because just as with animal life, forms of plant life differ in how much they invest in the potential of individual offspring.

if you're a dandelion or something, you'll have a more insect-like approach. send up hundreds of spores, that each have a 1% chance of germinating. easy come, easy go.

if you develop fruit, you're going for something different. more investment, therefore more expectation, and need, of a payoff.
just like humans.

so, in a like manner, one might wonder why we humans spend roughly a quarter of our lives 'in the nest'. why not something easier?
because we're going for something different.
something a lot more complicated, demanding, and potentially rewarding.

>> ^djsunkid:
Sorry, have to downvote. It was a reflex reaction when they showed mcdonalds with fine dining over it. Want to see american fine dining? Try Alinea or MOTO or The French Laundry, or WD-50, or any of a hundred different places. America actually does have a cuisine. STFU. Fucking big mac. Argh.

I just watched the Alinea video, and while I'm sure the food is delicious, I HATE that form of cuisine...
"Here is your main meal sir"
"Where?"
"There sir, on the plate"
"I can see a flower petal on a stick"
"Yes sir, that is your meal, a dandelion petal infused with Yak butter broth, perched delicately atop a reduction of baby seal flipper, drizzled with aioli and ground camel hoof."
"Well, that sounds great, but I think I'll eat that in, erm, one, maybe two mouthfuls"
"Ahh, but of course, you just need to order another 18 courses sir"
"This one cost me $45 on its own!"
"Is sir a cheapskate?"
"No, but I do need to pay the bills"
"I scoff at you sir... scoff"

Really, a complete wank... I enjoy good food, I enjoy food with great presentation, but I can NEVER come at food where the portion sizes are so insanely small that even after a 3 or 4 course meal you're left empty. I don't suggest just going to a steakhouse and getting the largest damn slab o' meat you can, but come on, I go out to EAT not to sample.

Bush Administration Favored Baby Formula Companies Over Babies
By Brandon Keim August 31, 2007 | 6:08:56 PMCategories: Government, Health
Back in 2004, federal health officials figured that an advertising campaign could help increase rates of breast-feeding in the United States.

Breast milk, as doctors universally recognize and the FDA makes very clear, is healthier than formula. It's full of ingredients developed by a few million years of evolution to do a baby's body good. Breast-fed kids are less likely to get sick as they grow up, the milk is always sterile, and there's probably a psychological benefit, too.

But the baby formula industry -- a subdivision of the high-powered pharmaceutical industry -- didn't like this, reports the Washington Post, so they put pressure on the Department of Health and Human Services to tone down the ads.

The industry roped in ex-Republican National Committee chairman Clayton Yeutter and ex-FDA official Joseph Levitt to meet with HHS officials. They told then-surgeon general Richard Carmona to stay out of the process, which he did.

In a Feb. 17, 2004, letter to [then-HHS secretary Tommy Thompson], Yeutter began "Dear Tommy" and explained that the council wished to meet with him because the draft ad campaign was inappropriately "implying that mothers who use infant formula are placing their babies at risk," and could give rise to class-action lawsuits.

Yeutter acknowledged that the ad agency "may well be correct" in asserting that a softer approach would garner less attention, but he said many women cannot breast-feed or choose not to for legitimate reasons, which may give them "guilty feelings." He asked, "Does the U.S. government really want to engage in an ad campaign that will magnify that guilt?"

Rather than starkly laying out the risks of not breast feeding -- as focus group testing showed would be most effective -- the resulting ads instead made awkward visual references (dandelions! ice cream scoops!) to breasts and soft-peddle the benefits of breast-feeding. As predicted by the Ad Council, this had no impact on breast feeding rates.

And if this wasn't bad enough, an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality study released two months later April found that breast-feeding

... was associated with fewer ear and gastrointestinal infections, as well as lower rates of diabetes, leukemia, obesity, asthma and sudden infant death syndrome. [...]

A top HHS official said that at the time, Suzanne Haynes, an epidemiologist and senior science adviser for the department's Office on Women's Health, argued strongly in favor of promoting the new conclusions in the media and among medical professionals. But her office, which commissioned the report, was specifically instructed by political appointees not to disseminate a news release.

I'm calling BS on this one. When I was a kid we used to pluck a dandelion and use it to touch an electric fence because enough of the current dissipated over the length of the stalk that all you felt was a very mild jolt. This video would have us believe the current would travel through five people -- all grounded -- with no loss? I don't think so.

Gruppe B was insane. The top cars from Audi, Ford, Peugeot et al had up to, and over, 1000 bhp. Mass killings were becoming a semi-regular occurrence with 20 or 30 people being mowed over like so many dandelions, and with several of those being killed. The whole show was, very rightly, halted after the bloody 1986 season. Simultaneously a shameful and fantastic period in automotive racing history.