Russians supply them with current Sukhoi models... you now want to appear like you're well aware about the insides of US fighters? (there's a lot of basically COTS CPUs nowadays in them BTW, just radiation/etc. hardened, not exactly a tech unavailable on the market)
You might also note recent stories on/. about universally flawed research or the push in "Western" academic institutions of anti-plagiarism measures - why would they be needed in the first place?
Even if they were 30 years behind - still right on track, F-22 is not exactly a design which just appeared...
"They just steal" was spoken about every upcoming technological powerhouse. It bites us in the ass already, even if not yet in mil tech.
China is both the largest market and manufacturer of automobiles; it's not hard to find lemons in such case / it's not too hard anywhere (*) / you might look into exactly what models of cars are produced there (particularly of the kind that might surprise) / think of further improvements possible in, say, 5 years. Probably Japanese and Korean story again.
(*)look up crash tests of 2001-2003 Dodge/Chrysler Neon, Chrysler Grand Voyager, Hummer H2, 2005 Ford F150... so called "I buy them because my family is safe"
Slashdot Mirror
One picture from Wiki article I linked to seems to show something which might "acceptable" enough already?
(anyway - I take it that meat paste would be OK? Heck, or even some form of proper Pâté; might taste and look very decently...)
Why lobster is (probably) OK for you?
Relative availability of food nowadays and sustainable ways of producing it are two different things. So what that "for the most part the majority of land (especially in America) are completely empty and undeveloped" - have you seen the diagram? (and its sources) It doesn't stop a given place from using way more than is available, long term (without compromising future viability and/or taking hectares from the past)
Hypocrisy is probably a good description if somebody wants to ignore already present anyway eating of insects, every day. Particularly if choosing to eat other invertebrates.
In "attacking real sources" you forget that agriculture is in fact a massive one.
humans being apes with less hair
Technically, an average human has more hair follicles on his or her body than an average chimpanzee. The type of hair is responsible for visible differences, for "nakedness".
Some equilibriums would be more comical, in a way, than others...
What's funny - it is practically impossible to be a vegetarian if eating insects disqualifies one...
Via insects - apparently around an order of magnitude more than via cattle. Even greater advantage when it comes to conservation of water.
Some domestic animals are even incapable of reproduction without our assistance...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eat-A-Bug_Cookbook
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Eating_Bugs:_The_Art_and_Science_of_Eating_Insects
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entomophagy#Unintentional_ingestion (try to think about it during your upcoming meals, please)
Any other misconceptions?
Eating insects is quite widespread, apart from few areas of cultural oddity (highly visible though; and we do eat other invertebrates), not to mention at least an order of magnitude more efficient from vertebrate farm animals when it comes to transformation of resources into meat.
In the form of industrially-produced meat paste (for a start) it would be probably hard or impossible to taste a difference; maybe military could introduce it to its diets - I imagine grunts can't whine quite as much as a typical consumer, and it would be one good part of the puzzle towards solving this, might get acceptance from there.
As a matter of fact - you all eat insects every day; standards for grain, flour, vegetables, etc. generally speak of "maximum number of insect body parts per unit"
(and feeding the world in a sustainable way - not exactly an Idle-grade material)
First, it was mostly a flick towards "fuck yeah, America!" AC; IMHO adequate, considering the X-37 and how excellent the main engine of Atlas V is...
Yes, excellent. You give it slightly too little credit. There's a lot more to it than price (though "price per excellence" in an item of such type is also telling) - most importantly, this particular engine was made specifically for Atlas family of rockets; not used by any other.
It's also the highest performance liquid propellant engine in service (apart from "doubled" version of...itself), with very efficient cycle made possible by advanced metallurgy (that nobody elsewhere chose to take at), not cheapness; overall design choices (say, channel wall design instead of tube wall design of combustion chamber; or ablative nozzles) perhaps hitting closer to sweet spots. Other examples could be "the most reliable ... most frequently used launch vehicle in the world, or NK-33, even more efficient than RD-180 (too bad it had to be renamed, now that it will be produced in the US...)
For some reason this particular field is one where Russians are damn good.
Nice (especially possible testing of properties / blowtorch), even if I'm lost on the significance of it in context ;)
(but you know, it's possible your money went towards Russian mafia - there were some accusations that the market of Russian space memorabilia (among many others...) at least was largely controlled by them; and 90s was the heyday)
Me obsessed? Just observant. Looking at worldwide prevalence of belief in some deity vs. generally dismissive attitudes towards "natural" (outside ours; which of course itself is far from being universally viewed as natural) forms of intelligence / civilizations (while all we know about Universe points towards serious possibility of their existence; unfortunately not towards "virtual certainty" like for life in general) - the former is a more, well, natural case scenario ;p
Fits rather nicely, too.
Whether one holds that life begins at conception or sometime later, at some point before exiting the birth canal there is an unborn human, able to survive outside the womb.
The corollary to the above, as stated, is that at some point there is a biological formation (to be most generic) not fulfilling the requirements.
I said "~95%" BTW / this fact has been slightly refined numerous times / I'm most likely closer than you. But curious to see how you essentially end up with "human characteristics = DNA"...I'd say there's a lot more to it. Functional at all neural system would be a good start. Also, what of those with aneuploidy of the chromosomes?
Just to be clear - I do think that abortions in second trimester are at least controversial, and in the third - outright barbaric. Oh, and I also live in a place where all of them are illegal (yes, including first trimester), except for "medical reasons" or when the pregnancy itself is a result of illegal activity / crime (and even in those cases also generally limited to first trimester) ...theoretically. I can clearly see what mess it gives (you know, "observable facts"). Not only women performing them anyway, in dangerous circumstances. Also, two recent illustrative cases:
1) A woman with children, at a risk of losing her sight if becoming pregnant again (oh, and permanent contraceptive methods are also illegal, together with emergency contraception; in fact, a recent parliament coalition - possible largely via this breakaway (in practice) sect, nationalists and neonazis - made allowed contraceptives less / not at all subsidized; together with giving poor families money for post-labour libation (Google Translate works decently); no other financial assistance / this amount given for birth is almost pocket change for anybody except very dysfunctional "families"). She does get pregnant. Encounters roadblocks, unable to get abortion in time. One of the first things told to her by ophthalmologist afterwards - "who the hell allowed you to remain pregnant?!" She now has to care for her family while essentially blind. At least Strasbourg Tribunal ordered my country to compensate her, in the end...
2) A 14-year old girl, pregnancy due to illegal act. Local hospital unwilling to perform abortion (they can deny it, but have to point to a suitable place). Shipped to one of major medical centers in the end. Her parents are denied access to her for most of the ordeal, while her local priest enjoys essentially unlimited one (WTF?! And in case you wonder - yes, he theoretically had no right at all / they had every). Media circus around what is her legal right. Essentially - every possible backstabbing / intimidation to pull that girl over into second trimester. At least in this case, eventually, the "rule of law" prevailed...
Yay for "every sperm is sacred" and how it ends up in practice!
Next step of nuttery - getting rid of quaint dietary taboos; greater utilization of animals with very basic brains as food sources, when there's no good reason to do otherwise. Insects are an excellent source of meat (very efficient - around an order of magnitude better, per resources used, than beef), and in things like mass-produced canned meat paste it would be even hard or impossible to taste a difference.
(in case somebody is not aware - you eat insects every day; the norms about their presence in grain / flour / fruits / etc. basically boil down to "maximum allowable number of insect body parts per unit of product")
You are what you eat, so...
Considering general absurdity of certain expectations (or specifically the examples of gnosticism / Demiurge, liar and damager of maltheism, the worst of cruel "sinners") - perhaps, overall, we are treated like that? ;p
One can ask - what such deity could get from a constant stream of preconditioned "souls" ... flavored to its liking? Power? Pleasure? It certainly desires adulation, worship, ... sustenance, food? (maybe, at best, as sensory organs for the "real world")
in reality 'rights' are an abstract idea defined by humans
Don't you mean "god-given"?
[humming "Every sperm is sacred"] ...this stuff which is ~95% identical in chimps? "95% of human" - that's still more rights than adolescents, I think? Not to mention zygotes.
[/humming "Every sperm is sacred"]
Well they do have relatively sizable Finnish Swede and Russian populations, some recent immigration, differences in military spending in percentage of GDP aren't very dramatic.,,
But most importantly, they have two times lower population density. Going from their 17 per sq km to 32 makes things easier when it comes to scaling. And, FYI, preventative healthcare is also part of healthcare, and isn't free (might very well be more efficient of course)
Finns present at US university level (you seem to almost assume lack of possibility of reverse situation? Heck, I had students from US at my uni in Poland, even in my dorm ("substandard", I'm sure...) - from Texas, to boot) don't tell much about condition of the whole system. Not when the US has (together with the UK) the lowest social mobility among developed nations.
Being beaten by South Korea is nothing to be ashamed of, but being beaten across all three categories by Poland has got to be embarassing.
Somewhat embarrassing, yes, considering the education reform a decade ago which actually did bring the system in Poland superficially closer to US one. With quite a few failures, complications, "unintended consequences" along the way - overall, it made things worse (still enough to beat, apparently)
...you are stretching your arms up, which is uncomfortable...
Space colonies can't come quickly enough? ;)
Want to know what might kill the keyboard someday? Perfect speech recognition. On the average, that should be able to transcribe data about twice as fast as a fairly good typist. We're still a long way from that, though.
That's also debatable, and not strictly on a technical level. At least a long way off simply because it would need to coincide with major refactoring of how societies are laid out.
Imagine your bus, with fifty or sixty passengers (ok, half of them) using such method as input (for all the "those damn disrespectful new generation!" BS around, it's hard to not notice how unobtrusive texting is; how headphones replaced boomboxes). Imagine the same for cubicle farm. Any semi-public space, really.
So, after suggesting how some Sukhoi is a simple modification to MiG-35, or not being aware of typical rules of engagement in aerial combat and that Israel has a history of cooperation with Chinese and how Russians supply them with current Sukhoi models... you now want to appear like you're well aware about the insides of US fighters? (there's a lot of basically COTS CPUs nowadays in them BTW, just radiation/etc. hardened, not exactly a tech unavailable on the market)
You might also note recent stories on /. about universally flawed research or the push in "Western" academic institutions of anti-plagiarism measures - why would they be needed in the first place?
Even if they were 30 years behind - still right on track, F-22 is not exactly a design which just appeared...
"They just steal" was spoken about every upcoming technological powerhouse. It bites us in the ass already, even if not yet in mil tech.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAskckqdCLk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ekxvQR97O0
China is both the largest market and manufacturer of automobiles; it's not hard to find lemons in such case / it's not too hard anywhere (*) / you might look into exactly what models of cars are produced there (particularly of the kind that might surprise) / think of further improvements possible in, say, 5 years. Probably Japanese and Korean story again.
(*)look up crash tests of 2001-2003 Dodge/Chrysler Neon, Chrysler Grand Voyager, Hummer H2, 2005 Ford F150 ... so called "I buy them because my family is safe"