I know you say you still need IE for things but, seriously, if that's the trouble you go to to avoid malware, maybe it's time to download that Ubuntu ISO. Hell, even a Gentoo install would be a timesaver.
Without our borders there as political boundaries, then our influence would spread as far as we want it to, and what would stop us from using our military prowess (read: everything in our power including nukes) to make everyone live by our way or the highway?
Uh, are you being facetious here? Honestly, I'm not really sure.
Actually, your steering wheel analogy isn't correct. In the early 90's, then-Swedish automaker SAAB built a prototype car based on a fly-by-wire joystick concept. They found in testing that drivers had greater control with their joystick than they did with a traditional steering wheel. It was also safer in a crash, due to the advantages it offered in airbag placement. The system never went into production as it was determined that it would be far too difficult to convince the general public of these advantages.
Though I too greatly prefer the book to the film, it's not entirely Kubrick's fault. He wasn't given the complete novella to work from; the version published in America at the time lacked the 21st chapter, due to some terrible editing decision, which drastically changes the ending of the book. I used to absolutely abhor the film, but I've warmed up to it slightly over the years.
Also, by way of interesting anecdote, Burgess was so outraged by the film and Kubrick's treatment of it that, in the musical version of ACO, which Burgess published after Kubrick's film, there is a bald, bearded, bespectacled old man, an effigy of Kubrick, who is severely beaten by Alex and his droogs.
...my vegetarianism doesn't seem to have stopped my brain from developing.
The point isn't that vegetarianism keeps a modern human's brain from developing properly, but that the introduction of animal fats over a long period of time (far longer than a single human life--we're talking about evolution here) to our ancestors' diets helped us develop the brain power we have today.
The body synthesizes the protein from the component amino acids in the diet just fine - or else how in world would a cow grow so much beef from eating grass?
I don't know about you, but I know I don't have four stomachs. Sure, a cow can obviously synthesize lots of protein eating only grass, but I'm not a cow. Neither are you. (If you are, my compliments on your being able to navigate a keyboard with your hooves, as well as your good diction. Well done!) Joking aside, your body wouldn't survive on an all-grass diet.
If you read the second paragraph there in the primate baseline, the diet they ascribe to early primates is strikingly similar to the diet that is promoted to cure America's dietary ills: fruits, veggies, lots of vitamins, low sodium, low fat, low cholesterol.
You're absolutely right, almost. We share something like 97% (maybe even more for some species; I'm not gonna get a link, you get the idea) of our genetic code with our closest primate relatives. Our digestive systems are virtually identical. It follows, then, that we should eat very similar diets, like the one you list, with the exception of the fat/cholesterol issue. Throughout history (and pre-history), the fattiest parts of animals were considered the choicest cuts. Ancient man didn't hunt many animals at certain times of the year, because the animals were too lean. I'm not saying that you should adopt an all-bacon diet or something (as delicious as that would be), but recognize that a large part of the reason that fat/cholesterol has become vilified lately (an extremely short amount of time, evolutionarily speaking) is that people like to fill up the tank, but they don't want to drive the car.
By way of personal anecdote, a few years ago I started to get interested in being healthy, eating well, exercise, etc. After some research, I settled into what I'd call a 'mostly-fruit' diet. That is, the majority of the food I eat (probably around 70%) is raw fruit, vegetables, and some select animal products. Sparing you my personal "Why and how I kick ass" story, suffice it to say that while I was skeptical at first, the results were significant enough for me to continue eating this way. I don't *want* to go back to my old 'modern' diet, the occasional Krispy Kreme or trip to my local Noodle House notwithstanding.:-)
The idea comes (to me, at least) from the work of Dr. Weston A. Price. He went around and studied primitive people's dietary and health lives. That is, human diets that were (for the most part) formed by natural selection. The primitive people studied all had excellent health, attributed to their diets, which were much like the primate diets, except that they ate vastly larger quantities of animal matter. Fruits and vegetables still made up the bulk of their diets, but evolution had taught them to include the animal parts. More information here.
Finally, not to denegrate your belief structure, or any thing, but if you're a vegetarian for ethical reasons, a little food for thougt: Your diet may actually cause MORE animal deaths than a standard omnivore diet, due to the large numbers of animals (mostly weasels and the like, that get sucked into grain threshers, but still) killed in harvesting grain. I can't find the link at the moment, and I've already spent FAR too much time typing this, but I've read that the lowest-impact diet a human can have (i.e. killing the least amount of animals to support it--the most 'in tune with nature', to use some hippy words) is a diet of organic fruits and vegetables, supplemented with the meat and milk of free range ruminants. Sound familiar?
Further, it's not clear how valuable hunting was. Contemporary hunter-gatherers get more calories, more regularly, from gathering than from hunting. Raising the question, were the first weapons primarily defensive?
I don't have an answer for you regarding the weapons, but hunting is considered rather instrumental in our evolution as a species. Access to greater amounts of animal fats in our diet allowed us to deveolp the much larger cranial capacities than those from whom we evolved, helping put the 'sapiens' in homo sapiens, so to speak. From this paper:
More animal fat in the diet meant not only additional energy, but also a source of ready-formed long chain PUFAs, including AA, DTA(docosatetraenoic acid (DTA, C22:4, w-3), and DHA. These three fatty acids together make up over 90% of the long chain PUFA (i.e. the structurally significant and biochemically active fat) found in the brain gray matter of all mammalian species. (Sinclair, 1975)
Don't go reaching for your gun just yet. The summary was a bit misleading, choosing to quote parts with words like "required" and "have to". No one is being *forced* to do anything. The government decided to throw some money to a city and university if they were willing to make this change in infrastructure. From TFA:
`We will start to receive applications next week. After screening candidate cities and universities, the test beds are likely to be decided by late March,'' MIC director Lee Do-kyu said."
If a city or university doesn't want to have a chance to participate, they won't apply. It's not as though the gov't is just picking a town at random and saying, "YOU MUST USE LINUX!" Also from TFA:
Lee said that the project will be kick-started just after the decision of the city and university, toward which end the ministry earmarked 4.1 billion won for this year alone.
``Already many universities and local governments have shown interest in the project. We expect big-sized entities will join it,'' he added.
For reference, 4.1B won works out to just over $4.2M USD according to www.xe.com. Not a bad deal if you ask me.
>Is that what he really wants to be teaching the kids? To doubt what they can't see for themselves?
>>Actually, yes. We schould teach our children to doubt and question absolutely everything. To me, the need for a continuous search for answers is one of the greatest attributes a person can have.
I agree. Our children should be raised on healthy food, decent values, and taught to question everything for themselves. Obviously, on that last one, you're gonna have to make some concessions on some of the more-controversial or difficult to understand (even for adults) issues, but on the whole, yeah, we need new generations with respect for the search for answers, rather than drones puppets and parrots coming out of our schools.
>>>I think such absolute skepticism is impossible to maintain in the face of how much there is in the world to understand. Very few people are in any position to vouch for the authenticity of much of the scientific experimentation that goes on...
That is the pitfall of this view, and strong forms of positivism. Hopefully though, these theoretical students will have been tought not just to "question absolutely everything" for themselves, but to have a greater understanding of how we come to declare things known--i.e., part of teaching them how to question, is (should be) learning processes by which we come to agree as a community on the validity of something. I personally personally don't have time to verify for myself the vast number of things about which I wonder, but using the same sense of reason appled to other sources (i.e. how reputable is this source on this topic?), I can get a picture suitable for my own needs and intellect level.
Third, since when did everything have to be brand new and different to be valid? We don't suddenly decide that cars are "so last century" and begin driving 10 foot hamster wheels, do we?
Clearly you've never travelled in the comfort, style, and security that only a giant hamster wheel can provide. I'd be happy to give you a ride some time in my 9-foot wheel. It's not quite as large as the 10-foot model, but I think that's just a little too 'flashy'. I drive one for the gas mileage, not to make a spectacle of myself.
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I know you say you still need IE for things but, seriously, if that's the trouble you go to to avoid malware, maybe it's time to download that Ubuntu ISO. Hell, even a Gentoo install would be a timesaver.
That costs extra.
Without our borders there as political boundaries, then our influence would spread as far as we want it to, and what would stop us from using our military prowess (read: everything in our power including nukes) to make everyone live by our way or the highway?
Uh, are you being facetious here? Honestly, I'm not really sure.
I don't see what US borders have to do with it. There are plenty of shady characters right here in these United States.
Exactly. And her sentence? According to TFA, "such willful attempts at piracy, even if they fail, could be punished by up to 10 years in prison."
Meanwhile, the average federal manslaughter sentence is just under three years.
I'd prefer them to glow in the dark. Everyone knows that mutant pirhana prefer to attack under the cover of darkness!
Actually, your steering wheel analogy isn't correct. In the early 90's, then-Swedish automaker SAAB built a prototype car based on a fly-by-wire joystick concept. They found in testing that drivers had greater control with their joystick than they did with a traditional steering wheel. It was also safer in a crash, due to the advantages it offered in airbag placement. The system never went into production as it was determined that it would be far too difficult to convince the general public of these advantages.
Though I too greatly prefer the book to the film, it's not entirely Kubrick's fault. He wasn't given the complete novella to work from; the version published in America at the time lacked the 21st chapter, due to some terrible editing decision, which drastically changes the ending of the book. I used to absolutely abhor the film, but I've warmed up to it slightly over the years.
Also, by way of interesting anecdote, Burgess was so outraged by the film and Kubrick's treatment of it that, in the musical version of ACO, which Burgess published after Kubrick's film, there is a bald, bearded, bespectacled old man, an effigy of Kubrick, who is severely beaten by Alex and his droogs.
And how do you propose that a test subject report the data he gathers when he's, you know...dead?
Welcome to vendor lock-in.
You bring up some interesting points.
...my vegetarianism doesn't seem to have stopped my brain from developing.
:-)
The point isn't that vegetarianism keeps a modern human's brain from developing properly, but that the introduction of animal fats over a long period of time (far longer than a single human life--we're talking about evolution here) to our ancestors' diets helped us develop the brain power we have today.
The body synthesizes the protein from the component amino acids in the diet just fine - or else how in world would a cow grow so much beef from eating grass?
I don't know about you, but I know I don't have four stomachs. Sure, a cow can obviously synthesize lots of protein eating only grass, but I'm not a cow. Neither are you. (If you are, my compliments on your being able to navigate a keyboard with your hooves, as well as your good diction. Well done!) Joking aside, your body wouldn't survive on an all-grass diet.
If you read the second paragraph there in the primate baseline, the diet they ascribe to early primates is strikingly similar to the diet that is promoted to cure America's dietary ills: fruits, veggies, lots of vitamins, low sodium, low fat, low cholesterol.
You're absolutely right, almost. We share something like 97% (maybe even more for some species; I'm not gonna get a link, you get the idea) of our genetic code with our closest primate relatives. Our digestive systems are virtually identical. It follows, then, that we should eat very similar diets, like the one you list, with the exception of the fat/cholesterol issue. Throughout history (and pre-history), the fattiest parts of animals were considered the choicest cuts. Ancient man didn't hunt many animals at certain times of the year, because the animals were too lean. I'm not saying that you should adopt an all-bacon diet or something (as delicious as that would be), but recognize that a large part of the reason that fat/cholesterol has become vilified lately (an extremely short amount of time, evolutionarily speaking) is that people like to fill up the tank, but they don't want to drive the car.
By way of personal anecdote, a few years ago I started to get interested in being healthy, eating well, exercise, etc. After some research, I settled into what I'd call a 'mostly-fruit' diet. That is, the majority of the food I eat (probably around 70%) is raw fruit, vegetables, and some select animal products. Sparing you my personal "Why and how I kick ass" story, suffice it to say that while I was skeptical at first, the results were significant enough for me to continue eating this way. I don't *want* to go back to my old 'modern' diet, the occasional Krispy Kreme or trip to my local Noodle House notwithstanding.
The idea comes (to me, at least) from the work of Dr. Weston A. Price. He went around and studied primitive people's dietary and health lives. That is, human diets that were (for the most part) formed by natural selection. The primitive people studied all had excellent health, attributed to their diets, which were much like the primate diets, except that they ate vastly larger quantities of animal matter. Fruits and vegetables still made up the bulk of their diets, but evolution had taught them to include the animal parts. More information here.
Finally, not to denegrate your belief structure, or any thing, but if you're a vegetarian for ethical reasons, a little food for thougt: Your diet may actually cause MORE animal deaths than a standard omnivore diet, due to the large numbers of animals (mostly weasels and the like, that get sucked into grain threshers, but still) killed in harvesting grain. I can't find the link at the moment, and I've already spent FAR too much time typing this, but I've read that the lowest-impact diet a human can have (i.e. killing the least amount of animals to support it--the most 'in tune with nature', to use some hippy words) is a diet of organic fruits and vegetables, supplemented with the meat and milk of free range ruminants. Sound familiar?
I don't have an answer for you regarding the weapons, but hunting is considered rather instrumental in our evolution as a species. Access to greater amounts of animal fats in our diet allowed us to deveolp the much larger cranial capacities than those from whom we evolved, helping put the 'sapiens' in homo sapiens, so to speak. From this paper:
>Is that what he really wants to be teaching the kids? To doubt what they can't see for themselves?
>>Actually, yes. We schould teach our children to doubt and question absolutely everything. To me, the need for a continuous search for answers is one of the greatest attributes a person can have.
I agree. Our children should be raised on healthy food, decent values, and taught to question everything for themselves. Obviously, on that last one, you're gonna have to make some concessions on some of the more-controversial or difficult to understand (even for adults) issues, but on the whole, yeah, we need new generations with respect for the search for answers, rather than drones puppets and parrots coming out of our schools.
>>>I think such absolute skepticism is impossible to maintain in the face of how much there is in the world to understand. Very few people are in any position to vouch for the authenticity of much of the scientific experimentation that goes on...
That is the pitfall of this view, and strong forms of positivism. Hopefully though, these theoretical students will have been tought not just to "question absolutely everything" for themselves, but to have a greater understanding of how we come to declare things known--i.e., part of teaching them how to question, is (should be) learning processes by which we come to agree as a community on the validity of something. I personally personally don't have time to verify for myself the vast number of things about which I wonder, but using the same sense of reason appled to other sources (i.e. how reputable is this source on this topic?), I can get a picture suitable for my own needs and intellect level.
Third, since when did everything have to be brand new and different to be valid? We don't suddenly decide that cars are "so last century" and begin driving 10 foot hamster wheels, do we?
Clearly you've never travelled in the comfort, style, and security that only a giant hamster wheel can provide. I'd be happy to give you a ride some time in my 9-foot wheel. It's not quite as large as the 10-foot model, but I think that's just a little too 'flashy'. I drive one for the gas mileage, not to make a spectacle of myself.
A couple Katamari should do quite nicely!