Divorce Your Car --and get into a relationship with a Bike!



> ...In the event that they're spending all their time savenging, which we no
> longer do. And keep in mind that these people did not eat a lot of meat,
> and much of the meat they did eat was in the form of worms and bugs. Anyone
> in favor of adding worms and bugs to the supermarket shelves because we're
> evolved to eat them? ;-)


Bugs are indeed very good and tasty. Some insectariums make degustations
every now and then.
If you can get beyhond the appearence of the bugs, you will enjoy
them... I can remember a big south american ant tasting like blue cheese...

Also, in many countries, people do eat bugs. You take the worms, smash
them, mix them with flour and make high protein bread!.

In some asian countries, you can find cans of worms at the
supermarket... you can even find these cans in some dark stores of your
local chinatown (I saw some in Montreal, Qc)!

Have you ever ate snails? frog legs? .. they are very good!

What don't you eat cat and dogs? ... cats taste about the same as rabits!

Why don't you want to eat bugs while you do (most people do at least)
eat sea fruits? ... look at an oyster!

Occidental 'education' (or lack of) makes most of us reject things that
really should not be rejected.... so open your mind a bit and you will
see many feeding oportunities in this world!

Jean
 
bill wrote:

> If you think 'work' does not involve BTU or calories expended then you
> are just fooling yourself into an early "Push up the daisies" scenario.


Everyone knows that work is force x net distance. Therefore, a cyclist
going 5 miles one direction and then 5 miles in the opposite direction
does no work (since the net distance is 0) ;).
 
>> Cool. Make students' grades contingent on swallowing misinformation whole
>> without questioning it. No wonder you're so invested in believing and
>> making others believe it's true. Because if it's not, you've miseducated
>> a *lot* of students, and have written records of that fact.
>>

>
> It is a refereed textbook in the 10th edition. Sorry about that. Other
> articles think that figure may be too low.


Others, too high. Certainly there's no way to actually determine if it's
true without trying it :).

I think it's funny you believe everything that's in that textbook
unquestioningly, while rejecting out of hand what's in, say, urban planning
text books.
 
In article <[email protected]>,
[email protected] (Matthew Russotto) wrote:

> In article <[email protected]>, Amy
> Blankenship <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> >"Matthew Russotto" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> >news:[email protected]...
> >>
> >> The glycemic index of white bread is 100. The glycemic index of
> >> wheat bread is 99. Processing isn't the issue.

> >
> >That's standard processed wheat bread. Real wheat bread is when you
> >mill the wheat berries just before baking. Got any figures on that?

>
> Unless some magic occurs during a delay between the milling of the
> flour and the baking of the bread, it makes no difference. Not
> surprising, really; the digestible carbohydrates in whole wheat bread
> are exactly the same as those in white bread; the only difference is
> the removal of indigestible fiber.


Bingo. Although "indigestible" is sort of the point of fiber. ;-)
 
"Matthew Russotto" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> In article <[email protected]>,
> Amy Blankenship <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>"Matthew Russotto" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>>news:[email protected]...
>>>
>>> The glycemic index of white bread is 100. The glycemic index of wheat
>>> bread is 99. Processing isn't the issue.

>>
>>That's standard processed wheat bread. Real wheat bread is when you mill
>>the wheat berries just before baking. Got any figures on that?

>
> Unless some magic occurs during a delay between the milling of the
> flour and the baking of the bread, it makes no difference. Not
> surprising, really; the digestible carbohydrates in whole wheat bread are
> exactly the same as those in white bread; the only difference is the
> removal of indigestible fiber.


While grain is in its whole berry state it can remain fresh and viable for
many years. In fact archeologists have found wheat in 3000-year-old pyramids
that was still viable. However, once that grain has been milled in to flour,
it begins to die you might say. If it isn't used within 72 hours a lot of
the vitamins and minerals contained in the grain begin to break down. Whole
grains contain a large amount of oils and these begin to oxidize and can go
rancid giving bread an old dirty taste. The stuff in the store has had a lot
of the oils removed so that it won't go rancid as fast but because you don't
know how old that flour is. You may be getting whole grain flour that isn't
that much better for you than white flour. With the exception of the bran,
this will still be there no matter what.
 
Matthew Russotto wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>,
> bill <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 75% of the world's population is surplus anyway.

>
> [...]
>> now. Rolling the global population to about 1 billion (max)

>
> OK, you first.


I'm not volunteering, yet. But Somalia might not be a bad place to
start. After our incident there I think we only need just so many gun
toting, murdering 12 year old African kids. There is one example of a
country that would be better off without people of any kind. The whole
planet needs a reduction before we kill it for everyone, man and animal
both.
Bill Baka
 
Tim McNamara wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>,
> bill <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Tim McNamara wrote:
>>> In article <[email protected]>,
>>> "george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>>>> Small farms would condemn about 75% of the current world's
>>>>>> population to death. That is not a solution except for death.
>>>>> I don't know if the 75% is correct but the basic idea is sound.
>>> No, it's not. Where do you think 75% (actually more) of the
>>> world's population gets its food now? From small farms. Large
>>> scale agribusiness farming is the purview of economically developed
>>> countries which feeds a fraction of the world's population
>>> regularly, and which does provide emergency capacity when food
>>> production fails in ecologically difficult areas due to drought,
>>> flooding, fires, etc. In the latter case, large scale farming does
>>> save lives. However, 75% of the world's population is not all
>>> going to suffer such catastrophes at once.

>> 75% of the world's population is surplus anyway. I just read where
>> the United States is going to top 300 million around October 15.
>> Compared to the country (this one) I grew up in that is about 150
>> million too many. We are paving over everything, quite literally. I
>> went to visit the houses I grew up in, back in Illinois and all the
>> corn fields I grew up playing in are now built over with housing or
>> "Condo-fields". If we keep replacing corn with people we are going to
>> be in deeper **** than we are now. Rolling the global population to
>> about 1 billion (max) and keeping it there with some no growth
>> thinking is about the only way the human race will be here in another
>> 200 years. I think we are setting ourselves up far a mass plague or
>> starvation that is going to thin out the population. We just plain
>> doesn't need so many people.

>
> I suspect that there are points of agreement that we could find, but
> there are also points of disagreement. For example, your claim that 75%
> of the population is "surplus." Of course, that gives you a 4:1 chance
> of being one of the surplus ones. ;-) I agree that there is
> overpopulation not only in America but around the world as well. I
> cannot bring myself to call anyone "surplus," however. They have every
> bit as much right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as I
> have.


My actual solution was to ship food to them that had fertility
impairment hormones in it or mandate a vasectomy or tube tie in order to
qualify if people already had 2 or more children. Nobody gets hurt, but
nobody gets to have 10 kids they can't feed, either.
>
> In terms of whether we need so many people, the answer is "yes." A free
> market capitalist system is dependent upon a continually enlarging
> market (e.g. more customers) for long term sustainability. Of course,
> ecologically the population is not infinitely expandable, which is
> something I think you are getting at in your post.


That is actually stupid politico thinking since all that growth is not
only making city life a clogged mess but also paving over everything a
building can't be put up on. I lived far enough out in the Chicago
suburbs in the early 50's that I thought it would remain corn fields
forever. I went back in 1993 and found the farm was now a condo farm.
That's progress??? Chicago is unique in that they have the Metra rail
which has double decker commuter trains going up to 100 miles in a big
wagon wheel pattern around the city. There is also weekly if not daily
news of yet another car trying to run the rail gate and getting everyone
inside killed.
>
>>> Sedentary lifestyles are unhealthy. That's not exactly news. It
>>> is the same phenomenon as seen in the U.S. of course, which has
>>> developed over 75-100 years. The effects are dramatically
>>> noticeable among relatively isolated groups that get rapidly
>>> introduced to technology and "modern" foods.

>> This reminds me of an anecdote that I read once somewhere. You see
>> really, really fat people, and you see really, really old people but
>> you never see really fat and old people. I saw Rose Kennedy on
>> television last night at 104 and she was skinny. You just don't make
>> it much past 70-75 by being a sedentary porker.

>
> I work with the elderly. I go to two nursing homes a day, five days a
> week, and have done so for 16 years. The current elderly are pretty
> much pioneers- no generation has lived as long on average as they are
> living. Few of the centenarians I have met are particularly happy about
> it. They have often outlived their siblings, friends and most of their
> children. Their physical abilities are often limited, and of course
> nursing home life presents a number of problems (as well as a number of
> opportunities).


Somewhere I will never be found. I would walk in front of a train before
that happened.

I do see some elderly folks (>90 and even 100 years
> old) who are overweight, but on average I would say that the very old
> have tended to not be overweight.


That is probably recent overweight as that condition does not lead to
100 years. Maybe they are ready to leave this world.

In terms of aging, into and past the
> 8th decade there is a tendency to lose significant muscle mass and
> subcutaneous fat, which is part of why the very old tend to be skinny.


To their generation, exercise just wasn't in the picture unless it was
needed to actually do something. Lift weights? Up and down? Why? My
older sister is 71 and practically refuses to watch television because
she was a nurse for over 45 years and only quit at 67 after hurting her
back trying to roll over a 300 pound patient. She was doing in home care
rather than the rat race of hospitals and after that she figured that if
they want to be that fat, they can damn well roll themselves over. Most
of her patients were younger than her, which got her to thinking, what
next? Now she is hiking the Grand Canyon and southern Utah and says the
exercise has made her feel better than ever. Getting older, but nowhere
close to just hanging it up.

> If you look at their family photos, they tended to be of average build
> in middle age.


Jack Lalanne is still going strong 'literally' at 94 and still works out
at least two hours a morning, so it can be done. Wheelchairs just don't
get it.
>
> On the other hand, I haven't seen all that many ultra skinny people live
> long lives. Being underweight doesn't seem to be of benefit either.


My sister told me the healthiest people in her age group were not fat
but neither were they fanatically skinny, just normal.
>
> Overweight is like any other risk factor. Some people win the lottery
> and don't have problems, others get the whammy. I know people who have
> smoked for 80 years and are hale and hearty.


Very few of them I bet.

I know people who have
> smoked for 10 years and have had lung cancer.


I lost 2 friends who were die hard smokers in the last 2 years, both in
their early 50's. My dad made it to 83 smoking Camel non filters.
Flip a coin.

We can give odds for
> populations but not for individuals. At least, not yet. As the
> relationships between the environment and one's genetics becomes better
> known, we may eventually be able to identify individual risks.
>
>>>>> The point is that biologically humans are quite able to eat and
>>>>> flourish when their diet is linked in a postive way with life
>>>>> style.

>> Only until we fish the oceans out of healthy fish and pave over just
>> a bit too much farmland.

>
> The former is fairly close to having happened already. Fish stocks have
> declined dramatically, and commonly eaten fish now were considered "weed
> fish" just 10 to 20 years ago.
>
> My grandfather was a farmer. The family farm in Michigan has been in
> the family since 1878. My grandfather used to get really irked by good
> farmland being turned into suburbs. I've inherited some of that
> attitude. I grew up in a suburb of Chicago, where suburban sprawl is
> quite remarkable. Where New York City went vertical, Chicago went
> horizontal. I live in St. Paul MN now, where suburban sprawl continues
> apace. An oversight body, the Metropolitan Council, was created to try
> to manage this problem but is of course a little more than a political
> football.


At least you know what I mean about sprawl paving over my childhood haunts.
>
>>>>> If one wants to be sedentary then perhaps the solution is massive
>>>>> caloric deprivation.
>>> I'd say that's the wrong phrasing. It's simply that intake needs
>>> to be balance with expenditure. If I sit at a desk all day long in
>>> air conditioned comfort, I only need 1800 k-calories per day to
>>> keep my body weight constant. If I eat lunch at Burger King, I
>>> would be close to meeting that caloric need in a single meal. When
>>> I ride my bike 375 miles/600 km in a weekend, I need a few more
>>> k-calories (13,000 or so just for riding, plus basal metabolism
>>> k-calories).

>> That is an extreme example. Maybe 1/100,000 people put out that much
>> energy for the weekend. If you sit at a desk all day you should only
>> need about 1,500 calories a day unless you are over 6 feet tall and
>> have more mass to support. Maybe 1,200 for the average woman. I have
>> to envy you that you can take the entire weekend for riding and not
>> have to worry about wife/kids/house/car or whatever. I am married
>> with all of the above and it is only rarely that I can sneak out for
>> a 12-14 hour marathon ride/hike on a weekend. There is always
>> something to be done at home, since it is my home and not just a
>> rented bachelor pad.

>
> Oh, yes, my example was quite extreme. I only do it once a year as part
> of the local brevet series (200, 300, 400 and 600 km rides, see
> www.rusa.org). I was hoping to illustrate by exaggeration. I am 6'4"
> tall, also, so I tend to think in slightly larger numbers regarding
> food.


Ummm,
Yeah, I need to take that into consideration. I have a friend who is
6'8" tall and typically burns 4,000 to 5,000 calories a day without
gaining weight. He also does not have a strictly desk job. I worked with
him on a contract basis for about 3 months in a factory and even as an
electrician he does a lot of mechanical work and chasing emergencies
around the plant. Cubicles kill, real jobs don't.

However, during times when I am not getting much exercise- and my
> work, while not done at a desk, is still within what I would call
> "sedentary"- I have to be very careful about what I eat to prevent
> weight gain. Calorie dense foods must be avoided.
>
>>>>> Anyway, poor life style choices far outweigh mass farming as a
>>>>> cause of human misery.
>>> That's true to an extent, but there are both individual choices and
>>> social factors to be considered. Social engineering in the U.S.
>>> has predisposed us to eat high calorie, high fat, low fiber diets
>>> with predictable health consequences.

>> I would add here that poor lifestyle also includes having 4 or more
>> kids and then wondering what happened to your life because you always
>> have to be doing something to support the kids. The diets are still
>> of our own choosing, like whether mom wants to cook or just gives the
>> kids money to go to McJunk. Sit down restaurants have the same
>> problem since they are cooking to be listed on the 5 star gourmet
>> listings if they can and healthy food rarely makes the gourmet list.

>
> And restaurants tend to serve a *lot* of food on the plate- about 50%
> more than is reasonable.


Yeah,
You notice how "Super size me" has disappeared from the McDonalds'
commercials?
>
>>>> Except that the poor lifestyle we are supposed to live today is
>>>> correlated with much longer life expectancy. When the study which
>>>> showed that you had to be about 50 lbs overweight before life was
>>>> shorter was published, the establishemnt went nuts.
>>> 50 pounds overweight is not unusual in America. I've been there
>>> myself, now I'm only 5 pounds overweight after resuming bicycling
>>> and changing my diet pretty dramatically. The study you cite was
>>> not definitive.

>> 50 pounds overweight is pretty definitive to me since that is where I
>> am right now due to too many things other than biking I had to take
>> care of this year. Also a friend who ambushed me over the weekends
>> and his idea of lunch was a Chinese all you can eat buffet. Chinese
>> is good, sort of and I ate about 2 plates of Broccoli and a plate
>> full or steamed fish and shrimp but still managed to gain weight with
>> that as the only meal of the day. I think the Wok oil on the stir fry
>> Broccoli got me.

>
> The amount of oil used to stir fry one dish is dramatic- not
> infrequently nearly a cup of oil. When I stir fry at home it's a
> tablespoon of oil in the wok!


I am too lazy to stir, so I steam things, a lot. The fat just melts down
into the water.
>
> <snip>
>
>>> vegetable products, have hit the news in the past 10 years. There
>>> are also issues of longer term food safety- contamination with
>>> pesticides and synthetic chemicals, prion diseases, and possibly
>>> safety issues with genetically modified organisms (the latter not
>>> having yet been demonstrated "in the wild" as it were. With any
>>> luck it never will be).

>> Genetically modified foods are and have been a fact of life for
>> hundreds of years through selective breeding and grafting of orchard
>> trees. Don't fool yourself that just because a scientist did it in a
>> lab it is any different, cause it ain't what grows in the wild.

>
> There is a difference between selective breeding and hybridization, and
> sticking fish genes in a tomato.


Still, people should not worry about growing strange body parts or
anything. Why should it be immoral or "Against God's wishs" if an
improvement is found in a DNA lab?
>
>>> Heart disease and diabetes are more prevalent than at any time in
>>> human history. That is in part due to food not being safe,
>>> although this is not food safety as it is normally thought of. In
>>> this case it is the overavailability of poor food choices.

>> Heart disease is due to people becoming more and more spoiled through
>> technology, plain and simple, with McJunk food coming in a close
>> second.

>
> Well, there is some evidence that strenuous exercise can overcome the
> effects of diet. The Inuit example cited earlier in the thread being
> one such situation. When Will Steger and crew went to the North Pole a
> decade or so back, they were studied medically. Their diet was hugely
> laden in saturated fats- the equivalent of eating a stick of butter per
> person a day, IIRC. But their blood lipids profiles didn't change due
> to the exercise and extremity of the environment. In the temperate
> zones living the sedentary lifestyle that most Americans live, that type
> if diet is going to be disastrous for most people.


Our way of "Nicing them into extinction" so they won't complain about
our drilling for oil up there?

Bill Baka
 
Jean H. wrote:
>> ...In the event that they're spending all their time savenging, which
>> we no longer do. And keep in mind that these people did not eat a lot
>> of meat, and much of the meat they did eat was in the form of worms
>> and bugs. Anyone in favor of adding worms and bugs to the supermarket
>> shelves because we're evolved to eat them? ;-)

>
> Bugs are indeed very good and tasty. Some insectariums make degustations
> every now and then.
> If you can get beyhond the appearence of the bugs, you will enjoy
> them... I can remember a big south american ant tasting like blue
> cheese...
>
> Also, in many countries, people do eat bugs. You take the worms, smash
> them, mix them with flour and make high protein bread!.
>
> In some asian countries, you can find cans of worms at the
> supermarket... you can even find these cans in some dark stores of your
> local chinatown (I saw some in Montreal, Qc)!
>
> Have you ever ate snails? frog legs? .. they are very good!
>
> What don't you eat cat and dogs? ... cats taste about the same as rabits!
>
> Why don't you want to eat bugs while you do (most people do at least)
> eat sea fruits? ... look at an oyster!
>
> Occidental 'education' (or lack of) makes most of us reject things that
> really should not be rejected.... so open your mind a bit and you will
> see many feeding oportunities in this world!
>
> Jean


Back around 1960 there was a big thing about eating chocolate covered
ants and even bees. Us kids were eating them on dares.

Bill Baka
 
Arif Khokar wrote:
> bill wrote:
>
>> If you think 'work' does not involve BTU or calories expended then you
>> are just fooling yourself into an early "Push up the daisies" scenario.

>
> Everyone knows that work is force x net distance. Therefore, a cyclist
> going 5 miles one direction and then 5 miles in the opposite direction
> does no work (since the net distance is 0) ;).


There's one in every group.
Bill Baka
 
In article <[email protected]>,
bill <[email protected]> wrote:

> Cubicles kill, real jobs don't.


LOL! There is something to that- not only in terms of physical health
but also in terms of mental and spiritual health. I heard a term last
week that I had never run across before: "cubicle farms."
 
"bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Tim McNamara wrote:
>> In article <[email protected]>,
>> bill <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> Tim McNamara wrote:
>>>> In article <[email protected]>,
>>>> "george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>>> Small farms would condemn about 75% of the current world's
>>>>>>> population to death. That is not a solution except for death.
>>>>>> I don't know if the 75% is correct but the basic idea is sound.
>>>> No, it's not. Where do you think 75% (actually more) of the world's
>>>> population gets its food now? From small farms. Large scale
>>>> agribusiness farming is the purview of economically developed countries
>>>> which feeds a fraction of the world's population regularly, and which
>>>> does provide emergency capacity when food production fails in
>>>> ecologically difficult areas due to drought, flooding, fires, etc. In
>>>> the latter case, large scale farming does save lives. However, 75% of
>>>> the world's population is not all going to suffer such catastrophes at
>>>> once.
>>> 75% of the world's population is surplus anyway. I just read where the
>>> United States is going to top 300 million around October 15. Compared to
>>> the country (this one) I grew up in that is about 150 million too many.
>>> We are paving over everything, quite literally. I went to visit the
>>> houses I grew up in, back in Illinois and all the corn fields I grew up
>>> playing in are now built over with housing or "Condo-fields". If we keep
>>> replacing corn with people we are going to be in deeper **** than we are
>>> now. Rolling the global population to about 1 billion (max) and keeping
>>> it there with some no growth thinking is about the only way the human
>>> race will be here in another 200 years. I think we are setting ourselves
>>> up far a mass plague or starvation that is going to thin out the
>>> population. We just plain doesn't need so many people.

>>
>> I suspect that there are points of agreement that we could find, but
>> there are also points of disagreement. For example, your claim that 75%
>> of the population is "surplus." Of course, that gives you a 4:1 chance
>> of being one of the surplus ones. ;-) I agree that there is
>> overpopulation not only in America but around the world as well. I
>> cannot bring myself to call anyone "surplus," however. They have every
>> bit as much right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as I
>> have.

>
> My actual solution was to ship food to them that had fertility impairment
> hormones in it or mandate a vasectomy or tube tie in order to qualify if
> people already had 2 or more children. Nobody gets hurt, but nobody gets
> to have 10 kids they can't feed, either.


I think you're operating under two fundamental misconceptions:

1) That civilizations never reach a point where population stops increasing
2) That children never feed their parents

If you look at the most developed nations, population growth through
reproduction is in the near-zero to negative range, depending on which
country you're talking about. This implies that as more and more nations
become industrialized, population will level off or even decline. The
reason we have such extreme population growth now is that we have better
education, health care, food production, and food distribution. So
mortality is down.

Now let's look at the second premise. In the developing world, children are
often valuable hands to produce food and/or the means to get food. So in
that sense, developing nations can't afford "pet children" who are not
expected to return any value to the family in the way we do in the US. So
people in developing nations tend to reproduce more because they need the
additional hands and because of higher infant and child mortality rates.
Small amounts of education, especially for female children, greatly reduces
mortality among infants and children, so population will initially spike as
education becomes available.

But this makes the benefits of education tangible, so developng peoples
slowly spend more and more time in school in order to reap more benefits of
education. This extends the childhood years, and people begin to reproduce
less. In addition, since the children are spending all their time learning,
they are not an asset to the household, but a drain on it until they become
productive in their teens or twenties. At which time they are themselves
ready to reproduce, so they split off into their own households *and never
return any value to the parent household.*

And this is exactly why as nations develop, population levels off. So if we
really want to control population we need to educate, educate, educate.
 
In article <[email protected]>,
bill <[email protected]> wrote:

> > bill <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> Genetically modified foods are and have been a fact of life for
> >> hundreds of years through selective breeding and grafting of
> >> orchard trees. Don't fool yourself that just because a scientist
> >> did it in a lab it is any different, cause it ain't what grows in
> >> the wild.

>
> Tim McNamara<[email protected]> wrote:
> > There is a difference between selective breeding and hybridization,
> > and sticking fish genes in a tomato.

>
> Still, people should not worry about growing strange body parts or
> anything. Why should it be immoral or "Against God's wishs" if an
> improvement is found in a DNA lab?


IMHO it's not about being moral or against God's wishes (not being a
Believer, I don't think in those terms). It's about introducing
unknowns into the environment that were formerly impossible by natural
selection. We don't know the potential adverse consequences. What if
genetic modification of a food results in a prion-mediated disease that
takes a decade to show symptoms? Millions of people could be affected
before the problem was known.

Of course, this can happen without genetic modification, too. Hundreds
of thousands of Britons ate BSE-infected beef products, but fortunately
human susceptibility to the prion appears to be rare and cases of vCJD
have numbered below 200 as far as I know. About 800 BSE-infected cattle
are thought to have gone to market in the U.S., although this is a
mathematical projection due to the FDA and USDA basically refusing to do
competent testing over the past 6 years. It's more important to them to
protect rich cattle interests than the public health.

In many cases, genetically modified organisms are solutions in search of
a problem. They are a supply-side phenomenon and are quite unnecessary
as far as food goes. There is a better argument for using GMOs to
produce medicines (most insulin is now produced by GMO bacteria to
closely mimic human insulin; previously diabetics used animal insulins
extracted from pigs, cows, horses, etc.). The testing for medicines is
far more stringent and the risk of GMOs getting released into the wild
is far far lower. And GMOs may be useful for other technologies such as
nanotechnology.
 
On Sat, 7 Oct 2006 09:46:19 -0500, "Amy Blankenship"
<[email protected]> wrote:


>
>I think you're operating under two fundamental misconceptions:
>
>1) That civilizations never reach a point where population stops increasing


You and your stupid confusing double negatives. Why do all the
morons love to talk that way? Why not just say "Population keeps
growing."?
 
"Speeders & Drunk Drivers are MURDERERS" <[email protected]> wrote in
message news:[email protected]...
> On Sat, 7 Oct 2006 09:46:19 -0500, "Amy Blankenship"
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>>
>>I think you're operating under two fundamental misconceptions:
>>
>>1) That civilizations never reach a point where population stops
>>increasing

>
> You and your stupid confusing double negatives. Why do all the
> morons love to talk that way? Why not just say "Population keeps
> growing."?


In 63 nations now the population is not or shortly will not be growing
(except through in-migration).
 
Tim McNamara wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>,
> bill <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>> bill <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>> Genetically modified foods are and have been a fact of life for
>>>> hundreds of years through selective breeding and grafting of
>>>> orchard trees. Don't fool yourself that just because a scientist
>>>> did it in a lab it is any different, cause it ain't what grows in
>>>> the wild.

>> Tim McNamara<[email protected]> wrote:
>>> There is a difference between selective breeding and hybridization,
>>> and sticking fish genes in a tomato.

>> Still, people should not worry about growing strange body parts or
>> anything. Why should it be immoral or "Against God's wishs" if an
>> improvement is found in a DNA lab?

>
> IMHO it's not about being moral or against God's wishes (not being a
> Believer, I don't think in those terms). It's about introducing
> unknowns into the environment that were formerly impossible by natural
> selection. We don't know the potential adverse consequences. What if
> genetic modification of a food results in a prion-mediated disease that
> takes a decade to show symptoms? Millions of people could be affected
> before the problem was known.


Take it in stride. You don't know what you are inhaling every time you
ride in traffic either. Remember the MTBE fiasco about 5 years ago? Some
of the gas stations were putting "MTBE Free" in bigger letters than
their prices, as if that was the biggest selling point. Industry puts
plenty of unknowns into the environment and we never know until some
focus group makes a big stink over it. Life goes on.
>
> Of course, this can happen without genetic modification, too. Hundreds
> of thousands of Britons ate BSE-infected beef products, but fortunately
> human susceptibility to the prion appears to be rare and cases of vCJD
> have numbered below 200 as far as I know. About 800 BSE-infected cattle
> are thought to have gone to market in the U.S., although this is a
> mathematical projection due to the FDA and USDA basically refusing to do
> competent testing over the past 6 years. It's more important to them to
> protect rich cattle interests than the public health.


I can't argue about the 'Competency' of the FDA or USDA since both are
afraid to rattle the rich farmers too much.
>
> In many cases, genetically modified organisms are solutions in search of
> a problem. They are a supply-side phenomenon and are quite unnecessary
> as far as food goes.


Most of the GMOs that I have read about are modified to withstand a
particular plant disease or to survive long periods without water, or
something like that. There is a need or some foods might not be
available at all.

There is a better argument for using GMOs to
> produce medicines (most insulin is now produced by GMO bacteria to
> closely mimic human insulin; previously diabetics used animal insulins
> extracted from pigs, cows, horses, etc.).


I read a lot on that and one of the technical journals I have a
subscription to states that they are now looking at ocean organisms
right down to the single celled plankton and finding all kinds of
naturally occurring 'interesting' compounds. It used to be the rain
forests, but now that it is more profitable to burn them to grow beef
for McDonalds that is kind of fading into history.

The testing for medicines is
> far more stringent and the risk of GMOs getting released into the wild
> is far far lower. And GMOs may be useful for other technologies such as
> nanotechnology.


The amount of research and computerization would surprise you. The big
Pharma companies are searching through 100's of thousands of compounds
weekly and tossing the ones that don't fit the bill for the one thing
they are looking for. If something doesn't just happen to be effective
at curing AIDs or Cancer or one of the money pit diseases they will just
toss the formula, and not consider that it may cure the common cold.
Lots of waste going on, and they don't like to share, so another company
might discover 5 years down the road a miracle cure that one company
tossed out.

Bush is the biggest enemy of research right now, since that fool thinks
stem cell research is immoral. Good thing that after November he will be
a real "Lame duck". Worst president in my lifetime, except maybe Truman.
Bill Baka
 
Tim McNamara wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>,
> bill <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Cubicles kill, real jobs don't.

>
> LOL! There is something to that- not only in terms of physical health
> but also in terms of mental and spiritual health. I heard a term last
> week that I had never run across before: "cubicle farms."


I did work in one and that term fits it to a T. I could stand up and
throw a piece of paper into the appropriate square and hit someone in
the head with a message, so who needed e-mail??? H.P. was a 2,000 person
cubicle farm.
Bill Baka
 
Amy Blankenship wrote:
> "bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>> Tim McNamara wrote:
>>> In article <[email protected]>,
>>> bill <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Tim McNamara wrote:
>>>>> In article <[email protected]>,
>>>>> "george conklin" <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Small farms would condemn about 75% of the current world's
>>>>>>>> population to death. That is not a solution except for death.
>>>>>>> I don't know if the 75% is correct but the basic idea is sound.
>>>>> No, it's not. Where do you think 75% (actually more) of the world's
>>>>> population gets its food now? From small farms. Large scale
>>>>> agribusiness farming is the purview of economically developed countries
>>>>> which feeds a fraction of the world's population regularly, and which
>>>>> does provide emergency capacity when food production fails in
>>>>> ecologically difficult areas due to drought, flooding, fires, etc. In
>>>>> the latter case, large scale farming does save lives. However, 75% of
>>>>> the world's population is not all going to suffer such catastrophes at
>>>>> once.
>>>> 75% of the world's population is surplus anyway. I just read where the
>>>> United States is going to top 300 million around October 15. Compared to
>>>> the country (this one) I grew up in that is about 150 million too many.
>>>> We are paving over everything, quite literally. I went to visit the
>>>> houses I grew up in, back in Illinois and all the corn fields I grew up
>>>> playing in are now built over with housing or "Condo-fields". If we keep
>>>> replacing corn with people we are going to be in deeper **** than we are
>>>> now. Rolling the global population to about 1 billion (max) and keeping
>>>> it there with some no growth thinking is about the only way the human
>>>> race will be here in another 200 years. I think we are setting ourselves
>>>> up far a mass plague or starvation that is going to thin out the
>>>> population. We just plain doesn't need so many people.
>>> I suspect that there are points of agreement that we could find, but
>>> there are also points of disagreement. For example, your claim that 75%
>>> of the population is "surplus." Of course, that gives you a 4:1 chance
>>> of being one of the surplus ones. ;-) I agree that there is
>>> overpopulation not only in America but around the world as well. I
>>> cannot bring myself to call anyone "surplus," however. They have every
>>> bit as much right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as I
>>> have.

>> My actual solution was to ship food to them that had fertility impairment
>> hormones in it or mandate a vasectomy or tube tie in order to qualify if
>> people already had 2 or more children. Nobody gets hurt, but nobody gets
>> to have 10 kids they can't feed, either.

>
> I think you're operating under two fundamental misconceptions:
>
> 1) That civilizations never reach a point where population stops increasing
> 2) That children never feed their parents
>
> If you look at the most developed nations, population growth through
> reproduction is in the near-zero to negative range, depending on which
> country you're talking about. This implies that as more and more nations
> become industrialized, population will level off or even decline. The
> reason we have such extreme population growth now is that we have better
> education, health care, food production, and food distribution. So
> mortality is down.


Way off base for the US. We get one pregnant Mexican having a baby here
and the whole illegal family stays, so that one 'Citizen' gives a whole
pre-existing family the right to stay here. Mortality due to disease is
down from what it used to be, but then people in non-developed countries
just have more children who then starve and of course, we send them
food. Us Natural born Americans don't have that many children because we
are too busy working to survive the high cost of living to support all
the immigrants who we have to support through social programs. China and
India are both over 1 Billion and will keep going as long as we keep
bleeding money to them, which will eventually make us the "EX" superpower.
>
> Now let's look at the second premise. In the developing world, children are
> often valuable hands to produce food and/or the means to get food. So in
> that sense, developing nations can't afford "pet children" who are not
> expected to return any value to the family in the way we do in the US. So
> people in developing nations tend to reproduce more because they need the
> additional hands and because of higher infant and child mortality rates.


You don't read much, do you? The reason they try to reproduce so much is
that there is a high rate of infant death caused by the birth of a new
child. Once there is a new baby to breast feed the next older one is
expected to survive on adult food and often dies from malnutrition.
Our answer to this? Throw money at them or "Adopt" a child in a far away
land, thus making it our problem.

> Small amounts of education, especially for female children, greatly reduces
> mortality among infants and children, so population will initially spike as
> education becomes available.


Uh-huh!
>
> But this makes the benefits of education tangible, so developng peoples
> slowly spend more and more time in school in order to reap more benefits of
> education. This extends the childhood years, and people begin to reproduce
> less. In addition, since the children are spending all their time learning,
> they are not an asset to the household, but a drain on it until they become
> productive in their teens or twenties. At which time they are themselves
> ready to reproduce, so they split off into their own households *and never
> return any value to the parent household.*
>
> And this is exactly why as nations develop, population levels off. So if we
> really want to control population we need to educate, educate, educate.
>

You really do believe the view through your rose colored glasses, don't you.

Bill Baka
 
In article <[email protected]>,
bill <[email protected]> wrote:

> Tim McNamara wrote:
> > In article <[email protected]>,
> > bill <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> >>> bill <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>>> Genetically modified foods are and have been a fact of life for
> >>>> hundreds of years through selective breeding and grafting of
> >>>> orchard trees. Don't fool yourself that just because a scientist
> >>>> did it in a lab it is any different, cause it ain't what grows
> >>>> in the wild.
> >> Tim McNamara<[email protected]> wrote:
> >>> There is a difference between selective breeding and
> >>> hybridization, and sticking fish genes in a tomato.
> >> Still, people should not worry about growing strange body parts or
> >> anything. Why should it be immoral or "Against God's wishs" if an
> >> improvement is found in a DNA lab?

> >
> > IMHO it's not about being moral or against God's wishes (not being
> > a Believer, I don't think in those terms). It's about introducing
> > unknowns into the environment that were formerly impossible by
> > natural selection. We don't know the potential adverse
> > consequences. What if genetic modification of a food results in a
> > prion-mediated disease that takes a decade to show symptoms?
> > Millions of people could be affected before the problem was known.

>
> Take it in stride. You don't know what you are inhaling every time
> you ride in traffic either. Remember the MTBE fiasco about 5 years
> ago? Some of the gas stations were putting "MTBE Free" in bigger
> letters than their prices, as if that was the biggest selling point.
> Industry puts plenty of unknowns into the environment and we never
> know until some focus group makes a big stink over it. Life goes on.


Except for the focus groups often having a very good point. MTBE is a
bad thing once it gets into groundwater. Groundwater is a rather
important thing, after all. I'm not willing to buy the James Watt
vision of the world, being "it doesn't matter if we chop all the trees
down because God's going to end the world anyway and save the
righteous." Granted we have another one of these nuts in office now,
surrounded by an administration that is loyal not to him but to the vast
interests they served in the private sector. Just follow the money and
the smell of cigars.

> > Of course, this can happen without genetic modification, too.
> > Hundreds of thousands of Britons ate BSE-infected beef products,
> > but fortunately human susceptibility to the prion appears to be
> > rare and cases of vCJD have numbered below 200 as far as I know.
> > About 800 BSE-infected cattle are thought to have gone to market in
> > the U.S., although this is a mathematical projection due to the FDA
> > and USDA basically refusing to do competent testing over the past 6
> > years. It's more important to them to protect rich cattle
> > interests than the public health.

>
> I can't argue about the 'Competency' of the FDA or USDA since both
> are afraid to rattle the rich farmers too much.


It's not "rich farmers" so much as the rich middlemen such as Tyson's,
Cargill, etc. There aren't very many rich farmers. There are a lot of
rich middlemen who can afford their own senators.

> > In many cases, genetically modified organisms are solutions in
> > search of a problem. They are a supply-side phenomenon and are
> > quite unnecessary as far as food goes.

>
> Most of the GMOs that I have read about are modified to withstand a
> particular plant disease or to survive long periods without water, or
> something like that. There is a need or some foods might not be
> available at all.


This os one of the failures of the Green Revolution, the proponents of
which never fail to blow their own horns while overlooking the tragic
consequences in many parts of the world. The Green Revolution
introduced inappropriate crops to places all over the world, which
required technologies and inputs that were not going to be reliably
available. Basically they tried to Americanize agriculture in places
where American agricultural practices are not appropriate. Now the
effort is to make up for that failure with GM crops, rather than having
been more intelligent in the first place and helping develop locally
appropriate agricultural practices.

> > There is a better argument for using GMOs to produce medicines
> > (most insulin is now produced by GMO bacteria to closely mimic
> > human insulin; previously diabetics used animal insulins extracted
> > from pigs, cows, horses, etc.).

>
> I read a lot on that and one of the technical journals I have a
> subscription to states that they are now looking at ocean organisms
> right down to the single celled plankton and finding all kinds of
> naturally occurring 'interesting' compounds. It used to be the rain
> forests, but now that it is more profitable to burn them to grow beef
> for McDonalds that is kind of fading into history.
>
> > The testing for medicines is far more stringent and the risk of
> > GMOs getting released into the wild is far far lower. And GMOs may
> > be useful for other technologies such as nanotechnology.

>
> The amount of research and computerization would surprise you. The
> big Pharma companies are searching through 100's of thousands of
> compounds weekly and tossing the ones that don't fit the bill for the
> one thing they are looking for. If something doesn't just happen to
> be effective at curing AIDs or Cancer or one of the money pit
> diseases they will just toss the formula, and not consider that it
> may cure the common cold. Lots of waste going on, and they don't like
> to share, so another company might discover 5 years down the road a
> miracle cure that one company tossed out.
>
> Bush is the biggest enemy of research right now, since that fool
> thinks stem cell research is immoral. Good thing that after November
> he will be a real "Lame duck". Worst president in my lifetime, except
> maybe Truman. Bill Baka


Hmm, I was born in 1959 so my perspective is different. Bush is the
worst President in my lifetime, followed closely by Ronald Reagan.
Personally I do not believe the Democrats will regain control of either
the House or the Senate. The absence of leadership on any issue on that
side of the aisle will doom them to failure yet again, as people will
choose the devil they know. The Democrats have just not offered an
alternative vision to vote for, unlike the Republicans in 1994, who
understood that it isn't enough to hope that the voters will vote
against the other side and vote you in by default.
 
"bill" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>> And this is exactly why as nations develop, population levels off. So if
>> we really want to control population we need to educate, educate,
>> educate.
>>

> You really do believe the view through your rose colored glasses, don't
> you.


While he be educatin', everybody else be fornicatin'.
 
Tim McNamara wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>,
> bill <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Tim McNamara wrote:
>>> In article <[email protected]>,
>>> bill <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>>> bill <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>> Genetically modified foods are and have been a fact of life for
>>>>>> hundreds of years through selective breeding and grafting of
>>>>>> orchard trees. Don't fool yourself that just because a scientist
>>>>>> did it in a lab it is any different, cause it ain't what grows
>>>>>> in the wild.
>>>> Tim McNamara<[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>> There is a difference between selective breeding and
>>>>> hybridization, and sticking fish genes in a tomato.
>>>> Still, people should not worry about growing strange body parts or
>>>> anything. Why should it be immoral or "Against God's wishs" if an
>>>> improvement is found in a DNA lab?
>>> IMHO it's not about being moral or against God's wishes (not being
>>> a Believer, I don't think in those terms). It's about introducing
>>> unknowns into the environment that were formerly impossible by
>>> natural selection. We don't know the potential adverse
>>> consequences. What if genetic modification of a food results in a
>>> prion-mediated disease that takes a decade to show symptoms?
>>> Millions of people could be affected before the problem was known.

>> Take it in stride. You don't know what you are inhaling every time
>> you ride in traffic either. Remember the MTBE fiasco about 5 years
>> ago? Some of the gas stations were putting "MTBE Free" in bigger
>> letters than their prices, as if that was the biggest selling point.
>> Industry puts plenty of unknowns into the environment and we never
>> know until some focus group makes a big stink over it. Life goes on.

>
> Except for the focus groups often having a very good point. MTBE is a
> bad thing once it gets into groundwater. Groundwater is a rather
> important thing, after all. I'm not willing to buy the James Watt
> vision of the world, being "it doesn't matter if we chop all the trees
> down because God's going to end the world anyway and save the
> righteous."


James "Dumb-Ass" Watt.
I never read anything written by an obvious moron.

Granted we have another one of these nuts in office now,
> surrounded by an administration that is loyal not to him but to the vast
> interests they served in the private sector. Just follow the money and
> the smell of cigars.


Heh, heh.
I can't wait until the November mid-term elections that should make him
a dead in the water president.
>
>>> Of course, this can happen without genetic modification, too.
>>> Hundreds of thousands of Britons ate BSE-infected beef products,
>>> but fortunately human susceptibility to the prion appears to be
>>> rare and cases of vCJD have numbered below 200 as far as I know.
>>> About 800 BSE-infected cattle are thought to have gone to market in
>>> the U.S., although this is a mathematical projection due to the FDA
>>> and USDA basically refusing to do competent testing over the past 6
>>> years. It's more important to them to protect rich cattle
>>> interests than the public health.

>> I can't argue about the 'Competency' of the FDA or USDA since both
>> are afraid to rattle the rich farmers too much.

>
> It's not "rich farmers" so much as the rich middlemen such as Tyson's,
> Cargill, etc. There aren't very many rich farmers. There are a lot of
> rich middlemen who can afford their own senators.


Yeah, you got that right, and Tyson's is one brand I won't touch since
finding a bunch of it spoiled and still on the shelves at a Safeway
years ago.
>
>>> In many cases, genetically modified organisms are solutions in
>>> search of a problem. They are a supply-side phenomenon and are
>>> quite unnecessary as far as food goes.

>> Most of the GMOs that I have read about are modified to withstand a
>> particular plant disease or to survive long periods without water, or
>> something like that. There is a need or some foods might not be
>> available at all.

>
> This os one of the failures of the Green Revolution, the proponents of
> which never fail to blow their own horns while overlooking the tragic
> consequences in many parts of the world. The Green Revolution
> introduced inappropriate crops to places all over the world, which
> required technologies and inputs that were not going to be reliably
> available. Basically they tried to Americanize agriculture in places
> where American agricultural practices are not appropriate. Now the
> effort is to make up for that failure with GM crops, rather than having
> been more intelligent in the first place and helping develop locally
> appropriate agricultural practices.


Years ago I read that the lowly Cherry tomato, which will grow almost
anywhere could help to solve world hunger, and I can attest to that. I
had a half acre yard that I planted some Cherry tomatoes on and within a
few months I had so many every week I was begging the neighbors to take
them by the bucket full. If I could have eaten that many tomatoes I
never would have had to buy food again, but short of starving, you can
only take so much of any one thing.
>
>>> There is a better argument for using GMOs to produce medicines
>>> (most insulin is now produced by GMO bacteria to closely mimic
>>> human insulin; previously diabetics used animal insulins extracted
>>> from pigs, cows, horses, etc.).

>> I read a lot on that and one of the technical journals I have a
>> subscription to states that they are now looking at ocean organisms
>> right down to the single celled plankton and finding all kinds of
>> naturally occurring 'interesting' compounds. It used to be the rain
>> forests, but now that it is more profitable to burn them to grow beef
>> for McDonalds that is kind of fading into history.
>>
>>> The testing for medicines is far more stringent and the risk of
>>> GMOs getting released into the wild is far far lower. And GMOs may
>>> be useful for other technologies such as nanotechnology.

>> The amount of research and computerization would surprise you. The
>> big Pharma companies are searching through 100's of thousands of
>> compounds weekly and tossing the ones that don't fit the bill for the
>> one thing they are looking for. If something doesn't just happen to
>> be effective at curing AIDs or Cancer or one of the money pit
>> diseases they will just toss the formula, and not consider that it
>> may cure the common cold. Lots of waste going on, and they don't like
>> to share, so another company might discover 5 years down the road a
>> miracle cure that one company tossed out.
>>
>> Bush is the biggest enemy of research right now, since that fool
>> thinks stem cell research is immoral. Good thing that after November
>> he will be a real "Lame duck". Worst president in my lifetime, except
>> maybe Truman. Bill Baka

>
> Hmm, I was born in 1959 so my perspective is different. Bush is the
> worst President in my lifetime, followed closely by Ronald Reagan.


Roger that.

> Personally I do not believe the Democrats will regain control of either
> the House or the Senate.


Been watching the news lately? I thing Foley just handed both houses to
the Democrats. The voters aren't totally stupid and I think they will
realize that the Republicans could care less about family values other
than talking about it at election time.

The absence of leadership on any issue on that
> side of the aisle will doom them to failure yet again, as people will
> choose the devil they know. The Democrats have just not offered an
> alternative vision to vote for, unlike the Republicans in 1994, who
> understood that it isn't enough to hope that the voters will vote
> against the other side and vote you in by default.


Clinton got my attention when he showed up on the Arsenio Hall show and
played his Saxophone in 1992, so he had a certain 'cool' factor that
neither Bush has had. Since 1980 we have had Republicans with a stick up
their ass, so I think change is due. If Hillary runs, she gets my vote,
Gore really won the popular vote in 2000, and I think 2004 just showed
how a corrupt party can manipulate the votes. No way could Kerry have
lost that badly when Bush was already unpopular.
Bill Baka