Actually, it's a sensible behavior. America taxes 39% to corporations regardless of where they earn profit: an American HQ company pays 39% on everything it sells in China and Japan. In most other developed nations, it's different: a German company selling cars in the US pays taxes to the US on the profits from its US sales, but pays no taxes to Germany on those profits; it does pay German taxes on profits made from selling cars in Germany.
Americans are essentially crying about American companies not wanting to make $10 million selling to Britain, pay Britain $2.5 million in taxes, and then pay America $3.9 million in taxes; instead, these companies want to have a British arm headquarters, make $10 million in Britain, and pay $2.5 million to Britain and NOTHING to America.
Doesn't work that way. In this case, the US wants to tax a US business on income from US business, but also on income from Japanese business. Instead, the US business moves to Ireland, pays 0.027% taxes on Japanese business, and pays the US taxes on business done in the US--but NOT on business done anywhere else in the world
There is a penalty for being an American business.
All business done in the US pays US taxes. That is: if iTunes sells $5 million of songs in the US, Apple pays taxes on $5 million of revenue. Simple enough.
At the same time, any US company which sells something to Japan, Germany, France, Britain, and so on also pays taxes on it. If iTunes sells $50 million of songs in Europe, Apple pays $50 million in taxes to the US.
All Apple has done is moved their iTunes operations under another company headquartered in Germany. When iTunes sells $5 million of songs in the US, Apple pays US taxes on $5 million; but when iTunes sells $50 million of songs in Europe, Apple doesn't pay the US shit.
You may notice that the US is trying to tax businesses for doing business in the US, and also tax US businesses for doing business outside the US. US businesses are simply moving their non-US business outside the US, which is where it is anyway.
I use firefox at work and Chromium at home. I use Firefox because of the tab expose view... which I've stopped using, so I don't know why I still use Firefox. Chromium is better.
The food pyramid was created by the United States Department of Agriculture, not the National Institute of Health.
There's this, as well as 30 or 40 years of studies which suggest similar. As Atkins said, high amounts of starch are probably bad for you; mind you, the Atkins fad diet is ridiculous, and extends these claims to eschewing all starch. Dr. Atkins suggested we shouldn't intake the great majority of our calories from starch, but rather largely from protein and fats.
Hunter-gatherer humans ate foraged fruits and vegetables more than grain. Before agrarian society, finding a potato or a squash was hard; celery, spinach, and similar leafy plants we've likely never heard of are easier to grab at. A fruit tree or a squash vine is fantastic... and quickly picked bare, as well as highly seasonal. Berries are more plentiful.
These considerations lead to some interesting conclusions. Salt is likely harmless up to 6000mg/day, if you have enough potassium--and early man eating little grain, hunted meat, and whatever greenery and berries he got his hands on would have been loaded with potassium. Likewise, as scientific evidence has suggested (not proven, but firmly suggested), early man probably had a high amount of protein in his diet from nuts and hunting. Mexicans still eat grasshoppers; like apes, we would have eaten bugs. Farming probably evolved to grain after cooking, when it was discovered you could smash and grind grain into porridge; the first mass starch introduction was probably tuberous roots or squash.
Such conjectures lead to modern fad diets like the Paleo diet, where people will only eat bison meat and nuts. I prefer to consider these as potentially correlated to a number of things we've seen from scientific studies:
* Fat doesn't make you fat, or cause heart disease (trans-fats possibly, but the evidence is weak)
* Cholesterol intake doesn't correlate strongly to blood cholesterol levels, as over 90% of blood cholesterol is produced in the body
* High protein intake is better than high starch intake
* We're apparently deficient in minerals such as potassium and magnesium
Considering the digestion methods for starch, protein, and fat is more interesting than considering the origins, although they're both interesting. Starch effectively becomes sugar by a long-chain breakdown and a short-chain breakdown: complex chains are broken into small fragments by one enzyme, which are then broken into individual sugar molecules by another enzyme. By contrast, fats undergo lipolysis, while proteins go through a long and complicated process to derive energy.
Energy conversion from sugar isn't readily controlled: it spikes glucose, and then is bound into glycogen by insulin; this is why diabetics are told to avoid sugars and starches, favoring meats and vegetables. We're well aware that too much sugar, starch, and alcohol intake can lead to diabeetus by damaging the body with glucose and insulin spikes, again suggesting that perhaps 50-75% of our diet being starch isn't a good idea.
Even so, the food pyramid does suggest meat and dairy. I'm dubious on dairy, but I don't think a meal of green things and potato bread is going to keep you optimally healthy. It works for a few people; for many people, it's livable; there are a very few people, like me, who would flatly die (my immune system fails catastrophically within two weeks without animal protein and fat intake, mechanism unknown); and there are a great many people who are healthier with a fair amount of meat and a fair amount of vegetation in their diet, along with some starch for a pad.
Anyway. Most of that was from the Atkins reference. I don't like these fad diets; I just think we shouldn't be stuffed with bread and grain for 1200-1500 calories each day.
False equivalence. Are we hypothetically eliminating the health issues of eating human meat? Consuming human meat is an excellent way to spread prion diseases, which aren't killed by heat treatment.
Sans health concerns, we all know how the desert island scenario plays out: you kill the other castaways and eat them. The dog dies first.
Meat intolerance doesn't occur as a result of not eating meat. There is scientifically no basis for this, and no such thing has been observed. It has been observed that vegans and vegetarians can switch to meat-based diets after several years; it's currently trendy for vegans to take up the Paleo diet, including bison burgers and other red meat, in search of better health. The most common result is an immediate improvement in health.
By contrast, it's well-documented that lack of lactose ingestion often leads to a reduced tolerance for lactose. This happens to lactose intolerant individuals who are asymptomic. The excess lactose is digested by gut flora normally; extended periods without lactose ingestion deprive these bacteria of food, thus diminishing their numbers. When lactose is reintroduced, more of it is fermented by other bacteria, producing gas and associated symptoms; long exposure provides a survival advantage to those gut flora which more directly consume lactose (they derive more energy from it, thus can reproduce more rapidly), eventually diminishing symptoms.
It's also true that food tolerances change throughout life, with no regard to how much you actually eat. You can start off lactose-tolerant and become gradually lactose-intolerant, relying on gut flora as above. Your gut flora aren't identical to everyone else's, and so you may or may not be able to eat lactose anyway; some lactose intolerant people can eat small amounts, some can't eat any, and some can eat so much without symptoms that they're never discovered intolerant.
No, I'm not. "Hipster Vegan" is being Vegan because it's cool and different, and has a small subgroup, and is thus sophisticated; this is a very weak self-image, as the self-image is the differentiation from common culture. "Real Vegan" is the deep self-image, and functions like Catholicism or Orthodox Judaism: its tenants cannot be violated without violating the self. The difference is whether the person in question associates themselves with the subgroup, or whether they associate the subgroup with themselves.
10 years ago we built Firefox to give you a choice. The Web was a monoculture and the only way in was through the company that controlled your operating system.
... 10 years ago, it was 2004. In 1995, the Web was Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. Mozilla built their browser on Netscape Navigator; eventually, Firebird forked from Mozilla Suite, which would then become Mozilla Seamonkey, while Firebird would eventually become Firefox. Meanwhile, Galeon and Konqueror were popular options, eventually overruled by Firefox.
My schools tried to teach me to not hit people. They said to run away if I see someone being beaten viciously by another student. As a sixth grader, I was absolutely certain I knew better than the adults surrounding me. I haven't been convinced otherwise yet.
It is the duty of the strong to protect the weak. If you see somebody being raped or beaten to death, you should render aid. Running away is the exact opposite of what you should do.
Slow radioactive decay is low radiation. Think about the amount of radiation you'd face holding half a kilogram of Cesium-137. Now, think about if its half life were 8 days instead of 30 years. You'd face 30 years of radiation in 8 days.
Probability isn't binary: if the earthquake was 0.001% likely to occur, and they said it was unlikely to occur, it could happen. If, after the swarm, it was still 0.001% likely to occur, then the probability hadn't changed; yet, in 1 out of 1000 cases, it would occur anyway.
In my case, everything my parents ever told me was stupid and harmful. Rejecting their experience with the world has been the most fruitful thing I have ever done.
Here's a tip: if anyone tells you to keep your mouth shut and your head down, they're stupid. This is not how you advance through a career. Being the useless guy in the office who has been forgotten and who nobody notices anymore will get you trapped in a solid, dead-end career.
You're using the "imaginary friends are real because they're in your brain, which is real" argument?
That sounds more like a value statement to me, which would be subjective.
So you're saying that something being absolutely true is a value statement, because... maybe somebody doesn't care about the truth and reality, but would rather follow a nonsensical belief system? This is like saying "trees aren't demons plotting to destroy us" is subjective.
Or keep you from getting sick from eating meat after not doing so for such a long period of time.
I actually know one person who doesn't eat meat because it makes her ill. She has a physical disorder which prevents her from properly digesting meat, causing an anemia. I also know several people who were vegan for years, and then switched back; I used to not drink milk (for 15 years) and was even lactose intolerant at one point--an occurrence which is actually common among people who bluntly swear off milk, unlike meat intolerance.
An intelligent decision?
"Skipping church" was equated to "eating meat" for their respective participants. So you just suggested, in a full reversal of your arguments, that a vegan eating meat would be a vegan making an intelligent decision.
I did, however, explicitly state that psychology and its ilk are soft sciences.
You stated:
You're pointing to soft science to help you out? Please.
Yes, how quaint.
This is a dismissive statement. It has words that says "this is science!", and tone that says, "Air quotes included."
You're think YOU could beat me in a fight? You and what army?... some kids from your TKD class? Please. We both know Tae Kwan Do kids couldn't win a fight with an incontinent house cat.
It turns out that tone in language is a real thing, too.
That's 100% subjective. It all depends on the person's values.
No, it's 100% objective. Your value system is immaterial: it's not real; it's an imaginary thing in your head, with no bearing on THE MATERIAL WORLD. The MATERIAL facts are the realities of the situation: the physical effects of taking these idealistic actions.
Your value system won't change that there is meat here now. Not eating the meat won't magically undo the dead cow in front of you. It will, however, save you from a distressing break from your routine behavior and a forceful re-evaluation of yourself and your behaviors.
It's essentially the same thing as skipping church, if you go to church every week: it won't hurt anyone, but it'll upset you personally.
If the class is boring and the subject matter is something you won't memorize anyway, passing it and continuing can free your time up for better things. I know you like the ideal of a just world, but often times these behaviors are an optimal strategy to get ahead.
Are you kidding? I was a retarded child. I used to remember my early life with embarrassment; now I don't, but I do remember being stupid. There were definitely mistakes made I will not repeat--mistakes of large and small scale, constantly, every minute of every day. There were severe errors in thought and entirely poor actions. Some of the things I significantly hate about people are attributes I have once, often briefly, possessed; many of the symptoms of defective thought I see adults exemplify each day are attributable to myself when I was in third grade or so.
How can you un-retard yourself if you can't remember how retarded you were two or twenty-two years past?
I just argue that you're not a mind-reader and that you should probably stop trying to be a pseudo-psychologist on the Internet who constantly spews forth buzzwords.
No, you're setting up a strawman. The technical term for jargon is not buzzword; it's "domain-specific language". You're also implying mind reading and psychology are the same thing.
You're pointing to soft science to help you out? Please.
As you imply that soft sciences aren't science and aren't real. Here, you dismiss psychology and other "soft sciences" as invalid.
And even the soft scientists don't agree that you can randomly label entire groups as hiveminds where all individuals in said groups are in the groups because of reason X.
I believe the term you want is "arbitrarily", not "randomly". Regardless, application of science is not arbitrary labeling, any more than fuel mileage ratings are arbitrary. In this particular case--in prison, where the food consumed or not consumed will be the food that comes in, and food that is not consumed is wasted--I can argue from a wholly logical perspective to show that what you eat in prison is immaterial. The argument of a moral impetus at best holds no meaning; at worst, food is wasted, and any special accommodations made increase consumption and thus lead to more environmental damage and related harm to fluffy animals and insects.
Given the situation, why would someone continue to refuse eating meat that is available? Why would anyone not casually consume meat and animal products which are available and already prepared at any given function? They could refuse to support the industry by not buying it; but casual actions have a null or negative impact within the supposed moral and ethical system. The only plausible explanation--and the one that lines up with modern psychology--is the one I've given. You can deny it all you want, and still have plenty of friends in the Flat Earth Society.
That's fine. The problem is vegetarians and vegans see themselves as adhering to a moral choice to save the animals, when it's nothing of the sort. If it were, then they wouldn't trade food in prison to make sure that the same food was eaten by other people; they'd recognize that eating the pork chop today is not going to kill another pig, and just eat that.
Eating the pork chop today would shatter their self-image. It's that simple. They would have an identity crisis, which would be uncomfortable.
Frankly, I'm surprised they don't just feed prisoners grain porridge. It'd be cheaper. Meat is where vitamins, fats, and proteins are concentrated; vegetables are where important trace minerals concentrate; and grains are largely just carbohydrate sources (seriously, whole grains have a wide variety of vitamins and minerals... in quantities so low as to be of no dietary significance). It's cheaper to just dump some barley in a pile of warm water, mix it around until it thickens into a soup, and sprinkle in a multivitamin made largely of synthetic mineral salts and vitamins.
If you lost 15 pounds due to malnourishment and other prisoners are not malnourished, you should probably eat a proper diet.
There are tons of studies showing less grain, more meat is better for you. That was also on Slashdot recently.
95% of people who go vegetarian go back due to dramatic reduction in health. 4% are quiet. The remaining 1% are loud, obnoxious assholes who insist you weren't eating the right combination of vegetables, even if you were eating the same ones as they.
How dogmatic is it to not eat the prison food offered in prison?
Slashdot Mirror
I have no idea what this is referring to, as it's not contextually related to anything I said.
Actually, it's a sensible behavior. America taxes 39% to corporations regardless of where they earn profit: an American HQ company pays 39% on everything it sells in China and Japan. In most other developed nations, it's different: a German company selling cars in the US pays taxes to the US on the profits from its US sales, but pays no taxes to Germany on those profits; it does pay German taxes on profits made from selling cars in Germany.
Americans are essentially crying about American companies not wanting to make $10 million selling to Britain, pay Britain $2.5 million in taxes, and then pay America $3.9 million in taxes; instead, these companies want to have a British arm headquarters, make $10 million in Britain, and pay $2.5 million to Britain and NOTHING to America.
Doesn't work that way. In this case, the US wants to tax a US business on income from US business, but also on income from Japanese business. Instead, the US business moves to Ireland, pays 0.027% taxes on Japanese business, and pays the US taxes on business done in the US--but NOT on business done anywhere else in the world
There is a penalty for being an American business.
They're paying what they should be paying.
All business done in the US pays US taxes. That is: if iTunes sells $5 million of songs in the US, Apple pays taxes on $5 million of revenue. Simple enough.
At the same time, any US company which sells something to Japan, Germany, France, Britain, and so on also pays taxes on it. If iTunes sells $50 million of songs in Europe, Apple pays $50 million in taxes to the US.
All Apple has done is moved their iTunes operations under another company headquartered in Germany. When iTunes sells $5 million of songs in the US, Apple pays US taxes on $5 million; but when iTunes sells $50 million of songs in Europe, Apple doesn't pay the US shit.
You may notice that the US is trying to tax businesses for doing business in the US, and also tax US businesses for doing business outside the US. US businesses are simply moving their non-US business outside the US, which is where it is anyway.
Are civil rights theoretical, or do they deserve some sort of societal protection?
I use firefox at work and Chromium at home. I use Firefox because of the tab expose view... which I've stopped using, so I don't know why I still use Firefox. Chromium is better.
The food pyramid was created by the United States Department of Agriculture, not the National Institute of Health.
There's this, as well as 30 or 40 years of studies which suggest similar. As Atkins said, high amounts of starch are probably bad for you; mind you, the Atkins fad diet is ridiculous, and extends these claims to eschewing all starch. Dr. Atkins suggested we shouldn't intake the great majority of our calories from starch, but rather largely from protein and fats.
Hunter-gatherer humans ate foraged fruits and vegetables more than grain. Before agrarian society, finding a potato or a squash was hard; celery, spinach, and similar leafy plants we've likely never heard of are easier to grab at. A fruit tree or a squash vine is fantastic... and quickly picked bare, as well as highly seasonal. Berries are more plentiful.
These considerations lead to some interesting conclusions. Salt is likely harmless up to 6000mg/day, if you have enough potassium--and early man eating little grain, hunted meat, and whatever greenery and berries he got his hands on would have been loaded with potassium. Likewise, as scientific evidence has suggested (not proven, but firmly suggested), early man probably had a high amount of protein in his diet from nuts and hunting. Mexicans still eat grasshoppers; like apes, we would have eaten bugs. Farming probably evolved to grain after cooking, when it was discovered you could smash and grind grain into porridge; the first mass starch introduction was probably tuberous roots or squash.
Such conjectures lead to modern fad diets like the Paleo diet, where people will only eat bison meat and nuts. I prefer to consider these as potentially correlated to a number of things we've seen from scientific studies:
* Fat doesn't make you fat, or cause heart disease (trans-fats possibly, but the evidence is weak)
* Cholesterol intake doesn't correlate strongly to blood cholesterol levels, as over 90% of blood cholesterol is produced in the body
* High protein intake is better than high starch intake
* We're apparently deficient in minerals such as potassium and magnesium
Considering the digestion methods for starch, protein, and fat is more interesting than considering the origins, although they're both interesting. Starch effectively becomes sugar by a long-chain breakdown and a short-chain breakdown: complex chains are broken into small fragments by one enzyme, which are then broken into individual sugar molecules by another enzyme. By contrast, fats undergo lipolysis, while proteins go through a long and complicated process to derive energy.
Energy conversion from sugar isn't readily controlled: it spikes glucose, and then is bound into glycogen by insulin; this is why diabetics are told to avoid sugars and starches, favoring meats and vegetables. We're well aware that too much sugar, starch, and alcohol intake can lead to diabeetus by damaging the body with glucose and insulin spikes, again suggesting that perhaps 50-75% of our diet being starch isn't a good idea.
Even so, the food pyramid does suggest meat and dairy. I'm dubious on dairy, but I don't think a meal of green things and potato bread is going to keep you optimally healthy. It works for a few people; for many people, it's livable; there are a very few people, like me, who would flatly die (my immune system fails catastrophically within two weeks without animal protein and fat intake, mechanism unknown); and there are a great many people who are healthier with a fair amount of meat and a fair amount of vegetation in their diet, along with some starch for a pad.
Anyway. Most of that was from the Atkins reference. I don't like these fad diets; I just think we shouldn't be stuffed with bread and grain for 1200-1500 calories each day.
False equivalence. Are we hypothetically eliminating the health issues of eating human meat? Consuming human meat is an excellent way to spread prion diseases, which aren't killed by heat treatment.
Sans health concerns, we all know how the desert island scenario plays out: you kill the other castaways and eat them. The dog dies first.
Meat intolerance doesn't occur as a result of not eating meat. There is scientifically no basis for this, and no such thing has been observed. It has been observed that vegans and vegetarians can switch to meat-based diets after several years; it's currently trendy for vegans to take up the Paleo diet, including bison burgers and other red meat, in search of better health. The most common result is an immediate improvement in health.
By contrast, it's well-documented that lack of lactose ingestion often leads to a reduced tolerance for lactose. This happens to lactose intolerant individuals who are asymptomic. The excess lactose is digested by gut flora normally; extended periods without lactose ingestion deprive these bacteria of food, thus diminishing their numbers. When lactose is reintroduced, more of it is fermented by other bacteria, producing gas and associated symptoms; long exposure provides a survival advantage to those gut flora which more directly consume lactose (they derive more energy from it, thus can reproduce more rapidly), eventually diminishing symptoms.
It's also true that food tolerances change throughout life, with no regard to how much you actually eat. You can start off lactose-tolerant and become gradually lactose-intolerant, relying on gut flora as above. Your gut flora aren't identical to everyone else's, and so you may or may not be able to eat lactose anyway; some lactose intolerant people can eat small amounts, some can't eat any, and some can eat so much without symptoms that they're never discovered intolerant.
It's quite a complex phenomena.
No, I'm not. "Hipster Vegan" is being Vegan because it's cool and different, and has a small subgroup, and is thus sophisticated; this is a very weak self-image, as the self-image is the differentiation from common culture. "Real Vegan" is the deep self-image, and functions like Catholicism or Orthodox Judaism: its tenants cannot be violated without violating the self. The difference is whether the person in question associates themselves with the subgroup, or whether they associate the subgroup with themselves.
The first paragraph is even better:
10 years ago we built Firefox to give you a choice. The Web was a monoculture and the only way in was through the company that controlled your operating system.
There was no such time as described.
My schools tried to teach me to not hit people. They said to run away if I see someone being beaten viciously by another student. As a sixth grader, I was absolutely certain I knew better than the adults surrounding me. I haven't been convinced otherwise yet.
It is the duty of the strong to protect the weak. If you see somebody being raped or beaten to death, you should render aid. Running away is the exact opposite of what you should do.
Slow radioactive decay is low radiation. Think about the amount of radiation you'd face holding half a kilogram of Cesium-137. Now, think about if its half life were 8 days instead of 30 years. You'd face 30 years of radiation in 8 days.
Probability isn't binary: if the earthquake was 0.001% likely to occur, and they said it was unlikely to occur, it could happen. If, after the swarm, it was still 0.001% likely to occur, then the probability hadn't changed; yet, in 1 out of 1000 cases, it would occur anyway.
The simple truth is it's not a problem. If you did find an effective way to eliminate it, you would have a dystopian world.
In my case, everything my parents ever told me was stupid and harmful. Rejecting their experience with the world has been the most fruitful thing I have ever done.
Here's a tip: if anyone tells you to keep your mouth shut and your head down, they're stupid. This is not how you advance through a career. Being the useless guy in the office who has been forgotten and who nobody notices anymore will get you trapped in a solid, dead-end career.
Your brain is part of the material world.
You're using the "imaginary friends are real because they're in your brain, which is real" argument?
That sounds more like a value statement to me, which would be subjective.
So you're saying that something being absolutely true is a value statement, because... maybe somebody doesn't care about the truth and reality, but would rather follow a nonsensical belief system? This is like saying "trees aren't demons plotting to destroy us" is subjective.
Or keep you from getting sick from eating meat after not doing so for such a long period of time.
I actually know one person who doesn't eat meat because it makes her ill. She has a physical disorder which prevents her from properly digesting meat, causing an anemia. I also know several people who were vegan for years, and then switched back; I used to not drink milk (for 15 years) and was even lactose intolerant at one point--an occurrence which is actually common among people who bluntly swear off milk, unlike meat intolerance.
An intelligent decision?
"Skipping church" was equated to "eating meat" for their respective participants. So you just suggested, in a full reversal of your arguments, that a vegan eating meat would be a vegan making an intelligent decision.
I did, however, explicitly state that psychology and its ilk are soft sciences.
You stated:
You're pointing to soft science to help you out? Please.
Yes, how quaint.
This is a dismissive statement. It has words that says "this is science!", and tone that says, "Air quotes included."
You're think YOU could beat me in a fight? You and what army? ... some kids from your TKD class? Please. We both know Tae Kwan Do kids couldn't win a fight with an incontinent house cat.
It turns out that tone in language is a real thing, too.
That's 100% subjective. It all depends on the person's values.
No, it's 100% objective. Your value system is immaterial: it's not real; it's an imaginary thing in your head, with no bearing on THE MATERIAL WORLD. The MATERIAL facts are the realities of the situation: the physical effects of taking these idealistic actions.
Your value system won't change that there is meat here now. Not eating the meat won't magically undo the dead cow in front of you. It will, however, save you from a distressing break from your routine behavior and a forceful re-evaluation of yourself and your behaviors.
It's essentially the same thing as skipping church, if you go to church every week: it won't hurt anyone, but it'll upset you personally.
If the class is boring and the subject matter is something you won't memorize anyway, passing it and continuing can free your time up for better things. I know you like the ideal of a just world, but often times these behaviors are an optimal strategy to get ahead.
Are you kidding? I was a retarded child. I used to remember my early life with embarrassment; now I don't, but I do remember being stupid. There were definitely mistakes made I will not repeat--mistakes of large and small scale, constantly, every minute of every day. There were severe errors in thought and entirely poor actions. Some of the things I significantly hate about people are attributes I have once, often briefly, possessed; many of the symptoms of defective thought I see adults exemplify each day are attributable to myself when I was in third grade or so.
How can you un-retard yourself if you can't remember how retarded you were two or twenty-two years past?
I just argue that you're not a mind-reader and that you should probably stop trying to be a pseudo-psychologist on the Internet who constantly spews forth buzzwords.
No, you're setting up a strawman. The technical term for jargon is not buzzword; it's "domain-specific language". You're also implying mind reading and psychology are the same thing.
You're pointing to soft science to help you out? Please.
As you imply that soft sciences aren't science and aren't real. Here, you dismiss psychology and other "soft sciences" as invalid.
And even the soft scientists don't agree that you can randomly label entire groups as hiveminds where all individuals in said groups are in the groups because of reason X.
I believe the term you want is "arbitrarily", not "randomly". Regardless, application of science is not arbitrary labeling, any more than fuel mileage ratings are arbitrary. In this particular case--in prison, where the food consumed or not consumed will be the food that comes in, and food that is not consumed is wasted--I can argue from a wholly logical perspective to show that what you eat in prison is immaterial. The argument of a moral impetus at best holds no meaning; at worst, food is wasted, and any special accommodations made increase consumption and thus lead to more environmental damage and related harm to fluffy animals and insects.
Given the situation, why would someone continue to refuse eating meat that is available? Why would anyone not casually consume meat and animal products which are available and already prepared at any given function? They could refuse to support the industry by not buying it; but casual actions have a null or negative impact within the supposed moral and ethical system. The only plausible explanation--and the one that lines up with modern psychology--is the one I've given. You can deny it all you want, and still have plenty of friends in the Flat Earth Society.
That's fine. The problem is vegetarians and vegans see themselves as adhering to a moral choice to save the animals, when it's nothing of the sort. If it were, then they wouldn't trade food in prison to make sure that the same food was eaten by other people; they'd recognize that eating the pork chop today is not going to kill another pig, and just eat that.
Eating the pork chop today would shatter their self-image. It's that simple. They would have an identity crisis, which would be uncomfortable.
I know exactly how you think, because I'm psychic.
Your argument is thus: "Nobody can know how anyone thinks or why they do what they do."
Then, there's the entire field of psychology, and its medical application as psychiatry.
Frankly, I'm surprised they don't just feed prisoners grain porridge. It'd be cheaper. Meat is where vitamins, fats, and proteins are concentrated; vegetables are where important trace minerals concentrate; and grains are largely just carbohydrate sources (seriously, whole grains have a wide variety of vitamins and minerals... in quantities so low as to be of no dietary significance). It's cheaper to just dump some barley in a pile of warm water, mix it around until it thickens into a soup, and sprinkle in a multivitamin made largely of synthetic mineral salts and vitamins.
If you lost 15 pounds due to malnourishment and other prisoners are not malnourished, you should probably eat a proper diet.
There are tons of studies showing less grain, more meat is better for you. That was also on Slashdot recently.
95% of people who go vegetarian go back due to dramatic reduction in health. 4% are quiet. The remaining 1% are loud, obnoxious assholes who insist you weren't eating the right combination of vegetables, even if you were eating the same ones as they.
How dogmatic is it to not eat the prison food offered in prison?