"Just google it" requires that this sort of discussion is already easily available on the internet, which is often not the case. The question first needs to be posed on some sort of forum where experts congregate, otherwise it doesn't exist! And on a huge forum such as slashdot, you're going to eventually get into arguments over different software packages and with all the bickering over minutiae you'll learn more about the software in 15 minutes of reading than you ever would looking over documentation.
Right now googling "vm software beginner" returns this as the first result and simply "vm software" is on the front page, making it considerably easier for people to find without having to ask this question again.
Not an American creation. Bible literalists are as old as Christianity itself, and only really started to go away with the scientific achievements of the Renaissance/Enlightenment and even in the Catholic Church was dominant until the Second Vatican Council in the 60's. It's just stuck around a little more persistently in our region of the world than others, for some reason.
Sorry, you aren't even having the same conversation as the rest of us. You may view Genesis as a metaphor or allegory, but that's not what we're talking about here.
This:
You see, the way the entire Bible is written, the "literal" meaning isn't as simple as taking the meaning of the individual words and putting them together, and the Bible (from the very beginning of Christianity) has always been looked at that way.
is a ridiculous argument. That's exactly what the word literal means! "Taking words in their usual or most basic sense without metaphor or allegory." You can't just change the meaning of words to fit your own ideas.
And the second part of your statement is patently false. A literal interpretation of the Bible has been exceptionally popular for the majority of the existence of Christianity. It's only in the last few hundred years that it was challenged in the slightest, and it certainly hasn't gone away! Remember the Catholic church prosecuting folks for claiming the universe was not geocentric? That was because modern science was challenging the traditional, literal reading of the Bible. There are thousands of other examples with which I could use to illustrate the idea, most of which I'm sure you're probably familiar.
People who take a literal interpretation of our favorite holy book believe that every word printed is the inerrant word of God himself. If the Bible says Jonah was swallowed by a big fish and then coughed out three days later, well by golly that's what happened! If it says Noah rounded up two of every animal on a big ship while the entire world flooded, then he sure as heck did just that! And a literal interpretation of the Bible is *absolutely* incompatible with modern scientific laws.
In the Old Testament it says Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt, which, if you remember a little Chemistry 101, is fucking impossible. But for some reason Bible literalists mainly go after biology. You don't see them waging a war on teaching chemistry in schools, even though their literal interpretation of the Bible is just as much at odds with that field as it is with biology. And they've pretty much given up on attacking astronomy, even though the Bible pretty explicitly describes the Earth as the center of the universe. Geocentric viewpoints survived well into the 20th century, but the space age pretty much killed that movement off (in the developed world, at least).
Reasonable people do not take a literal interpretation of the Bible. I agree with you on that. But that is not what Dr. Dawkins or GP poster were talking about.
Anonymous coward is wrong. You can eat beef every day, but try and limit it to 4 oz. or less and keep a close watch on the saturated fat in your diet. Beef is actually extremely nutritious. It's only unhealthy if you eat large servings on a regular basis, which is pretty typical in the US.
You're practicing a false dichotomy. Eating healthy can still be enjoyable, and heart disease and colon cancer certainly aren't very pleasurable.
It's not necessarily that simple, though. Corn is a hardy crop, but it requires rich soil with good drainage. You can graze cattle on marginal land that would be unsuitable for farming. And land that for whatever reason makes it difficult to farm (rocky, steep, marshy, etc.). The biggest cattle-producing regions historically are places that are ill-suited for intensive agriculture.
The high reliance on corn as a finishing feed for cattle has more to do with the fact that agricultural subsidies have made it incredibly cheap and abundant than it does with sensible land use policy. Raising cattle on marginal rangeland and occasionally feeding them fodder makes a whole lot more sense than shipping them off to Colorado or Western Kansas to be fed grain that was shipped in from Iowa and Indiana once you account for all the agriculture subsidies and transportation costs associated with corn production (not to mention externalities like CO2 pollution and fertilizer runoff!). Corn is more efficient in calorie-per-acre, but acreage is not the limiting resource in the US. Water and fossil fuels are.
Everything you said is true, sort of. I went to a school that had piss poor administration and I would say about 90% of the teachers put in the bare minimum of work. The other 10% went above and beyond like coming up with interesting lesson plans and buying stuff out of pocket to make memorable projects. Those teachers definitely weren't working a standard 8-5. And guess which ones taught me the most?
It's hard to take a stand to make a political change when you know that it will affect children negatively and might not be effective in the long-term. Just look at all the crap the Chicago teacher's union is taking in certain parts of the media and political system. It's very, very difficult to affect positive change in the education system, and the easiest way for an individual teacher who wants to encourage something other than mediocrity is to do it themselves, rather than wait for the politicians and administrators to help them out.
It's compounded in Utah because of the extremes (very liberal and very conservative coexisting in the same space) and the fact that Salt Lake is the only major city in Utah and the church is headquartered there. It would be like Texas if Austin was the only major city, the Southern Baptist Convention was headquartered there, and 60% of the state of Texas was Baptist. And if the Baptists were much more centralized and authoritarian of an organization.
There are parallels in other states for sure, but nothing remotely resembling the situation in Utah.
The problem is that reforming the US electoral process at the federal level requires amending the Constitution. 2/3 of both houses of congress would have to vote yes, and then 3/4 of all states would also have to ratify it. But the federal government and every state government are effectively controlled entirely by the Republican and Democratic parties, and under a proportional representation system they would stand to lose a great deal of power.
Since they're not going to voluntarily sign a document to give away a significant portion of power, it would have to be something forced on them by the people. Something would have to happen to cause a true grassroots movement for proportional representation across the entire country, and I can't imagine what would cause that. Maybe if multiple presidential elections repeat the nightmare scenario of 2000 and Congress stays deadlocked and ineffective for a decade people will start to call for electoral reform.
I'm a big city liberal and I grew up on a ranch, bucking bails and working cattle. Most big city conservatives have never stepped foot on a farm, either, so try not to make so many generalizations, eh?
It's not just parents that don't care, though. Most working class people don't have the time or ability to guide their children over summer education. So unless the kid is self-motivated or an avid reader, they tend to not learn very much over summer break.
Track and cross country are a lot smaller investment than other sports, particularly football. Track you just need a van, gasoline, and some fairly cheap uniforms. Occasionally you need hotels for overnight stays.
For a football program you're talking about buying hundreds of dollars of equipment for at least 50 kids. And that's for smaller programs. Larger programs spend a lot more than just equipments and uniforms, particularly in areas of the country where high school football is a big deal. There are shocking amount of high schools with six figure athletic budgets. Public schools too, not just private.
No, you're wrong about sport. Football really was an incredibly valuable teaching tool. I can't think of anything that has come close to teaching me the work ethic, leadership, and teamwork skills I learned through competitive football. Maybe if I joined the armed services I would have something to compare it to. It's a truly exceptional game, nearly without parallel in world sport (rugby being the only real similarity).
It's really difficult to get teens to commit to that level of teamwork, discipline, effort, etc. in science class. I was a much better student in high school than I was an athlete, but I worked a hell of a lot harder at athletics. Eventually that work ethic I learned through athletics translated into my academics, but not until school became much harder at the university level. And it's more of an individual thing in academics, even when you work as a team. You never learn to sublimate your own individual desires and emotions the way you do in team sports.
It's not that your criticisms are wrong, necessarily. High school sports are often a very poor use of limited resources, and I agree that organize sport should not be handled by public educational institutions. But that doesn't mean there isn't a point.
Actually, you're both wrong. Your post is quite a bit more reasonable than GP's, but it's not as simple as you make it out to be.
The LDS church doesn't control government in Utah the way that he suggested. It's not a theocracy. They don't choose the candidates or decide who gets elected. But in many significant ways they do have near-complete control over politics in the state. There is certainly no other state in the US where a single religious organization has such a large degree of control over (ostensibly) secular politics.
And it is often a *very* direct and deliberate type of control. Take, for example, the recent revitalization of downtown, primarily City Creek Center, a $5 billion mixed use development deal undertaken by the LDS church. Like many cities in the US, Salt Lake struggles with urban decay and development. The Salt Lake temple and the headquarters of the LDS church are downtown. Downtown SLC is not that large of a place, and in many ways the city itself is a showcase for the church. And the LDS church is *extremely* image-conscious. They don't want visitors to the Salt Lake temple or church headquarters to see downtown in a state of neglect, they want it to look clean and successful. So they bought a bunch of property and invested in City Creek Center.
Obviously that's not really all that normal compared to most US cities, but overall it seems like a good thing, right? And for the most part it is. But the church also starting mucking around manipulating SLC politics in very shady and underhanded ways. Let me digress for a second...bear with me.
One problem with Utah is that SLC citizens and the SLC government are far morel iberal than the rest of the state (think more in line with Portland or Seattle, whereas most of the state is *extremely* conservative). A common theme in Utah politics is Salt Lake liberals vs. the rest of the state. SLC progressives want to change the laws, but since the state legislature is much, more conservative they are often prevented from doing what they want, and they end up yelling back and forth at each other, fighting in the media, etc. One common solution to that problems is the state legislature often lets the Salt Lake liberals do whatever the hell they want in Salt Lake County with the understanding that the liberals will leave them alone the rest of the state.
In the example you gave of Mayor Becker passing anti-discrimination laws for LGBT individuals, you are only getting half the story. The Democrats tried to get that law passed for the whole state. The Republicans fought it, and a compromise was worked out. The state legislature wouldn't pass a statewide law nullifying the discrimination laws if the Democrats would give up the fight and settle for just Salt Lake County. This is an example, of how, like you explained, the government in Utah reflects the values of Utah voters. Obviously the church has a lot to do with the anti-gay feelings felt by the majority of Utah's legislators, but in this situation they did not influence it in any sort of direct way.
In the case of the downtown developments, however, the church acted in a very direct way to influence local legislature. The LDS church is not very tolerant of alcohol use. They do everything they can to control the sale and use of alcohol. For the most part it's not that big of a deal, the alcohol drinkers work around it and it's fine. But there are three major things that Salt Lake County businesses hate about Utah liquor laws:
1) There is a finite number of business in Utah that can sell liquor, based on the population of the entire state. Once the liquor licenses are gone for the year, no businesses can get a new liquor license unless a business that already has a license sells it off. Most businesses feel that the number of licenses, particularly for full-service bars, is far too low. 2) You can only open a full-service bar in an area zoned
Eh, you're changing your argument now. My complaint was with your blanket statement of "However, the only problem with feeding cattle a diet that is majority corn is the lack of fiber in the diet, not a problem with digesting the corn. Antibiotics do not have any impact on that." That is untrue, for the reasons I have laid out. A corn-based diet causes increased acidity in the rumin and increased amounts of unprocessed starch in the intestines, both of which lead to significant health problems. Antibiotics are used to fight both of those problems.
I also think there's an inherent contradiction with what you're saying. You have to make sure that the animals get enough fiber, but if you feed them a majority corn-based diet, it's not possible for them to get enough fiber. So there's a little bit of a paradox there.
We can argue the rest of what you're saying (that it's not the diet itself, but the transition) until the cows come home (heh), the science on that is non-existent AFAIK. It agree that it is likely that with a less aggressive grain feeding regimen cattle wouldn't get the animals as sick. But nobody ever fed cattle on corn-based diets until the last few decades, and they have all been industrial farms operating in the same manner. The science on what would happen if they did push a less aggressive corn-feeding program doesn't exist, and I've never seen anything suggesting that it is solely the adaption to the change in diet, rather than the diet itself that causes the illness. If you have some references for that, please pass them along.
But overall at this point in time that's not the way it's done as far as I know by any organization, commercial or otherwise. Because it is less profitable, and the entire point of moving to a corn-based diet in the first place is because it is more profitable. From the first abstract: "Feeding higher amounts of dietary roughage, processing grains less thoroughly, and limiting the quantity of feed should reduce the incidence of acidosis, but these practices often depress performance and economic efficiency."
You're making unfounded assumptions that the health of the animal actually matters. It really doesn't that much. If a steer has liver abcesses and laminitis, the hamburger tastes exactly the same as from an animal that doesn't. What matters is that they survive to slaughter, and that they have a high enough fat content to achieve high marks from the USDA. Gorge them on corn until they're fat and sick, pump them full of antibiotics so that they survive until slaughter, rinse and repeat. That's how *everybody* does it.
FWIW I grew up on a cattle ranch and have studied this quite a bit. You need to talk to your farmer friends more in depth with about this. You might be confused because the majority of family farms and ranches usually don't finish the cattle themselves. They sell them to industrial operations where the dirty work of finishing, slaughtering, and bringing the animal to market is done. And most farms and ranches feed their cattle through grazing and hay primarily, with processed grains representing a very small percentage of the feed.
This is a near-universal practice now unless you are selling organic, grass-fed beef. And the market for that is very, very, very small.
There would be a lot fewer people capable of doing good work without public education. Those people would have a hard time getting to work without government-built roads.
Obviously to have a healthy economy it is necessary to have both government-provided services and private enterprise, so why the false dichotomy present in your post? Why is it that we are unable to have a political discussion in this country without running to ideological hyperbole immediately? How can you even take yourself seriously?
Um...sorry buddy, but no. Not even close. 5 minutes of internet research does not make you an expert on the topic. This statement:
However, the only problem with feeding cattle a diet that is majority corn is the lack of fiber in the diet, not a problem with digesting the corn. Antibiotics do not have any impact on that.
is patently false. Only patently isn't a strong enough word. Ludicrous and laughable are more close to the truth (sorry if that comes off as rude, but it's true).
What you wrote is sort of correct. Antibiotics do help transition from roughage to a grain based diet and back. However, that is not their primary use in modern factory farming.
In the past, it was common to raise cattle in pasture and grain finish them for a few weeks prior to slaughter. This causes them to fatten up a little before sale. In the present, however, aggressive, grain-heavy diets are now the norm for most of the beef produced in North America. Corn is now much cheaper than it was 30+ years ago, so it can constitute upwards of 80-90% of the feed in finishing yards where in the past it was less than 50%.
A corn-based diet causes cattle's rumen to become more acidic, leading to more acid in the blood. Which isn't a significant problem for short periods of time. But now it is common for cattle to be fed for months on a majority corn diet. When cattle eat a corn-based diet for long periods of time, the increased acidity leads them to develop a condition called acidosis, which leads to significant health problems: liver abscesses, laminitis, and polioencephalomalacia all being common. Increased buildup of starch in the animals' intestines provides a home for many dangerous bacteria to grow, making sudden death syndrom and e coli significantly more prevalent. The solution to this? Pump them full of antibiotics and most of the animals make it to slaughter, even if they are ill.
Beyond that, having large numbers of cattle in industrial feedlots for long periods of time creates massively unsanitary conditions. Industrial feedlots can contain tens of thousands of animals at a time, all in very close quarters with poor sanitation. This increases the risk of common infectious diseases. The solution? Pump them full of antibiotics and most of the animals make it to slaughter, even if they are ill.
What does that have to do with anything? Cattle can't process corn very well. If you feed cattle a diet that is majority corn for longer than a few weeks, they start to get sick. Which is the main reason why modern factory-farmed beef requires so much antibiotics.
While your thought experiment is interesting, I think it is also worthwhile to remember that men *are* responsible for instigating the overwhelming majority of rapes. 99% of rapes are instigated by men. Most rapes are predatory, and are quite often violent.
So while it *is* a case of cultural bias and double standards, that bias and double standard isn't based on stereotypes and misinformation. It's based in fact.
If there was a DSM app where you input a list of symtpoms and it spits out a possible diagnosis, the FDA would consider it is a medical device and it would be subject to FDA regulations. If it is just a reference which relies exlusively on the judgement of the physician then it would not.
The FDA is pretty strict about these things, which is one of the main reasons why medical information systems are so far behind the rest of the IT world.
Obviously your anecdotal evidence disproves the massive amount of research on the effects of tobacco use that has happened over the last 60+ years.
Listen, I know you like your cigarettes. God bless. I used to smoke, I get it. But if your argument for smoking is "science is bullshit, it's really not that dangerous" then you're flat-out delusional.
Male smokers lose an average of 13 years of life. At least half of all lifelong smokers die early. Smokers are three times as likely as non-smokers to die before they reach the age of 60. You are 20x as likely to die of lung cancer. Smokers are more than 5x as likely to have a heart attack before age 40. Impotence is 85% more prevalent in smokers than non-smokers. These are all facts, and there are a lot more of them to go along with that. Smoking affects nearly every part of your body, particularly the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, and makes it massively more likely for you to fall ill.
Any justification you give for smoking that doesn't include "Yeah, I know I'm killing myself slowly, but it's worth it" is absolute bullshit. If you want to smoke anyway, fine, but you're dead wrong about the dangers of smoking.
To a certain extent, yes, there are differences in culture that are independent of the health care system. Preventable disease like diabetes and heart disease are largely dependent upon lifestyle choices like diet and exercise.
But a lot of that difference can also be attributed to the way the health care system in the US is run. It is not a holistic system. Because health care is so expensive, most people only go to the doctor when they are very ill. On top of that, most private medical insurance does not cover much in the way of routine checkups or consultations with nutritionists/dietitians/etc, therefore the majority of people do not have access to those services without paying a hefty fee. If people had free and easy access to those services, many would make different choices regarding their diet and overall health.
A lot of the other metrics like patient outcomes, duration of hospital stays, infant mortality and the like I think are completely valid metrics to directly compare two countries' health care systems.
And I remain unconvinced that the private health care system actually results in increased choice and competition most of the time. My private insurance charges drastically different rates for in-network and out-of-network care. We have two different major hospital systems in my city. One is in-network and the other out-of-network. If I were injured and needed to go to the hospital, I wouldn't choose the hospital that is closest or the one that provides the best service. I would choose the hospital that was in my network because that's what my insurance covers. I'm not making that decision, some bean counter in my insurance company is making that decision for me. And there are many, many places around the country where there is only one hospital or one hospital system available.
By literally any metric you care to use, other first world countries have far superior health care. And they spend much less to get that health care.
Surveys consistently show that people in countries with socialized health care are much more satisfied with the quality of their medical care. Patient outcomes are better. Hospital stays are fewer, and for a shorter duration. Life expectancies are higher. Infant mortality is lower. Preventable diseases like diabetes are lower.
You also seem to be making the assumption that because we have a market-based health care system that those same poor anecdotal experiences don't hapeen. My grandmother once passed kidney stones in the emergency room of a hospital because she was waiting there for 6 hours. A close friend of mine cut finger off slamming it in a car door, and the surgery was completely botched leaving her with a significant amount of pain. These things happen happen all the time in the US.
The idea that a market based health care system is superior is laughable. If it was superior, we would be healthier!
Slashdot Mirror
"Just google it" requires that this sort of discussion is already easily available on the internet, which is often not the case. The question first needs to be posed on some sort of forum where experts congregate, otherwise it doesn't exist! And on a huge forum such as slashdot, you're going to eventually get into arguments over different software packages and with all the bickering over minutiae you'll learn more about the software in 15 minutes of reading than you ever would looking over documentation.
Right now googling "vm software beginner" returns this as the first result and simply "vm software" is on the front page, making it considerably easier for people to find without having to ask this question again.
As usual, Hemingway said it best: "Write drunk. Edit sober."
Not an American creation. Bible literalists are as old as Christianity itself, and only really started to go away with the scientific achievements of the Renaissance/Enlightenment and even in the Catholic Church was dominant until the Second Vatican Council in the 60's. It's just stuck around a little more persistently in our region of the world than others, for some reason.
This:
is a ridiculous argument. That's exactly what the word literal means! "Taking words in their usual or most basic sense without metaphor or allegory." You can't just change the meaning of words to fit your own ideas.
And the second part of your statement is patently false. A literal interpretation of the Bible has been exceptionally popular for the majority of the existence of Christianity. It's only in the last few hundred years that it was challenged in the slightest, and it certainly hasn't gone away! Remember the Catholic church prosecuting folks for claiming the universe was not geocentric? That was because modern science was challenging the traditional, literal reading of the Bible. There are thousands of other examples with which I could use to illustrate the idea, most of which I'm sure you're probably familiar.
People who take a literal interpretation of our favorite holy book believe that every word printed is the inerrant word of God himself. If the Bible says Jonah was swallowed by a big fish and then coughed out three days later, well by golly that's what happened! If it says Noah rounded up two of every animal on a big ship while the entire world flooded, then he sure as heck did just that! And a literal interpretation of the Bible is *absolutely* incompatible with modern scientific laws.
In the Old Testament it says Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt, which, if you remember a little Chemistry 101, is fucking impossible. But for some reason Bible literalists mainly go after biology. You don't see them waging a war on teaching chemistry in schools, even though their literal interpretation of the Bible is just as much at odds with that field as it is with biology. And they've pretty much given up on attacking astronomy, even though the Bible pretty explicitly describes the Earth as the center of the universe. Geocentric viewpoints survived well into the 20th century, but the space age pretty much killed that movement off (in the developed world, at least).
Reasonable people do not take a literal interpretation of the Bible. I agree with you on that. But that is not what Dr. Dawkins or GP poster were talking about.
Anonymous coward is wrong. You can eat beef every day, but try and limit it to 4 oz. or less and keep a close watch on the saturated fat in your diet. Beef is actually extremely nutritious. It's only unhealthy if you eat large servings on a regular basis, which is pretty typical in the US.
You're practicing a false dichotomy. Eating healthy can still be enjoyable, and heart disease and colon cancer certainly aren't very pleasurable.
It's not necessarily that simple, though. Corn is a hardy crop, but it requires rich soil with good drainage. You can graze cattle on marginal land that would be unsuitable for farming. And land that for whatever reason makes it difficult to farm (rocky, steep, marshy, etc.). The biggest cattle-producing regions historically are places that are ill-suited for intensive agriculture.
The high reliance on corn as a finishing feed for cattle has more to do with the fact that agricultural subsidies have made it incredibly cheap and abundant than it does with sensible land use policy. Raising cattle on marginal rangeland and occasionally feeding them fodder makes a whole lot more sense than shipping them off to Colorado or Western Kansas to be fed grain that was shipped in from Iowa and Indiana once you account for all the agriculture subsidies and transportation costs associated with corn production (not to mention externalities like CO2 pollution and fertilizer runoff!). Corn is more efficient in calorie-per-acre, but acreage is not the limiting resource in the US. Water and fossil fuels are.
Everything you said is true, sort of. I went to a school that had piss poor administration and I would say about 90% of the teachers put in the bare minimum of work. The other 10% went above and beyond like coming up with interesting lesson plans and buying stuff out of pocket to make memorable projects. Those teachers definitely weren't working a standard 8-5. And guess which ones taught me the most?
It's hard to take a stand to make a political change when you know that it will affect children negatively and might not be effective in the long-term. Just look at all the crap the Chicago teacher's union is taking in certain parts of the media and political system. It's very, very difficult to affect positive change in the education system, and the easiest way for an individual teacher who wants to encourage something other than mediocrity is to do it themselves, rather than wait for the politicians and administrators to help them out.
It's compounded in Utah because of the extremes (very liberal and very conservative coexisting in the same space) and the fact that Salt Lake is the only major city in Utah and the church is headquartered there. It would be like Texas if Austin was the only major city, the Southern Baptist Convention was headquartered there, and 60% of the state of Texas was Baptist. And if the Baptists were much more centralized and authoritarian of an organization.
There are parallels in other states for sure, but nothing remotely resembling the situation in Utah.
The problem is that reforming the US electoral process at the federal level requires amending the Constitution. 2/3 of both houses of congress would have to vote yes, and then 3/4 of all states would also have to ratify it. But the federal government and every state government are effectively controlled entirely by the Republican and Democratic parties, and under a proportional representation system they would stand to lose a great deal of power.
Since they're not going to voluntarily sign a document to give away a significant portion of power, it would have to be something forced on them by the people. Something would have to happen to cause a true grassroots movement for proportional representation across the entire country, and I can't imagine what would cause that. Maybe if multiple presidential elections repeat the nightmare scenario of 2000 and Congress stays deadlocked and ineffective for a decade people will start to call for electoral reform.
I'm a big city liberal and I grew up on a ranch, bucking bails and working cattle. Most big city conservatives have never stepped foot on a farm, either, so try not to make so many generalizations, eh?
It's not just parents that don't care, though. Most working class people don't have the time or ability to guide their children over summer education. So unless the kid is self-motivated or an avid reader, they tend to not learn very much over summer break.
Track and cross country are a lot smaller investment than other sports, particularly football. Track you just need a van, gasoline, and some fairly cheap uniforms. Occasionally you need hotels for overnight stays.
For a football program you're talking about buying hundreds of dollars of equipment for at least 50 kids. And that's for smaller programs. Larger programs spend a lot more than just equipments and uniforms, particularly in areas of the country where high school football is a big deal. There are shocking amount of high schools with six figure athletic budgets. Public schools too, not just private.
No, you're wrong about sport. Football really was an incredibly valuable teaching tool. I can't think of anything that has come close to teaching me the work ethic, leadership, and teamwork skills I learned through competitive football. Maybe if I joined the armed services I would have something to compare it to. It's a truly exceptional game, nearly without parallel in world sport (rugby being the only real similarity).
It's really difficult to get teens to commit to that level of teamwork, discipline, effort, etc. in science class. I was a much better student in high school than I was an athlete, but I worked a hell of a lot harder at athletics. Eventually that work ethic I learned through athletics translated into my academics, but not until school became much harder at the university level. And it's more of an individual thing in academics, even when you work as a team. You never learn to sublimate your own individual desires and emotions the way you do in team sports.
It's not that your criticisms are wrong, necessarily. High school sports are often a very poor use of limited resources, and I agree that organize sport should not be handled by public educational institutions. But that doesn't mean there isn't a point.
Actually, you're both wrong. Your post is quite a bit more reasonable than GP's, but it's not as simple as you make it out to be.
The LDS church doesn't control government in Utah the way that he suggested. It's not a theocracy. They don't choose the candidates or decide who gets elected. But in many significant ways they do have near-complete control over politics in the state. There is certainly no other state in the US where a single religious organization has such a large degree of control over (ostensibly) secular politics.
And it is often a *very* direct and deliberate type of control. Take, for example, the recent revitalization of downtown, primarily City Creek Center, a $5 billion mixed use development deal undertaken by the LDS church. Like many cities in the US, Salt Lake struggles with urban decay and development. The Salt Lake temple and the headquarters of the LDS church are downtown. Downtown SLC is not that large of a place, and in many ways the city itself is a showcase for the church. And the LDS church is *extremely* image-conscious. They don't want visitors to the Salt Lake temple or church headquarters to see downtown in a state of neglect, they want it to look clean and successful. So they bought a bunch of property and invested in City Creek Center.
Obviously that's not really all that normal compared to most US cities, but overall it seems like a good thing, right? And for the most part it is. But the church also starting mucking around manipulating SLC politics in very shady and underhanded ways. Let me digress for a second...bear with me.
One problem with Utah is that SLC citizens and the SLC government are far morel iberal than the rest of the state (think more in line with Portland or Seattle, whereas most of the state is *extremely* conservative). A common theme in Utah politics is Salt Lake liberals vs. the rest of the state. SLC progressives want to change the laws, but since the state legislature is much, more conservative they are often prevented from doing what they want, and they end up yelling back and forth at each other, fighting in the media, etc. One common solution to that problems is the state legislature often lets the Salt Lake liberals do whatever the hell they want in Salt Lake County with the understanding that the liberals will leave them alone the rest of the state.
In the example you gave of Mayor Becker passing anti-discrimination laws for LGBT individuals, you are only getting half the story. The Democrats tried to get that law passed for the whole state. The Republicans fought it, and a compromise was worked out. The state legislature wouldn't pass a statewide law nullifying the discrimination laws if the Democrats would give up the fight and settle for just Salt Lake County. This is an example, of how, like you explained, the government in Utah reflects the values of Utah voters. Obviously the church has a lot to do with the anti-gay feelings felt by the majority of Utah's legislators, but in this situation they did not influence it in any sort of direct way.
In the case of the downtown developments, however, the church acted in a very direct way to influence local legislature. The LDS church is not very tolerant of alcohol use. They do everything they can to control the sale and use of alcohol. For the most part it's not that big of a deal, the alcohol drinkers work around it and it's fine. But there are three major things that Salt Lake County businesses hate about Utah liquor laws:
1) There is a finite number of business in Utah that can sell liquor, based on the population of the entire state. Once the liquor licenses are gone for the year, no businesses can get a new liquor license unless a business that already has a license sells it off. Most businesses feel that the number of licenses, particularly for full-service bars, is far too low.
2) You can only open a full-service bar in an area zoned
Bad example. He's actually a pretty decent screenwriter.
Eh, you're changing your argument now. My complaint was with your blanket statement of "However, the only problem with feeding cattle a diet that is majority corn is the lack of fiber in the diet, not a problem with digesting the corn. Antibiotics do not have any impact on that." That is untrue, for the reasons I have laid out. A corn-based diet causes increased acidity in the rumin and increased amounts of unprocessed starch in the intestines, both of which lead to significant health problems. Antibiotics are used to fight both of those problems.
I also think there's an inherent contradiction with what you're saying. You have to make sure that the animals get enough fiber, but if you feed them a majority corn-based diet, it's not possible for them to get enough fiber. So there's a little bit of a paradox there.
We can argue the rest of what you're saying (that it's not the diet itself, but the transition) until the cows come home (heh), the science on that is non-existent AFAIK. It agree that it is likely that with a less aggressive grain feeding regimen cattle wouldn't get the animals as sick. But nobody ever fed cattle on corn-based diets until the last few decades, and they have all been industrial farms operating in the same manner. The science on what would happen if they did push a less aggressive corn-feeding program doesn't exist, and I've never seen anything suggesting that it is solely the adaption to the change in diet, rather than the diet itself that causes the illness. If you have some references for that, please pass them along.
But overall at this point in time that's not the way it's done as far as I know by any organization, commercial or otherwise. Because it is less profitable, and the entire point of moving to a corn-based diet in the first place is because it is more profitable. From the first abstract: "Feeding higher amounts of dietary roughage, processing grains less thoroughly, and limiting the quantity of feed should reduce the incidence of acidosis, but these practices often depress performance and economic efficiency."
You're making unfounded assumptions that the health of the animal actually matters. It really doesn't that much. If a steer has liver abcesses and laminitis, the hamburger tastes exactly the same as from an animal that doesn't. What matters is that they survive to slaughter, and that they have a high enough fat content to achieve high marks from the USDA. Gorge them on corn until they're fat and sick, pump them full of antibiotics so that they survive until slaughter, rinse and repeat. That's how *everybody* does it.
FWIW I grew up on a cattle ranch and have studied this quite a bit. You need to talk to your farmer friends more in depth with about this. You might be confused because the majority of family farms and ranches usually don't finish the cattle themselves. They sell them to industrial operations where the dirty work of finishing, slaughtering, and bringing the animal to market is done. And most farms and ranches feed their cattle through grazing and hay primarily, with processed grains representing a very small percentage of the feed.
This is a near-universal practice now unless you are selling organic, grass-fed beef. And the market for that is very, very, very small.
There would be a lot fewer people capable of doing good work without public education. Those people would have a hard time getting to work without government-built roads.
Obviously to have a healthy economy it is necessary to have both government-provided services and private enterprise, so why the false dichotomy present in your post? Why is it that we are unable to have a political discussion in this country without running to ideological hyperbole immediately? How can you even take yourself seriously?
Source please?
is patently false. Only patently isn't a strong enough word. Ludicrous and laughable are more close to the truth (sorry if that comes off as rude, but it's true).
What you wrote is sort of correct. Antibiotics do help transition from roughage to a grain based diet and back. However, that is not their primary use in modern factory farming.
In the past, it was common to raise cattle in pasture and grain finish them for a few weeks prior to slaughter. This causes them to fatten up a little before sale. In the present, however, aggressive, grain-heavy diets are now the norm for most of the beef produced in North America. Corn is now much cheaper than it was 30+ years ago, so it can constitute upwards of 80-90% of the feed in finishing yards where in the past it was less than 50%.
A corn-based diet causes cattle's rumen to become more acidic, leading to more acid in the blood. Which isn't a significant problem for short periods of time. But now it is common for cattle to be fed for months on a majority corn diet. When cattle eat a corn-based diet for long periods of time, the increased acidity leads them to develop a condition called acidosis, which leads to significant health problems: liver abscesses, laminitis, and polioencephalomalacia all being common. Increased buildup of starch in the animals' intestines provides a home for many dangerous bacteria to grow, making sudden death syndrom and e coli significantly more prevalent. The solution to this? Pump them full of antibiotics and most of the animals make it to slaughter, even if they are ill.
Beyond that, having large numbers of cattle in industrial feedlots for long periods of time creates massively unsanitary conditions. Industrial feedlots can contain tens of thousands of animals at a time, all in very close quarters with poor sanitation. This increases the risk of common infectious diseases. The solution? Pump them full of antibiotics and most of the animals make it to slaughter, even if they are ill.
Some suggested reading for you:
Overview of common problems with high-grain diet in cattle
Acidosis in cattle.(PDF)
Prevention of liver abscesses by means of antibiotics Sorry, couldn't find a free version of the paper, so the summary will have to do.
What does that have to do with anything? Cattle can't process corn very well. If you feed cattle a diet that is majority corn for longer than a few weeks, they start to get sick. Which is the main reason why modern factory-farmed beef requires so much antibiotics.
While your thought experiment is interesting, I think it is also worthwhile to remember that men *are* responsible for instigating the overwhelming majority of rapes. 99% of rapes are instigated by men. Most rapes are predatory, and are quite often violent.
So while it *is* a case of cultural bias and double standards, that bias and double standard isn't based on stereotypes and misinformation. It's based in fact.
If there was a DSM app where you input a list of symtpoms and it spits out a possible diagnosis, the FDA would consider it is a medical device and it would be subject to FDA regulations. If it is just a reference which relies exlusively on the judgement of the physician then it would not.
The FDA is pretty strict about these things, which is one of the main reasons why medical information systems are so far behind the rest of the IT world.
Obviously your anecdotal evidence disproves the massive amount of research on the effects of tobacco use that has happened over the last 60+ years.
Listen, I know you like your cigarettes. God bless. I used to smoke, I get it. But if your argument for smoking is "science is bullshit, it's really not that dangerous" then you're flat-out delusional.
Male smokers lose an average of 13 years of life. At least half of all lifelong smokers die early. Smokers are three times as likely as non-smokers to die before they reach the age of 60. You are 20x as likely to die of lung cancer. Smokers are more than 5x as likely to have a heart attack before age 40. Impotence is 85% more prevalent in smokers than non-smokers. These are all facts, and there are a lot more of them to go along with that. Smoking affects nearly every part of your body, particularly the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, and makes it massively more likely for you to fall ill.
Just look at this graph! It doesn't get much more obvious than that.
Any justification you give for smoking that doesn't include "Yeah, I know I'm killing myself slowly, but it's worth it" is absolute bullshit. If you want to smoke anyway, fine, but you're dead wrong about the dangers of smoking.
To a certain extent, yes, there are differences in culture that are independent of the health care system. Preventable disease like diabetes and heart disease are largely dependent upon lifestyle choices like diet and exercise.
But a lot of that difference can also be attributed to the way the health care system in the US is run. It is not a holistic system. Because health care is so expensive, most people only go to the doctor when they are very ill. On top of that, most private medical insurance does not cover much in the way of routine checkups or consultations with nutritionists/dietitians/etc, therefore the majority of people do not have access to those services without paying a hefty fee. If people had free and easy access to those services, many would make different choices regarding their diet and overall health.
A lot of the other metrics like patient outcomes, duration of hospital stays, infant mortality and the like I think are completely valid metrics to directly compare two countries' health care systems.
And I remain unconvinced that the private health care system actually results in increased choice and competition most of the time. My private insurance charges drastically different rates for in-network and out-of-network care. We have two different major hospital systems in my city. One is in-network and the other out-of-network. If I were injured and needed to go to the hospital, I wouldn't choose the hospital that is closest or the one that provides the best service. I would choose the hospital that was in my network because that's what my insurance covers. I'm not making that decision, some bean counter in my insurance company is making that decision for me. And there are many, many places around the country where there is only one hospital or one hospital system available.
By literally any metric you care to use, other first world countries have far superior health care. And they spend much less to get that health care.
Surveys consistently show that people in countries with socialized health care are much more satisfied with the quality of their medical care. Patient outcomes are better. Hospital stays are fewer, and for a shorter duration. Life expectancies are higher. Infant mortality is lower. Preventable diseases like diabetes are lower.
You also seem to be making the assumption that because we have a market-based health care system that those same poor anecdotal experiences don't hapeen. My grandmother once passed kidney stones in the emergency room of a hospital because she was waiting there for 6 hours. A close friend of mine cut finger off slamming it in a car door, and the surgery was completely botched leaving her with a significant amount of pain. These things happen happen all the time in the US.
The idea that a market based health care system is superior is laughable. If it was superior, we would be healthier!