I'm guessing you're referring to white (American?) culture here. There are quite a few social groups I can think of, right here in America even, whose women were never under this spell that tiny butts are sexier.
The 11 year old has a twenty year history of killing innocents,...
Since day one of Hussein's rule of Iraq, he has been killing innocents. The US knew that, of course, yet decided that funding Hussein would be in its interests in terms of ousting the Shah of Iran, which the US had installed in the first place! (Notice the trend yet?) Up until the Kuwait invasion, the US (and THIS VERY ADMINISTRATION) was buddy-buddy with Hussein. Not saying he doesn't need a good smack down, but honestly, who is the US to give it?
"On Tuesday [the day after the sale], CMGI closed at $110.31, up $12.63, or 12.92 percent, with 13,921,400 shares traded. 'It's a great deal for them [CMGI],' says Ullas Naik, analyst with FAC Equities. 'AltaVista is an underappreciated and underused asset. CMGI can leverage that and cross-pollinate it with their existing companies and then they'll probably be able to spin it off as an IPO in six to nine months at a significant premium to what they paid.'"
December 1999, AltaVista files for IPO. (DEC had made plans to have AltaVista go public in 1996, but recanted the following year.)
"[During 2000, chief executive David] Wetherell's CMGI shares fell from a value of $2.1 billion at the beginning of the year to $100 million at year's end, a 95 percent decline."
I wouldn't worry about Google. It's made grown men cry. All over their worthless stocks.
To wrap it up, he suggests the reader should question where Turing, Shannon and von Neumann were wrong. Well, guess what: these were all mathematicians and even though one may question why they studied particular topics, their mathematics isn't and never will be wrong because it's logically sound.
What Jaron is suggesting is that we consider how their approach was wrong.
Rather than riding on the sidewalk, you should probably take the lane when you're worried about getting doored. Most citys don't allow sidewalk cycling, since bicycles are considered street vehicles. You're allowed to "take the lane" when you need it downtown. Helmets are your friend, of course.
... if mutations are truly random, isn't it necessary that they at least have the possibility to recreate a lost pathway, no matter how complex?
Yes, you're right. Here's an excerpt from Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker (via Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea).
"'Dollo's Law' states that evolution is irreversible... [But] There is no reason why general trends in evolution shouldn't be reversed. If there is a trend towards large antlers for a while in evolution, there can easily be a subsequent trend towards smaller antlers again. Dollo's Law is really just a statement about the statistical improbability of following exactly the same evolutionary trajectory twice (or indeed any particular trajectory), in either direction. A single mutational step can easily be reversed. But for larger numbers of mutational steps... the mathematical space of all possible trajectories is so vast that the chance of two trajectories ever arriving at the same point becomes vanishingly small... There is nothing mysterious or mystical about Dollo's Law, nor is it something that we go out and 'test' in nature. It follows simply from the evolutionary laws of probability."
Regarding your second wish, the UPS C/C++/Fortran debugger allows user code insertion at runtime. I don't know about loading pre-written modules in, tho.
It's not only learning that the orangutans have shown here. They also displayed long term memory, the ability to recognize the advantages of their actions (e.g. tools used for opening a fruit husk, arbitrary male displays that attract females). Many creatures do this sort of thing, but it's generally believed to be hard-wired. That behavior varies geographically in orangutans clearly shows that this is evolution on the memetic, software level -- a phenomenon that humans have long believed was our own.
What the orangutans also show is a desire to provide their fellows with these memes (i.e. to teach). That these memes exist, not in terms of individual orangutans, but in terms of *groups* of orangutans, in which individuals come and go, is what makes this a display of culture. In essence, orangutans have meme pools.
Not to mention, even Oppenheimer was the son of German Jewish immigrants, and received his PhD at Göttingen, Germany in 1927 -- during the early rise of the Nazis. Not exactly home-bred.
If the notion that humans are little more than advanced animals is allowed to lodge in the collective political mindshare, then abuses far worse than what the Nazis did will become commonplace.
Huh?
Humans aren't "little more than advanced" animals. We are animals. All of us. Nazis and Jews alike. Might as well face the truth.
Granted, most political leaders still seem to think humans have some special status, handed down by some supernatural power, but you can't just assume that someone who doesn't see a fundamental line between humans and animals is a tyrant! In fact, I've seen just the opposite. People who know that the difference between animals is of degree, not of kind (as Darwin put it), seem to appreciate animals more like humans, rather than humans like animals.
I cannot think of any better way to minimize suffering of animals than to have lab meat become more economical than factory farmed meat. I rather enjoy the taste of meat. My veganism is not rooted in aesthetics, but in ethics.
I am disappointed that so many people have the idea that vegetarians, and vegans especially, are dogmatic in their resistence to meat. To be sure, there is a small but loud subset of veg'ans who are. Many of them are doing it to be cool, and most are young -- usually teenagers (which gives them some leeway, as far as I'm concerned). But it's a minority! My personal opinion is that many anti-animal rights zealots would rather believe that all animal rights activists are loud, abnoxious fundies than actually consider their message. Ironically, I've found that whenever the subject of animal rights comes up in a public forum like this, I quickly find myself on the defensive, having to fend off attacks -- many of them downright malicious -- left and right. And even then, I'm accused of being the in-your-face protester that so many despise. So it goes.
So you agree people keeping pets is morally wrong and that all domesticated animals are better off dead?
The pet issue is grey, for me. I think the pet industry is morally corrupt, and that supporting that industry is morally wrong. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that owning a pet is always bad. I don't have any companion animals, but I have considered rescuing herbivorous animals, and probably will do so when my living situation stabilizes.
As for all domesticated animals being better off dead, of course I don't think that. AFAIK, PETA does support euthenasia of unwanted and feral pets, but they don't just want to kill all domesticated animals. My personal opinion is that domesticated animals would be better off unbred. This would eventually, of course, spell the end for some domestic species, and that's a Good Thing. As a utilitarian, I want to minimize suffering. It is individuals that suffer, not species themselves.
That's the PETA viewpoint...
One need not agree 100% with everything a group does to support the group in general. Mine and PETA's views are not a perfect union, but I applaud the good they do for our shared cause.
... it would be a lot less popular with most people.
From the vitriol of some of these comments, if PETA's goal is to be "popular with most people", they've utterly failed.;)
In my estimation, PETA is out to normalize the population. They're not afraid to come off as a radical group, which is indeed what they are. I look at them sort of like the Malcom X of the animal rights movement.
I've been around animals most of my life in a way that, if PETA had its way, I couldn't have been.
That's a good point. I too grew up in a house of pets, and I probably owe some of the compassion I now have for animals to that time I spent living with them.
But please realize that today there is a severe pet overpopulation problem, and that PETA is actively trying to improve the situation. They're answers aren't perfect, but there are no perfect answers.
Because we are physiologically omnivores and need both animals as well as plants to stay healthy.
This is simply not true. There are all kinds of evidence that shows vegetarian diets can be totally healthy. Also, roughly 5 million (a conservative number) Americans are living healthily on vegetarian diets. As they say, it takes one to know one, and I am one -- I've done the research. I monitor my health closely, and have not found anything to be concerned about in the years that I've been vegan.
Vegetarians in general and vegans in particular need to go through effort to find suitable replacements for the protiens they would be getting otherwise in order to maintain status quo.
Two points here. First, the idea that vegetarians cannot get enough protein -- or that the protein we do get is worse for us than the protein found in meat -- is a myth. In fact, many studies show that the average American diet consists of too much meat protein. This has been linked to osteoperosis, among other things. Secondly, while you are correct in pointing out the vegetarians need to plan their diets wisely in order to get the necessary nutrients, you are wrong to imply that it's an ongoing effort. Once a healthy, balanced diet is established, one need not continue "going through effort" to replace the protein they would otherwise get from meat. It's a one-time deal.
And even then, they usually end up eating more mass of food than a non-vegetarian in order just to keep up.
I've never heard that before. I don't find it to be the case at all.
> Oh yeah, what a horrible life: eat, sleep and for a few, reproduce.
There are plenty of resources out there on the net -- even objective ones -- that show how truly horrendous conditions are for animals on factory farms. I suggest doing some research; you may just be surprised.
So tell me, do you really expect the pig and chicken to survive as species once they are no longer of any use to man?
No.
What is harmful to the individual pig or chicken is beneficial to the species.
But why is preservation of the species important? It is the individuals that have the ability to feel pleasure and pain, not the species itself. As a utilitarian who's goal is the minimization of suffering, individuals are the measuring stick, not species.
Would you, as an individual, volunteer to live indoors, in a 5x5 cage for the rest of your life, which will be shortened by a bolt to the head while taking a ride on a conveyer belt, because it is "beneficial to the species"?
> Cool! Then we can just line up all those filthy, disease carrying, smelly beasts and shoot them all.
And then we'll shoot their livestock!
But seriously, it's going to be a gradual drift. Factory farmed animals' life spans are short. It's not like, one day they'll wake up to find that the world's eating lab meat, and they're going to be set free. In general, those that are bred, are slaughtered.
As a vegan and supporter of PETA, let me say that I am enthusiastic about this type of research. I would have no problem eating lab meat myself, and I will be thrilled when this becomes the most economical way to produce meat. In fact, I can't think of a better way for PETA to win its fight.
When the time comes that this is the most economical way to produce meat, farm animals will no longer live the horrible lives that billions are living right now. That will be VERY sweet indeed.
Slashdot Mirror
/. Everyone's favorite armchair.
--- If it's worth doing, it's worth doing in Perl!
:-)
Like implementing a Ruby or Python interpreter?
I'm guessing you're referring to white (American?) culture here. There are quite a few social groups I can think of, right here in America even, whose women were never under this spell that tiny butts are sexier.
The first notice (June 16) revoked IBM's license for AIX. This one revokes Sequent-IBM's license for "Dynix/ptx."
I think the word "final" in the headline is just part of the legalese, and does not imply that the previous revocation was in any way not final.
The 11 year old has a twenty year history of killing innocents, ...
Since day one of Hussein's rule of Iraq, he has been killing innocents. The US knew that, of course, yet decided that funding Hussein would be in its interests in terms of ousting the Shah of Iran, which the US had installed in the first place! (Notice the trend yet?) Up until the Kuwait invasion, the US (and THIS VERY ADMINISTRATION) was buddy-buddy with Hussein. Not saying he doesn't need a good smack down, but honestly, who is the US to give it?
June 1999: CMGI buys AltaVista from Compaq for $2.3 billion in stocks.
"On Tuesday [the day after the sale], CMGI closed at $110.31, up $12.63, or 12.92 percent, with 13,921,400 shares traded.
'It's a great deal for them [CMGI],' says Ullas Naik, analyst with FAC Equities. 'AltaVista is an underappreciated and underused asset. CMGI can leverage that and cross-pollinate it with their existing companies and then they'll probably be able to spin it off as an IPO in six to nine months at a significant premium to what they paid.'"
December 1999, AltaVista files for IPO. (DEC had made plans to have AltaVista go public in 1996, but recanted the following year.)
April 2000: IPO delayed.
"CMGI was enjoying a midday bounce of nearly 6 percent to $55.13 [half of what it was not one year before, mind you]."
January 2001: IPO withdrawn.
"[During 2000, chief executive David] Wetherell's CMGI shares fell from a value of $2.1 billion at the beginning of the year to $100 million at year's end, a 95 percent decline."
I wouldn't worry about Google. It's made grown men cry. All over their worthless stocks.
To wrap it up, he suggests the reader should question where Turing, Shannon and von Neumann were wrong. Well, guess what: these were all mathematicians and even though one may question why they studied particular topics, their mathematics isn't and never will be wrong because it's logically sound.
What Jaron is suggesting is that we consider how their approach was wrong.
Hell, half the cyclists I see on the sidewalks *are* the cops.
Rather than riding on the sidewalk, you should probably take the lane when you're worried about getting doored. Most citys don't allow sidewalk cycling, since bicycles are considered street vehicles. You're allowed to "take the lane" when you need it downtown. Helmets are your friend, of course.
Oops. That should end "elementary laws of probability".
... if mutations are truly random, isn't it necessary that they at least have the possibility to recreate a lost pathway, no matter how complex?
Yes, you're right. Here's an excerpt from Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker (via Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea).
"'Dollo's Law' states that evolution is irreversible... [But] There is no reason why general trends in evolution shouldn't be reversed. If there is a trend towards large antlers for a while in evolution, there can easily be a subsequent trend towards smaller antlers again. Dollo's Law is really just a statement about the statistical improbability of following exactly the same evolutionary trajectory twice (or indeed any particular trajectory), in either direction. A single mutational step can easily be reversed. But for larger numbers of mutational steps... the mathematical space of all possible trajectories is so vast that the chance of two trajectories ever arriving at the same point becomes vanishingly small... There is nothing mysterious or mystical about Dollo's Law, nor is it something that we go out and 'test' in nature. It follows simply from the evolutionary laws of probability."
Regarding your second wish, the UPS C/C++/Fortran debugger allows user code insertion at runtime. I don't know about loading pre-written modules in, tho.
http://www.concerto.demon.co.uk/UPS/
It's my favorite.
See .sig.
It's not only learning that the orangutans have shown here. They also displayed long term memory, the ability to recognize the advantages of their actions (e.g. tools used for opening a fruit husk, arbitrary male displays that attract females). Many creatures do this sort of thing, but it's generally believed to be hard-wired. That behavior varies geographically in orangutans clearly shows that this is evolution on the memetic, software level -- a phenomenon that humans have long believed was our own.
What the orangutans also show is a desire to provide their fellows with these memes (i.e. to teach). That these memes exist, not in terms of individual orangutans, but in terms of *groups* of orangutans, in which individuals come and go, is what makes this a display of culture. In essence, orangutans have meme pools.
Not to mention, even Oppenheimer was the son of German Jewish immigrants, and received his PhD at Göttingen, Germany in 1927 -- during the early rise of the Nazis. Not exactly home-bred.
If the notion that humans are little more than advanced animals is allowed to lodge in the collective political mindshare, then abuses far worse than what the Nazis did will become commonplace.
Huh?
Humans aren't "little more than advanced" animals. We are animals. All of us. Nazis and Jews alike. Might as well face the truth.
Granted, most political leaders still seem to think humans have some special status, handed down by some supernatural power, but you can't just assume that someone who doesn't see a fundamental line between humans and animals is a tyrant! In fact, I've seen just the opposite. People who know that the difference between animals is of degree, not of kind (as Darwin put it), seem to appreciate animals more like humans, rather than humans like animals.
There is not a single clinical study that demonstrates a link between increased red meat consumption and increased heart disease.
You may find these studies interesting.
Mortality in vegetarians and nonvegetarians: detailed findings from a collaborative analysis of 5 prospective studies
Associations between diet and cancer, ischemic heart disease, and all-cause mortality in non-Hispanic white California Seventh-day Adventists
Prospective study of major dietary patterns and risk of coronary heart disease in men
(Links are abstracts, with full texts linked within)
I cannot think of any better way to minimize suffering of animals than to have lab meat become more economical than factory farmed meat. I rather enjoy the taste of meat. My veganism is not rooted in aesthetics, but in ethics.
I am disappointed that so many people have the idea that vegetarians, and vegans especially, are dogmatic in their resistence to meat. To be sure, there is a small but loud subset of veg'ans who are. Many of them are doing it to be cool, and most are young -- usually teenagers (which gives them some leeway, as far as I'm concerned). But it's a minority! My personal opinion is that many anti-animal rights zealots would rather believe that all animal rights activists are loud, abnoxious fundies than actually consider their message. Ironically, I've found that whenever the subject of animal rights comes up in a public forum like this, I quickly find myself on the defensive, having to fend off attacks -- many of them downright malicious -- left and right. And even then, I'm accused of being the in-your-face protester that so many despise. So it goes.
So you agree people keeping pets is morally wrong and that all domesticated animals are better off dead?
...
... it would be a lot less popular with most people.
;)
The pet issue is grey, for me. I think the pet industry is morally corrupt, and that supporting that industry is morally wrong. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that owning a pet is always bad. I don't have any companion animals, but I have considered rescuing herbivorous animals, and probably will do so when my living situation stabilizes.
As for all domesticated animals being better off dead, of course I don't think that. AFAIK, PETA does support euthenasia of unwanted and feral pets, but they don't just want to kill all domesticated animals.
My personal opinion is that domesticated animals would be better off unbred. This would eventually, of course, spell the end for some domestic species, and that's a Good Thing. As a utilitarian, I want to minimize suffering. It is individuals that suffer, not species themselves.
That's the PETA viewpoint
One need not agree 100% with everything a group does to support the group in general. Mine and PETA's views are not a perfect union, but I applaud the good they do for our shared cause.
From the vitriol of some of these comments, if PETA's goal is to be "popular with most people", they've utterly failed.
In my estimation, PETA is out to normalize the population. They're not afraid to come off as a radical group, which is indeed what they are. I look at them sort of like the Malcom X of the animal rights movement.
I've been around animals most of my life in a way that, if PETA had its way, I couldn't have been.
That's a good point. I too grew up in a house of pets, and I probably owe some of the compassion I now have for animals to that time I spent living with them.
But please realize that today there is a severe pet overpopulation problem, and that PETA is actively trying to improve the situation. They're answers aren't perfect, but there are no perfect answers.
Because we are physiologically omnivores and need both animals as well as plants to stay healthy.
This is simply not true. There are all kinds of evidence that shows vegetarian diets can be totally healthy. Also, roughly 5 million (a conservative number) Americans are living healthily on vegetarian diets. As they say, it takes one to know one, and I am one -- I've done the research. I monitor my health closely, and have not found anything to be concerned about in the years that I've been vegan.
Vegetarians in general and vegans in particular need to go through effort to find suitable replacements for the protiens they would be getting otherwise in order to maintain status quo.
Two points here. First, the idea that vegetarians cannot get enough protein -- or that the protein we do get is worse for us than the protein found in meat -- is a myth. In fact, many studies show that the average American diet consists of too much meat protein. This has been linked to osteoperosis, among other things.
Secondly, while you are correct in pointing out the vegetarians need to plan their diets wisely in order to get the necessary nutrients, you are wrong to imply that it's an ongoing effort. Once a healthy, balanced diet is established, one need not continue "going through effort" to replace the protein they would otherwise get from meat. It's a one-time deal.
And even then, they usually end up eating more mass of food than a non-vegetarian in order just to keep up.
I've never heard that before. I don't find it to be the case at all.
> Oh yeah, what a horrible life: eat, sleep and for a few, reproduce.
There are plenty of resources out there on the net -- even objective ones -- that show how truly horrendous conditions are for animals on factory farms. I suggest doing some research; you may just be surprised.
http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan
> they were born to die and become food.
Please! Black slaves were born to work in the fields for their white owners too, but that don't make it right.
So tell me, do you really expect the pig and chicken to survive as species once they are no longer of any use to man?
No.
What is harmful to the individual pig or chicken is beneficial to the species.
But why is preservation of the species important? It is the individuals that have the ability to feel pleasure and pain, not the species itself. As a utilitarian who's goal is the minimization of suffering, individuals are the measuring stick, not species.
Would you, as an individual, volunteer to live indoors, in a 5x5 cage for the rest of your life, which will be shortened by a bolt to the head while taking a ride on a conveyer belt, because it is "beneficial to the species"?
> Cool! Then we can just line up all those filthy, disease carrying, smelly beasts and shoot them all.
And then we'll shoot their livestock!
But seriously, it's going to be a gradual drift. Factory farmed animals' life spans are short. It's not like, one day they'll wake up to find that the world's eating lab meat, and they're going to be set free. In general, those that are bred, are slaughtered.
As a vegan and supporter of PETA, let me say that I am enthusiastic about this type of research. I would have no problem eating lab meat myself, and I will be thrilled when this becomes the most economical way to produce meat. In fact, I can't think of a better way for PETA to win its fight.
When the time comes that this is the most economical way to produce meat, farm animals will no longer live the horrible lives that billions are living right now. That will be VERY sweet indeed.