Farmers in the desert use about 20 times as much water as California urbanites.
Agriculture in the southwest (i.e. in the desert) is being killed by the lack of rainfall, which seems to have caught everyone by surprise. They're idiots first, farmers second.
Lots of valid points. I can't say I disagree, on a personal level.
However, my original point was intended to reflect upon the true goals of [Neo-Classical] Libertarianism. There are those who accuse Libertarians of wanting a small government (or no government) as their stated goal. There are those who defend Libertarianism as a philosophy of maximizing individual liberty. These are two orthogonal concepts, at best tangentially correlated.
Individual liberty is a potentially confusing expression, I suppose. It all depends on which individual we're looking at, no? In the scenario I set forth, it's evident that ten people would lose all individual liberty, to the absurd extreme. However, hundreds of millions of others would each gain a moderate amount of individual liberty. I'm not talking about promoting a healthy society with minimal stratification of wealth; I'm talking about individual liberty. The kind of liberty that let's some person buy a new pair of shoes, or to fix their car, or to relocate to a different part of the country. For many people, insufficient financial resources are a very real impediment to exercising their "freedom" to do these things.
I'm not trying to digress into a discussion of the very real problems you mention. Indeed, even the most well-intentioned laws and regulations are often (if not always) coopted and abused (by the wealthy and the poor alike). However, this has more to do with the big government vs small government side of the Libertarianism debate. I'm more concerned with the maximize individual liberty side of the debate. In the hypothetical scenario I set forth, it is clear that the only way an answer could exist is if there is an objective way to quantify liberty. That is, if the ten dead rich people lost X liberty, and that the remaining hundreds of millions of people that inherited the redistributed wealth gained Y liberty, it could be shown to be true that such a policy would be in line with Libertarian ideology if Y>X. Of course, I don't know of a way to objectively quantify liberty like this, and consequently I was posing the question to someone that I inferred was a Libertarian himself.
Personally, I believe that beyond a certain point, wealth doesn't increase individual liberty too much. Whether you have $1B or $10B, there aren't many things that you can't do solely due to insufficient funds. Of course if you had $10T you could personally fund the construction of a lunar space elevator or something like that, and of course there are always things that cost more than $X for any value of X. However, based on my personal opinion alone, I don't believe it's lack of money that's stopping people from attempting these projects. For example, what has Bill Gates done with his vast personal fortune that could not have been done with a bank account one tenth the size? What $70B program is he funding with his wealth? Hell, what $7B program is he funding with his wealth? Of course, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation could have been formed with much less; there was no minimum dollar amount that needed to be met.
On the other hand, I believe that below a certain point, wealth (or lack thereof) does significantly limit individual liberty. We live in a great country that affords us countless freedoms (or used to, at least, but that's another rant entirely). However, these freedoms are de facto unavailable to a very large portion of the population. We have the freedom of movement, but many people cannot afford to travel, let alone relocate. We have the freedom of speech, but many people cannot afford to make themselves heard. Below a certain level of wealth, it really does seem that poverty is the great destroyer of freedom. Of individual freedom, for many, many individuals.
I understand that it's not the prerogative of our government to ensure that everyone has the means to exercise their rights, merely that our government does not itself trample upon them. However, we're not talking about our government, we're talking abo
So, you're saying that it is not true that the goal of Neo-Classical Libertarianism is to maximize individual liberty?
Regarding your other points...
1) Notice the word "if" at the start of my post. In this context, it's to set forth the premise of a hypothetical situation. For the purposes of this discussion, it is assumed true, regardless of whether or not it is true outside of this hypothetical situation.
2) Indeed. So allowing the wealthy to retain their wealth (and their lives), a good thing, does not cancel out the deprivation of economic liberty consequently inflicted on the poor, a bad thing, right? Or is that principle unidirectional?
3) I pointed this out myself, but thank you for demonstrating your reading comprehension.
4) ECHO, Echo, echo,...
They're also trying to get money out of politics, and they're making good progress. If you're a supported of Lessig is doing, you'll probably be a fan of WOLF-PAC's work. If you have money, give it to Lessig. If you have time, give it to WOLF-PAC. We need as many open fronts as possible in this war.
Earnest question: if the primary restrictions on an individual's freedom are a direct result of economic circumstances (read: being poor), are laws that promote an equitable distribution of wealth compatible with Neo-Classical Libertarianism?
For example, killing and redistributing the wealth of the ten richest Americans would yield roughly $1000 per American. This would be a dramatic decrease in freedom for ten individuals (perhaps an understatement), but a modest increase in freedom for hundreds of millions of other individuals. How would such a policy be seen in the context of your preferred flavor of Libertarianism?
In the past, my goal has been to make as close to 100% of my sauce from scratch (right down to growing my own veggies and herbs), so I've been using carrots (while I've considered growing sugar beets, I don't know how hard it is to refine the sugar from them) as the primary sweetener in my sauces to great effect. It seems like they also act as an emulsifier, which is incredibly useful when starting with fresh tomatoes, less so with canned.
And no, by the literature, I mean the interwebs (recipes, cooking blogs, etc.). Great way of making oneself not sound as stupid:P
My girlfriend and I recently made a "quick" sauce from canned tomato (don't remember what brand off-hand). It still feels wrong to me to make a sauce in less than one day, let alone 3 hours, but I'll just say that it was really delicious. I can see why people would argue in favor of canned tomatoes, laziness aside.
Honestly, I haven't really had an opportunity to taste them all yet. I'm so set on switching to canned tomatoes because of an overwhelming tendency in the literature to promote this approach. Most sauce recipes start with canned tomatoes, and most explanations for why this is the case tend to focus on flavor. That being said, the ones I have tried have all been surprisingly good. I'm just nowhere near deciding which is my favorite. I don't think I've seen S&W over here (NJ), but we do get quite a variety of canned tomatoes imported from Italy that are pretty delicious.
I'm an American that just got back from a vacation in Japan. On my trip, I saw maybe 3 overweight people, one of who was actually pretty damn fat. It really didn't hit me until I was back home, waiting to get through immigration and customs: Holy Fuck Americans Are Fat.
Anyway, while I was out there, I ran into a half-American/half-Japanese expat, and we're bullshitting about various subjects, including for some reason fatness. Her claim was "you just gotta stay away from that rice!", but, well, I don't buy it. You see, I once [accidentally] gained 30 lbs in one month just by eating at Outback for dinner every day. There was no rice in my diet at all, yet I was gaining weight faster than a sumo wrestler.
See, in Japan, food like that just doesn't exist. Of course you can "eat anything you want" in Japan without gaining weight; "anything you want" consists primarily of plain (or vinegared) white rice, pickled vegetables, and raw or roasted fish. Sure, there's tempura and beef and other higher-calorie foods, but they pale in comparison to what you can find in the States. A Bloomin' Onion from Outback (an appetizer), has 1950 Calories. That's just one appetizer for one meal, and it's got your entire day's worth of calories in there. It would take 9 hours of walking to burn those off. Or 5 hours biking. I challenge you to find me a tempura shop anywhere in Japan that has an appetizer with 1950 Calories.
You may argue that nobody eats a whole Bloomin' Onion by themselves (well, I have), but I'd counter by pointing out that the Bloomin' Onion is not an anomaly. All of our food is like that. Ruby Tuesdays used to have a Colossal Burger entree that had 150g fat. That's over a quarter pound of fat alone. Granted, I'm guessing that included the fat in the french fries it was served with, but still. Add on a few beers, maybe dessert, and before you know it, you've supersized yourself.
Sure, there are people with a broken metabolism that can eat anything they want without getting fat. It's physically possible to not metabolize food, to pass lots of the caloric value right through. The converse, however, is physically impossible. If you eat fewer calories than you burn, it's not possible for you to gain weight. There's no known medical condition which causes you to extract more calories from food than it inherently contains. There's no known medical condition which allows you to do work without burning calories. Quite simply, if you're fat, you're eating more than you're burning. And if you live in the USA, it's probably because the food you eat is unimaginably high in calories.
I lost a quarter of my body weight by eating less and exercising more. If you're trying to lose weight, I suggest a similar approach. Take a close look at your diet and you'll be horrified by how calorie-rich some of your favorite foods are. I couldn't (and still can't) believe a single deep fried onion could be just shy of 2000 Calories. I'm not saying "it worked for me, so it will work for anyone". I'm saying "the known laws of physics apply to everyone".
Calories, a measure of energy, are conserved. This is slashdot.
If you eat (and metabolize) 3000 calories, and you only use 2000 calories, you're not just going to shit out 1000 calories. No matter how many bunless cheeseburgers you eat.
Different foods are metabolized differently. You're not getting much caloric intake from insoluble fiber if it's not getting metabolized. Similarly, it's unlikely that any portion of your refined sugar intake isn't getting metabolized; those calories all count. Eating certain things might actually boost your metabolism, while eating others may lower it. To complicate things, certain foods may only alter part of your metabolism, speeding or slowing the absorption of certain forms of energy-bearing compounds. Eating certain things might make you too lazy to get off your ass, while eating others may have you running around madly. There's many variables, many factors. There is one thing that doesn't change, though. Energy is conserved.
The Atkins diet isn't magic. If you eat and metabolize 3000 calories of bunless cheeseburgers every day, and only burn off 2000 calories, you're still going to gain weight. It doesn't matter that you didn't have a single calorie from carbohydrates. If you're suggesting that the Atkins diet prevents you from metabolizing the bunless cheeseburgers you're eating, I'd like to see some evidence of that claim. If you're suggesting that the Atkins diet causes you to increase your activity levels and your calorie burn rate, I'd like to see some evidence of that claim. If you're suggesting neither, then I ask that you accept that the Atkins diet is no more or less effective for weight management than any other fad diet.
(Disclaimer: lost 25% of my body weight in two years by decreasing consumed calories and increasing burned calories; i.e. eat less, exercise more; i.e. the only diet plan that's consistent with the known laws of physics)
An apple shipped to Florida from Washington was bred specifically to make that transportation possible. Flavor and texture took a back seat to physical toughness, because a delicious apple is still worthless if it's squashed before it gets to your mouth. Of course, that same apple is just as disgusting back in Washington; it's the genes that make it crappy, not the transportation itself. However, you might be able to find other apples in Washington that are bred to be delicious but are unsuitable for long-haul transportation. You won't find these apples in Florida, because they would never survive the trip. That's why some people are into locally grown produce (for foodie reasons, not environmental ones). Not because it's inherently better, not because transportation somehow makes food taste bad.
I love American-style Italian food. Give me some cheese, tomato sauce, and pasta and I'm in heaven. When I cook, I've been known to go overboard more often than not. I have barely any 10-minute or 30-minute recipes, but a handful of 8-hour or 3-day recipes. I enjoy cooking as a hobby, so when I have time, I like to have fun and strive for perfection. While I've made my own cheeses and my own pasta from scratch, I've spent the last decade focusing on tomato sauce.
If you're a tomato lover, you may have noticed that a majority of tomatoes you see at the supermarket taste like nothing. They have a vague hint of tomato flavor, but they're not exactly something you'd want to sink your teeth into. Some varieties are better than others, particularly the campari which seems to be growing in popularity. In any case, most of these tomatoes are still garbage. Over the last decade or so, I've been growing my own tomatoes for making sauce; it seems that any variety that I choose for the garden has significantly more flavor than what you can buy in stores. I also visit local farms during peak tomato season and find their products are generally much better than what you find in stores as well. Well, why is it that when I grow a tomato it's fine, when someone near by grows a tomato it's fine, but when someone on the other side of the country (or world) grows a tomato, it's garbage?
Selective breeding. Crops are bred for certain desirable traits. One guy may be breeding tomatoes that are as sweet as possible. From each successive generation, he replants seeds from the sweetest tomatoes of the current generation. Eventually, he has very sweet tomatoes. Another guy may be breeding tomatoes that are most resistant to bruising (for less waste during long-haul transportation). From each successive generation, he replants seeds from the hardiest tomatoes of the current generation. Eventually, he has bulletproof tomatoes. Of course, by selecting for one trait, you're necessarily not selecting for other traits. The sweet tomato isn't likely to hold up well for long trips, and the hardy tomato isn't likely to be very sweet. Of course, it's possible (in theory at least) for a tomato to be both sweet and hardy, but breeding it will be more difficult and will take more time. Sure, people are shooting for the perfect tomato, one that is both sweet and capable of being trucked around the world, but perfection is a lofty goal, and instead we have some breeds that are better for transportation and others that are better for eating.
My next batch of sauce will not be made from tomatoes I grew myself. It won't be from locally-grown tomatoes either. It will be from canned tomatoes. Peeled canned tomatoes. You see, when you're growing tomatoes that are just going to be canned anyway, you don't need to worry about how pretty they look, or how well they hold up during transport. You can focus on flavor and flavor alone. Over the years, I've discovered that canned tomatoes can taste really, really amazing. Better than anything I've grown, better than anything I've bought at a farm. I'd imagine these tomatoes destined for the cannery look unsightly and break at the slightest bump. The breeders have the luxury of ignoring c
Actually no. Food and Water are Needs and are essential. The Internet, Phones, Game Console etc are Wants and are not essential for survival.
Internet is "essential to a modern economy", which is what TFS is talking about.
You're the one that's bringing in some other arbitrary criteria, "essential for survival". I say arbitrary because what's so special about survival? Food and water may be essential for survival, but they're not essential in the general sense. The universe would continue to exist if there were no food and water and we all died. Thus, food and water aren't essential either.
I'm not sure why you're telling me all of this. If you look back on this thread, you notice that I'm not the one that brought her up, nor am I saying that she's deserving of any more respect than anyone else. I'm merely pointing out that making fun of an arbitrary person for their [past] addiction problems makes one an ass. I think referring to her as wreckage is indisputably being "rude". Additionally, I think alleging that she lacked mental stability for "decades" based solely on three moments of televised [intoxicated] hysteria is both rude and unreasonable.
I also find it sad that slashdot is collectively laughing at her (5, Funny; really?) but overall dismissing my argument that it's not right to kick someone when they're down or to mock those who fall prey to addiction. You're not the first person to take issue with my posts in this thread, but I have yet to see someone else chime in to defend general decency.
Let me break it down for you. Uneventful footage of Courtney Love (or anyone else that's not doing anything noteworthy) doesn't make for good television programming, and is therefore unlikely to be aired. It is more logical to assume that all public displays of hysteria on Courtney's part were broadcast, and that any part of her life that wasn't on TV was either not public or not hysterical. Since she was living a public life during the majority of that time period, and the celebrity-chasing subset of the media was not taking a sabbatical, the logical assumption is that her life during this period was for the most part rather normal and uneventful.
That being said, let's say you're right and that she's indeed suffering from some debilitating mental illness. Does that mean we should all line up to take turns laughing at her? Is that the society we should be striving to build?
If you honestly think video of Courtney that makes it to MTV constitutes a random sample of her life, you're either terrible at statistics or ignorant of how television programming works.
That's a question that only you can answer for yourself.
Personally, I care about Courtney Love because she's a human being, to the same extent that I care about other human beings. That's why I don't arbitrarily single her out as the butt of jokes, and take offense when others do.
I suppose that since her music sold a few albums and she married a famous musician, you don't think she's worthy of the same respect that you'd offer any other person in this world? That a handful of her widely publicized intoxicated outbursts entitle the rest of us to belittle her for the remainder of her life? That it's best for us all to dwell on the youthful indiscretions of others instead of recognizing the potential for people to grow up as they grow old?
Yes, decades, five minutes at a time. Exaggerate much? Let's see, there's five minutes of Courtney throwing a shoe at Madonna, another five minutes of her on Letterman, another five minutes of her at Pam's roast... but you might find it challenging to find 87600 hours of Courney footage that portrays her in a questionable mental state.
Perhaps other celebrity train wrecks have prevented you from keeping up with Courtney. She's actually doing fine, having overcome her addiction problems and stayed clean since 2007. I understand it can be quite satisfying for some people to make fun of drug addiction, or to single out and shame individuals based on harmless yet abnormal or deviant behavior. I just expect more from the slashdot crowd.
Conventional dealerships are used by many buyers as a trusted service base
lolwat? You mean those places that have unreasonably high hourly labor rates and absolutely refuse to use third party components in lieu of OEM components which cost twice as much? Trusted service base? On what planet?
When I was younger, several of my close friends worked at a local Nissan dealership. They told me horror stories about people bringing in their cars for basic scheduled service. You go in for an oil change, they splash some oil on a new oil filter and throw it in the garbage. That's your "oil change", and there goes your "used oil filter". This wasn't their idea, it was established practice at this particular dealership, sanctioned by their superiors. I wouldn't trust a dealership's service department with shit.
hell I've got technology to grow some plants without any light at all (very useful for the cattle/sheep ranchers) with a 99% reduction in water requirements.
Do you call this technology Farmville?
How do you reduce water requirements by 99% and still grow a plant? Since plants are made mostly of water, wouldn't there be an upper bound on water requirement reduction that's nowhere near 99%? Otherwise, what is the plant made of? Do plants really lose >99% of uptaken water to respiration, etc.?
Which is especially strange since I'm a socialist liberal living in an apartment in New Jersey. I first subscribed as a joke, but it turns out that this is probably the last magazine I'll stop subscribing to. Great insight into a lifestyle that isn't available to me.
Other great periodicals that I don't see people mentioning include Wine Spectator (I don't really drink wine, or at least not any that costs more than $5/bottle), Outside magazine (I spend most of my life in a cubicle or a car), Powder magazine (skiing the east coast, the only time you see powder is in photographs).
Perhaps my taste in magazines has more to do with escapism than anything else?
Slashdot Mirror
Farmers in the desert use about 20 times as much water as California urbanites.
Agriculture in the southwest (i.e. in the desert) is being killed by the lack of rainfall, which seems to have caught everyone by surprise. They're idiots first, farmers second.
If i track my phone with GPS to a local high school, yeah ill go to the school and have the principal confront him
This is what happens, Larry! This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass!
Lots of valid points. I can't say I disagree, on a personal level.
However, my original point was intended to reflect upon the true goals of [Neo-Classical] Libertarianism. There are those who accuse Libertarians of wanting a small government (or no government) as their stated goal. There are those who defend Libertarianism as a philosophy of maximizing individual liberty. These are two orthogonal concepts, at best tangentially correlated.
Individual liberty is a potentially confusing expression, I suppose. It all depends on which individual we're looking at, no? In the scenario I set forth, it's evident that ten people would lose all individual liberty, to the absurd extreme. However, hundreds of millions of others would each gain a moderate amount of individual liberty. I'm not talking about promoting a healthy society with minimal stratification of wealth; I'm talking about individual liberty. The kind of liberty that let's some person buy a new pair of shoes, or to fix their car, or to relocate to a different part of the country. For many people, insufficient financial resources are a very real impediment to exercising their "freedom" to do these things.
I'm not trying to digress into a discussion of the very real problems you mention. Indeed, even the most well-intentioned laws and regulations are often (if not always) coopted and abused (by the wealthy and the poor alike). However, this has more to do with the big government vs small government side of the Libertarianism debate. I'm more concerned with the maximize individual liberty side of the debate. In the hypothetical scenario I set forth, it is clear that the only way an answer could exist is if there is an objective way to quantify liberty. That is, if the ten dead rich people lost X liberty, and that the remaining hundreds of millions of people that inherited the redistributed wealth gained Y liberty, it could be shown to be true that such a policy would be in line with Libertarian ideology if Y>X. Of course, I don't know of a way to objectively quantify liberty like this, and consequently I was posing the question to someone that I inferred was a Libertarian himself.
Personally, I believe that beyond a certain point, wealth doesn't increase individual liberty too much. Whether you have $1B or $10B, there aren't many things that you can't do solely due to insufficient funds. Of course if you had $10T you could personally fund the construction of a lunar space elevator or something like that, and of course there are always things that cost more than $X for any value of X. However, based on my personal opinion alone, I don't believe it's lack of money that's stopping people from attempting these projects. For example, what has Bill Gates done with his vast personal fortune that could not have been done with a bank account one tenth the size? What $70B program is he funding with his wealth? Hell, what $7B program is he funding with his wealth? Of course, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation could have been formed with much less; there was no minimum dollar amount that needed to be met.
On the other hand, I believe that below a certain point, wealth (or lack thereof) does significantly limit individual liberty. We live in a great country that affords us countless freedoms (or used to, at least, but that's another rant entirely). However, these freedoms are de facto unavailable to a very large portion of the population. We have the freedom of movement, but many people cannot afford to travel, let alone relocate. We have the freedom of speech, but many people cannot afford to make themselves heard. Below a certain level of wealth, it really does seem that poverty is the great destroyer of freedom. Of individual freedom, for many, many individuals.
I understand that it's not the prerogative of our government to ensure that everyone has the means to exercise their rights, merely that our government does not itself trample upon them. However, we're not talking about our government, we're talking abo
So, you're saying that it is not true that the goal of Neo-Classical Libertarianism is to maximize individual liberty?
...
Regarding your other points...
1) Notice the word "if" at the start of my post. In this context, it's to set forth the premise of a hypothetical situation. For the purposes of this discussion, it is assumed true, regardless of whether or not it is true outside of this hypothetical situation.
2) Indeed. So allowing the wealthy to retain their wealth (and their lives), a good thing, does not cancel out the deprivation of economic liberty consequently inflicted on the poor, a bad thing, right? Or is that principle unidirectional?
3) I pointed this out myself, but thank you for demonstrating your reading comprehension.
4) ECHO, Echo, echo,
There's also WOLF-PAC.
They're also trying to get money out of politics, and they're making good progress. If you're a supported of Lessig is doing, you'll probably be a fan of WOLF-PAC's work. If you have money, give it to Lessig. If you have time, give it to WOLF-PAC. We need as many open fronts as possible in this war.
Earnest question: if the primary restrictions on an individual's freedom are a direct result of economic circumstances (read: being poor), are laws that promote an equitable distribution of wealth compatible with Neo-Classical Libertarianism?
For example, killing and redistributing the wealth of the ten richest Americans would yield roughly $1000 per American. This would be a dramatic decrease in freedom for ten individuals (perhaps an understatement), but a modest increase in freedom for hundreds of millions of other individuals. How would such a policy be seen in the context of your preferred flavor of Libertarianism?
In the past, my goal has been to make as close to 100% of my sauce from scratch (right down to growing my own veggies and herbs), so I've been using carrots (while I've considered growing sugar beets, I don't know how hard it is to refine the sugar from them) as the primary sweetener in my sauces to great effect. It seems like they also act as an emulsifier, which is incredibly useful when starting with fresh tomatoes, less so with canned.
:P
And no, by the literature, I mean the interwebs (recipes, cooking blogs, etc.). Great way of making oneself not sound as stupid
My girlfriend and I recently made a "quick" sauce from canned tomato (don't remember what brand off-hand). It still feels wrong to me to make a sauce in less than one day, let alone 3 hours, but I'll just say that it was really delicious. I can see why people would argue in favor of canned tomatoes, laziness aside.
Honestly, I haven't really had an opportunity to taste them all yet. I'm so set on switching to canned tomatoes because of an overwhelming tendency in the literature to promote this approach. Most sauce recipes start with canned tomatoes, and most explanations for why this is the case tend to focus on flavor. That being said, the ones I have tried have all been surprisingly good. I'm just nowhere near deciding which is my favorite. I don't think I've seen S&W over here (NJ), but we do get quite a variety of canned tomatoes imported from Italy that are pretty delicious.
I'm an American that just got back from a vacation in Japan. On my trip, I saw maybe 3 overweight people, one of who was actually pretty damn fat. It really didn't hit me until I was back home, waiting to get through immigration and customs: Holy Fuck Americans Are Fat.
Anyway, while I was out there, I ran into a half-American/half-Japanese expat, and we're bullshitting about various subjects, including for some reason fatness. Her claim was "you just gotta stay away from that rice!", but, well, I don't buy it. You see, I once [accidentally] gained 30 lbs in one month just by eating at Outback for dinner every day. There was no rice in my diet at all, yet I was gaining weight faster than a sumo wrestler.
See, in Japan, food like that just doesn't exist. Of course you can "eat anything you want" in Japan without gaining weight; "anything you want" consists primarily of plain (or vinegared) white rice, pickled vegetables, and raw or roasted fish. Sure, there's tempura and beef and other higher-calorie foods, but they pale in comparison to what you can find in the States. A Bloomin' Onion from Outback (an appetizer), has 1950 Calories. That's just one appetizer for one meal, and it's got your entire day's worth of calories in there. It would take 9 hours of walking to burn those off. Or 5 hours biking. I challenge you to find me a tempura shop anywhere in Japan that has an appetizer with 1950 Calories.
You may argue that nobody eats a whole Bloomin' Onion by themselves (well, I have), but I'd counter by pointing out that the Bloomin' Onion is not an anomaly. All of our food is like that. Ruby Tuesdays used to have a Colossal Burger entree that had 150g fat. That's over a quarter pound of fat alone. Granted, I'm guessing that included the fat in the french fries it was served with, but still. Add on a few beers, maybe dessert, and before you know it, you've supersized yourself.
Sure, there are people with a broken metabolism that can eat anything they want without getting fat. It's physically possible to not metabolize food, to pass lots of the caloric value right through. The converse, however, is physically impossible. If you eat fewer calories than you burn, it's not possible for you to gain weight. There's no known medical condition which causes you to extract more calories from food than it inherently contains. There's no known medical condition which allows you to do work without burning calories. Quite simply, if you're fat, you're eating more than you're burning. And if you live in the USA, it's probably because the food you eat is unimaginably high in calories.
I lost a quarter of my body weight by eating less and exercising more. If you're trying to lose weight, I suggest a similar approach. Take a close look at your diet and you'll be horrified by how calorie-rich some of your favorite foods are. I couldn't (and still can't) believe a single deep fried onion could be just shy of 2000 Calories. I'm not saying "it worked for me, so it will work for anyone". I'm saying "the known laws of physics apply to everyone".
Calories, a measure of energy, are conserved. This is slashdot.
If you eat (and metabolize) 3000 calories, and you only use 2000 calories, you're not just going to shit out 1000 calories. No matter how many bunless cheeseburgers you eat.
Different foods are metabolized differently. You're not getting much caloric intake from insoluble fiber if it's not getting metabolized. Similarly, it's unlikely that any portion of your refined sugar intake isn't getting metabolized; those calories all count. Eating certain things might actually boost your metabolism, while eating others may lower it. To complicate things, certain foods may only alter part of your metabolism, speeding or slowing the absorption of certain forms of energy-bearing compounds. Eating certain things might make you too lazy to get off your ass, while eating others may have you running around madly. There's many variables, many factors. There is one thing that doesn't change, though. Energy is conserved.
The Atkins diet isn't magic. If you eat and metabolize 3000 calories of bunless cheeseburgers every day, and only burn off 2000 calories, you're still going to gain weight. It doesn't matter that you didn't have a single calorie from carbohydrates. If you're suggesting that the Atkins diet prevents you from metabolizing the bunless cheeseburgers you're eating, I'd like to see some evidence of that claim. If you're suggesting that the Atkins diet causes you to increase your activity levels and your calorie burn rate, I'd like to see some evidence of that claim. If you're suggesting neither, then I ask that you accept that the Atkins diet is no more or less effective for weight management than any other fad diet.
(Disclaimer: lost 25% of my body weight in two years by decreasing consumed calories and increasing burned calories; i.e. eat less, exercise more; i.e. the only diet plan that's consistent with the known laws of physics)
In fact, healthier fats (mono and poly unsaturated) mostly all come from plants.
While what you said is true, in fact, the most unhealthy fats (coconut oil, palm oil) mostly all come from plants as well.
It's not quite as simple as you make it out to be.
An apple shipped to Florida from Washington was bred specifically to make that transportation possible. Flavor and texture took a back seat to physical toughness, because a delicious apple is still worthless if it's squashed before it gets to your mouth. Of course, that same apple is just as disgusting back in Washington; it's the genes that make it crappy, not the transportation itself. However, you might be able to find other apples in Washington that are bred to be delicious but are unsuitable for long-haul transportation. You won't find these apples in Florida, because they would never survive the trip. That's why some people are into locally grown produce (for foodie reasons, not environmental ones). Not because it's inherently better, not because transportation somehow makes food taste bad.
I love American-style Italian food. Give me some cheese, tomato sauce, and pasta and I'm in heaven. When I cook, I've been known to go overboard more often than not. I have barely any 10-minute or 30-minute recipes, but a handful of 8-hour or 3-day recipes. I enjoy cooking as a hobby, so when I have time, I like to have fun and strive for perfection. While I've made my own cheeses and my own pasta from scratch, I've spent the last decade focusing on tomato sauce.
If you're a tomato lover, you may have noticed that a majority of tomatoes you see at the supermarket taste like nothing. They have a vague hint of tomato flavor, but they're not exactly something you'd want to sink your teeth into. Some varieties are better than others, particularly the campari which seems to be growing in popularity. In any case, most of these tomatoes are still garbage. Over the last decade or so, I've been growing my own tomatoes for making sauce; it seems that any variety that I choose for the garden has significantly more flavor than what you can buy in stores. I also visit local farms during peak tomato season and find their products are generally much better than what you find in stores as well. Well, why is it that when I grow a tomato it's fine, when someone near by grows a tomato it's fine, but when someone on the other side of the country (or world) grows a tomato, it's garbage?
Selective breeding. Crops are bred for certain desirable traits. One guy may be breeding tomatoes that are as sweet as possible. From each successive generation, he replants seeds from the sweetest tomatoes of the current generation. Eventually, he has very sweet tomatoes. Another guy may be breeding tomatoes that are most resistant to bruising (for less waste during long-haul transportation). From each successive generation, he replants seeds from the hardiest tomatoes of the current generation. Eventually, he has bulletproof tomatoes. Of course, by selecting for one trait, you're necessarily not selecting for other traits. The sweet tomato isn't likely to hold up well for long trips, and the hardy tomato isn't likely to be very sweet. Of course, it's possible (in theory at least) for a tomato to be both sweet and hardy, but breeding it will be more difficult and will take more time. Sure, people are shooting for the perfect tomato, one that is both sweet and capable of being trucked around the world, but perfection is a lofty goal, and instead we have some breeds that are better for transportation and others that are better for eating.
My next batch of sauce will not be made from tomatoes I grew myself. It won't be from locally-grown tomatoes either. It will be from canned tomatoes. Peeled canned tomatoes. You see, when you're growing tomatoes that are just going to be canned anyway, you don't need to worry about how pretty they look, or how well they hold up during transport. You can focus on flavor and flavor alone. Over the years, I've discovered that canned tomatoes can taste really, really amazing. Better than anything I've grown, better than anything I've bought at a farm. I'd imagine these tomatoes destined for the cannery look unsightly and break at the slightest bump. The breeders have the luxury of ignoring c
Actually no. Food and Water are Needs and are essential. The Internet, Phones, Game Console etc are Wants and are not essential for survival.
Internet is "essential to a modern economy", which is what TFS is talking about.
You're the one that's bringing in some other arbitrary criteria, "essential for survival". I say arbitrary because what's so special about survival? Food and water may be essential for survival, but they're not essential in the general sense. The universe would continue to exist if there were no food and water and we all died. Thus, food and water aren't essential either.
I'm not sure why you're telling me all of this. If you look back on this thread, you notice that I'm not the one that brought her up, nor am I saying that she's deserving of any more respect than anyone else. I'm merely pointing out that making fun of an arbitrary person for their [past] addiction problems makes one an ass. I think referring to her as wreckage is indisputably being "rude". Additionally, I think alleging that she lacked mental stability for "decades" based solely on three moments of televised [intoxicated] hysteria is both rude and unreasonable.
I also find it sad that slashdot is collectively laughing at her (5, Funny; really?) but overall dismissing my argument that it's not right to kick someone when they're down or to mock those who fall prey to addiction. You're not the first person to take issue with my posts in this thread, but I have yet to see someone else chime in to defend general decency.
Let me break it down for you. Uneventful footage of Courtney Love (or anyone else that's not doing anything noteworthy) doesn't make for good television programming, and is therefore unlikely to be aired. It is more logical to assume that all public displays of hysteria on Courtney's part were broadcast, and that any part of her life that wasn't on TV was either not public or not hysterical. Since she was living a public life during the majority of that time period, and the celebrity-chasing subset of the media was not taking a sabbatical, the logical assumption is that her life during this period was for the most part rather normal and uneventful.
That being said, let's say you're right and that she's indeed suffering from some debilitating mental illness. Does that mean we should all line up to take turns laughing at her? Is that the society we should be striving to build?
Bad sampling.
If you honestly think video of Courtney that makes it to MTV constitutes a random sample of her life, you're either terrible at statistics or ignorant of how television programming works.
That's a question that only you can answer for yourself.
Personally, I care about Courtney Love because she's a human being, to the same extent that I care about other human beings. That's why I don't arbitrarily single her out as the butt of jokes, and take offense when others do.
I suppose that since her music sold a few albums and she married a famous musician, you don't think she's worthy of the same respect that you'd offer any other person in this world? That a handful of her widely publicized intoxicated outbursts entitle the rest of us to belittle her for the remainder of her life? That it's best for us all to dwell on the youthful indiscretions of others instead of recognizing the potential for people to grow up as they grow old?
Yes, decades, five minutes at a time. Exaggerate much? Let's see, there's five minutes of Courtney throwing a shoe at Madonna, another five minutes of her on Letterman, another five minutes of her at Pam's roast... but you might find it challenging to find 87600 hours of Courney footage that portrays her in a questionable mental state.
Perhaps other celebrity train wrecks have prevented you from keeping up with Courtney. She's actually doing fine, having overcome her addiction problems and stayed clean since 2007. I understand it can be quite satisfying for some people to make fun of drug addiction, or to single out and shame individuals based on harmless yet abnormal or deviant behavior. I just expect more from the slashdot crowd.
She may have had her moments, but right now you're the one being an ass.
Conventional dealerships are used by many buyers as a trusted service base
lolwat? You mean those places that have unreasonably high hourly labor rates and absolutely refuse to use third party components in lieu of OEM components which cost twice as much? Trusted service base? On what planet?
When I was younger, several of my close friends worked at a local Nissan dealership. They told me horror stories about people bringing in their cars for basic scheduled service. You go in for an oil change, they splash some oil on a new oil filter and throw it in the garbage. That's your "oil change", and there goes your "used oil filter". This wasn't their idea, it was established practice at this particular dealership, sanctioned by their superiors. I wouldn't trust a dealership's service department with shit.
Today is my 32nd birthday and I'm in better shape than at any other point in my life.
That's more an indication of how out of shape I was in my earlier life than anything else though.
And here I thought I was the only one that liked that song.
hell I've got technology to grow some plants without any light at all (very useful for the cattle/sheep ranchers) with a 99% reduction in water requirements.
Do you call this technology Farmville?
How do you reduce water requirements by 99% and still grow a plant? Since plants are made mostly of water, wouldn't there be an upper bound on water requirement reduction that's nowhere near 99%? Otherwise, what is the plant made of? Do plants really lose >99% of uptaken water to respiration, etc.?
But then "Whoops, wrong hole" would be even less believable!
Garden & Gun magazine.
Byline: Soul of the South
Which is especially strange since I'm a socialist liberal living in an apartment in New Jersey. I first subscribed as a joke, but it turns out that this is probably the last magazine I'll stop subscribing to. Great insight into a lifestyle that isn't available to me.
Other great periodicals that I don't see people mentioning include Wine Spectator (I don't really drink wine, or at least not any that costs more than $5/bottle), Outside magazine (I spend most of my life in a cubicle or a car), Powder magazine (skiing the east coast, the only time you see powder is in photographs).
Perhaps my taste in magazines has more to do with escapism than anything else?