I didn't give you the clap, that was brain. I gave you diarrhea and a prolapsed rectum, remember?

I was thinking we'd get some pizza rolls and watch Hot Shots: Part Deux.

In reply to this comment by peggedbea:
did you make enough sandwiches to afford a movie?
and have you finished your round of antibiotics? i dont want to catch the clap again like last time.

In reply to this comment by thinker247:
So do you want dinner and a movie, or do you just want me to bone you tonight? XOXO

did you make enough sandwiches to afford a movie?
and have you finished your round of antibiotics? i dont want to catch the clap again like last time.

In reply to this comment by thinker247:
So do you want dinner and a movie, or do you just want me to bone you tonight? XOXO

The systemic disruption idea is interesting. One of my best friends did Biomedical science during his time at uni and we flatted together for part of it. He had a habit of going on about whatever he'd been covering in his lectures to me regardless of my interest level. Most of it was just incomprehensible page long equations, but I figured talking about it was part of his studying method so I put up with it. Still there are things he told me that stick in my mind. One of them was a brake down of what an antibiotic really is. We are Biological, 'biotic' (not to be confused with the Mass Effect appropriation of the term). An antibiotic kills things that are biological. the strongest medically utilized antibiotics kill us when they're given, they just kill bacteria faster. Similarly, fevers are a biological game of chicken, where by the 'blind watch maker' hopes to kill any invading organism with an excess of heat before we dehydrate.
This 'disrupting a complex system' technique for cancer treatment makes me wonder if a lot of the existing drugs in our arsenal might have an potential effect in the efforts against cancer.

It's actually pointless to introduce the solar energy input into the equation at all Crake. The sun has shone and will shine for far longer than human beings will ever manage to survive on this planet. When I and many others look at agricultural reform we look at those aspects of the food production chain that humans can control and can change. The 'facilitation' you talk about is the entire crux of the modern day agricultural dilemma. There are an infinite number of ways that facilitation could happen, and the concern and debate is whether or not the road industry has chosen for us is the one that will bare the most fruit. Clearly it has not. The reasons, myriad, I don't want to write a thesis on the sift.

And I agree, when you start looking at government crop subsidies the energy calculation does lose its relevance. Why? Because you have jumped a 100 steps up a chain that was problematic at its root. The agricultural subsidy issue is a whole other Pandora's box.

Again, it's not the Haber process itself that is unsustainable, it is the entire industrial agricultural framework. The Haber process's dependence on natural gas is problematic, and even with future technological developments aside, it's a reductionist solution that undermines the multitude of complimentary farming techniques that could naturally introduce nitrogen into the soil. It's the kind of simplified agricultural solution that corporate agribusiness monopolies love, and it's this mutual reinforcement that causes concern. Again, the Haber process is a small piece of huge puzzle, we digress.

And with regards to future developments, let me illustrate why future developments are almost irrelevant to many of the problems at hand. In India for example there is a 500 year old tradition of aquaculture, for shrimp specifically. Most of the farms are small, local and sustainably run using various aquaculture farming methods (if you are interested you could read up on the Bheri system of aquaculture, just one of the many traditional systems).

This 'third world' farming technique as some might call it is just as profitable and has yields just as large as the more intensive commercial and industrial aquaculture methods. It has stood the test of time and it also forms the back bone of India's shrimp export economy, the largest in the world.

Industrial shrimp farming has had dismal success around the world. Taiwan, China, Mexico, Ecuador, all these countries have had huge issues keeping commercial shrimp farming sustainable. Wherever commercial shrimp farming has been tried, it has failed to a large degree, usually due to major disease outbreaks. That's why the call it the 'rape and run' industry.

Isn't it strange that the more industrial shrimp farms are introduced in India (due to government subsidies and incentives), the more 'environmental issues' they have to deal with that just didn't exist with the 'traditional third world systems' . . . mangrove destruction, drinking water pollution (from antibiotics and pesticides add to the shrimp ponds to minimize disease) , salinization of groundwater, etc.

Now you might argue with me that the solution to this problem potentially lies with future developments . . . a better antibiotic maybe, perhaps genetically engineering shrimp to be more resistant to disease and pollution, etc, or maybe the solution lies in adopting farming techniques that have been slowly perfected for the last 500 years and are proven to work, where the only interventions that could be made were natural ones and success was determined by how well you could maintain a balanced relationship with your local ecosystem. It is these farming systems and the mindset that they embody that I would like to see the world adopt, improve upon and gravitate towards.

Pinning your hopes for improvement on future developments and technology is totally misguided, especially when the core of the modern industrial agricultural foundation is so rotten. I have nothing against technology, but I'm not going to let the problems, born of brutish and unsophisticated industrial thinking, be overlooked by a corporate apologist futurist mindset. I'm not implying that's how you feel about the issue, but that the stance that many people have. There is an utter lack of holistic thinking in the industrial agricultural world (and everywhere else pretty much) and the direction it is leading us in is potentially frightening.

The problem with belief or lack of belief in the 'theory' of evolution is moot, by using the term theory science already admits that it has not been proven beyond doubt...

Hypothesis
Theory
Law

You hypothesize something is the way it is by looking at the base situation. Then you test it using documented and scientifically repeatable criteria (eg. dropping an apple). If the tests prove overwhelmingly in the affirmative, it becomes a law (eg. the Law of Gravity has passed so many tests it cannot be disproven for example). Evolution is a theory, but there are some proven scientific methods that demonstrate it. eg. antibiotic resistant super bacteria, certain plants which are resistant to bugs or disease, human trait inheritance.

God is a hypothesis at best as there is anecdotal evidence that he has interceded directly enough for people to believe in him (eg. answers to prayers, miracles etc), but there is no scientific test which will prove his existence. Of course, there is no scientific test to disprove his existence either. Kinda like walking in to a darkened room and asking if anyone is there, if no one answers it doesn't mean the room is empty...

Which leaves us with an assumption based on lack of repeatable provable evidence vs belief.

I think the people that came up with religion were very very clever indeed. Gods who never reveal themselves and who find you wanting for even questioning their existence?

edit: spelling fail X D

In reply to this comment by jan:
Yes, absolutely.

The picture as I understand it involves not only the farms but the financial profits reap from them.
There has been some conflict of interest reported as government officials have investments in these farms.

The logging of BC forests also impacts the accessibility up creeks and rivers to spawning beds.
Forest companys have guidelines, but some get broken.

Some farmed fish are fed fish pellets that have been produced from other countries fish stock. So they take fish stock from sometimes poor countries to feed fish in farms.
Last year I heard a biology student talking about feeding the farmed fish canola pellets, imagine carnivorous fish eating canola pellets.

Other issues involve the antibiotics they have to give the fish in order to help them survive in the pen. Too many fish locked in one space.
The larger than normal amounts of sea lice is do to the fish being confined. The fry swim past these farms and pick up the lice in lethal amounts.

I could go on.

Yes, absolutely.

The picture as I understand it involves not only the farms but the financial profits reap from them.
There has been some conflict of interest reported as government officials have investments in these farms.

The logging of BC forests also impacts the accessibility up creeks and rivers to spawning beds.
Forest companys have guidelines, but some get broken.

Some farmed fish are fed fish pellets that have been produced from other countries fish stock. So they take fish stock from sometimes poor countries to feed fish in farms.
Last year I heard a biology student talking about feeding the farmed fish canola pellets, imagine carnivorous fish eating canola pellets.

Other issues involve the antibiotics they have to give the fish in order to help them survive in the pen. Too many fish locked in one space.
The larger than normal amounts of sea lice is do to the fish being confined. The fry swim past these farms and pick up the lice in lethal amounts.

I could go on. I'm looking for anther vid.

>> ^dag:
I do think they cultivate such an environment, perhaps not intentionally in all cases - but the relationship between patients and doctors, in my experience is mostly about domination and control. I'm not against medical science, I am for breaking down the walls between the medical world and consumers.

That is starting to change. The old generation of doctors, especially surgeons do have a paternalistic relationship with their patients. However, for quite a while now, medical education has shifted heavily to a patient centered, team based approach.

And as E_Nygma pointed out, it is great that your births went well. But having worked in Obstetrics and seen some of the fucking complication nightmares that can occur, it is ridiculous for me to even consider a birth without some form of OR and surgical team ready on hand. And there is such a huge shortage of OBs that it's hard to find one who is not overworked and overstressed. They do it out of a sense of duty to their communities and their profession. They sacrifice their personal lives so that in case the shit hits the fan, there's someone there to save you. And it's not that some OB's prefer C-Sections just for their patients for profit. Studies show that a significant portion of OBs prefer, and select C-sections for themselves. It's not some industry trying to screw you out of your money.

And painting epidurals as something unnecessary, and used instead to line the OB's pockets, is so ignorant. You might as well say the same thing of antibiotics, vaccines, and anesthetics in general.

One of the only things that the Obama administration is actually moving in the right direction. At some point they will learn the lesson that prohibition taught us decades ago. I'm a teatotaller, and the only 'drug' I've ever taken are antibiotics. But I fully support the move to end government's 'war on drugs'. I believe people that takes drugs recreationally are idiots, but that's my opinion and legal policy should not be based on moral opposition to a cause. That goes for abortions, gay marriage, and stem cell research too.

1. I'm an Atheist Jew, and that is not an oxymoron.

2. I lived in Corvallis, Oregon for about 2 years when I was 3 years old. I don't remember speaking English at the time, but the language came very naturally to me in school and I still have a somewhat American accent. I even catch myself thinking in English when speaking Hebrew.

3. In grade school I used to read ahead of the class and interrupt the teachers with questions so much that the school wanted to transfer me to a special (retarded) class. My mother insisted on a psychological evaluation that determined I was bored.

4. I'm addicted to an online game that takes almost all of my free time (guess which). I've quit and relapsed three times already. I'm also becoming addicted to an online video sharing community, but that's neither as time-consuming nor a problem IMO.

5. I lost touch with almost all of my high-school friends other than two. Other than family, those are the only people I talk to.

6. I have never finished anything that I wasn't forced to finish in my entire life. This includes university studies, projects at work and silly things like cleaning up my own apartment.

7. I am constantly tired. Have been since I can remember. After 3 cups of coffee I feel like a curtain that covers my eyes normally is gone.

8. I have no sense of self worth. That is to say, I believe that I am less than every other person, whether I know them or not. It makes me very persuadable and very vulnerable to criticism, which I usually take very personally, even if it's not meant that way.

9. I berate myself all the time. I'm doing it right now, telling myself to stop writing this pathetic post about what a pathetic person I am (considering how my imaginary problems are dwarfed by the post above mine).

10. I went to a therapy session once, but was very uncooperative.

11. I can't tell anybody else pretty much all of what I've written here already. The only reason I can do it here is because what's staring back at me is a LCD monitor.

12. I think about ending my life pretty much constantly. It's usually strongest before I go to sleep. It's been like this since I was 16 or so. I have never attempted suicide, I'm not suicidal as far as I know, and this isn't a cry for help.

13. I have never taken any kind of drug, aside for antibiotics and other common medicine. As far as I know, I've never been high.

14. I was in a scooter vs. scooter accident exactly three months ago. The other guy ran a red light and smashed into my vehicle at about 50 mph. I walked away with a slight pain in my right hand, he had several injuries as a result. In a related note, I also own a car now, and am attempting to sell my scooter.

15. I work as the sole IT guy for a tiny web hosting / site building company. It's barely enough work to keep me occupied during the day.

16. I have an American private pilot license from 2006 (single engine land). I haven't flown since, but that's because of the nature of recreational flight in Israel.

17. I am afraid of heights. Happens when I rappel or stand on high places without a safety rail. Doesn't affect me at all when flying.

18. I commonly engage in software/music/video piracy, but as a leecher, not a seeder.

19. I think about relocating to a different country a lot, but it's closer to my random thing #12 than it is an actual desire to move.

20. I am one of those people that ruin the movie-going experience for other people. I constantly find silly things wrong with movies or tv shows and point them out. I do this in a very hypocritical way, since I ignore such flaws in movies I like.

21. I suspect I have hypothyroidism, but my blood tests disagree.

22. I have no items that I would miss specifically if I had to part with them suddenly.

23. I wake up with two separate alarms, both on the other side of the room to force me to get out of bed to turn them off, but I still go back to sleep most of the time and end up being late for work. I sometimes even have no memory of turning off either alarm.

24. I have never been in a fight.

25. My favorite food is a pizza with green olives.

----------

I really don't want to click submit (#9) but I am going to anyway.

>> ^Sarzy:
>> ^CrushBug:
What cracks me up is that hospital births are a relatively recent concept. Women have been birthing on their own for thousands of years. A birth is a natural event, not a medical problem to be solved.

Antibiotics are a relatively recent concept. Before that people died of all kinds of infections we would laugh at today. Modern medicine is a "recent concept." The average life expectancy, a few hundred years ago, was thirty. Should we go back to that, just because it's "natural"?
I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to give birth however they want -- but don't claim that it isn't inherently more risky than giving birth in a hospital. "Natural" doesn't necessarily always mean better.

I totally agree with you and was in no way trying to imply that. My issue is with the approach that birth is a medical problem to be solved, that the mother is in need of being fixed. That part is not the case. We have made many medical advances over the years and I am appreciative of these advances especially when my son was hospitalized for 4 days. Did I think we should have hung out at home and burned incense and hoped for the best? Hell no, we went to peds emergency.

That being said, if all things are equal, and there is no obvious risk to mother and child, why should there be a "No home births" rule/law made based on fear and what might go wrong? The facts don't support it.

>> ^CrushBug:
What cracks me up is that hospital births are a relatively recent concept. Women have been birthing on their own for thousands of years. A birth is a natural event, not a medical problem to be solved.

Antibiotics are a relatively recent concept. Before that people died of all kinds of infections we would laugh at today. Modern medicine is a "recent concept." The average life expectancy, a few hundred years ago, was thirty. Should we go back to that, just because it's "natural"?

I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to give birth however they want -- but don't claim that it isn't inherently more risky than giving birth in a hospital. "Natural" doesn't necessarily always mean better.

>> ^gtjwkq:
Wow Nithern, your reply is a mess. I guess I should have explained to you that I'm not an anarchist, since that's what you understood by "free society", my fault for using such a loose term.
I meant a society free from government intervention in the economy, free market, preferably with a small government. Being mostly a libertarian, I don't like to be confused with an anarchist, the same way a social liberal might feel offended when called a socialist.
Well, one could argue that government of any sort is government intervention in the economy. That's why anarchists and libertarians so often get confused. Think about it. There's a market for murder. There's a market for "protection". There's a market for "waste disposal". So really, the question always boils down to 'what specific government interventions into the marketplace are you for?'

The problems with that line of reasoning are all those pesky externalities. Exploiting the commons for personal gain is the oldest trick in the book. It's also, unfortunately, the reason we need to regulate the marketplace. In our most recent episode, we removed long standing regulation on securities trading. They existed because in the 20's people had already figured out how to privatize gains and socialize losses. Without a government to overcome the transaction costs of collective bargaining, it would never be possible for people to prevent this sort of exploitation. To me, while anarchy seems like the end result of libertarian ideals... really it's rule by corporate oligarchy, with rampant exploitation of the commons. At least anarchy often does away with currency, and with it the power structure.


Ah I feel better already. Bureaucracies sure seem very efficient when you explain it like that.

How about like this: Medicare operates with 3% overhead, non-profit insurance 16% overhead, and private (for-profit) insurance 26% overhead. Source: Journal of American Medicine 2007

We're currently in a financial crisis because our government is broke, the world has been lending us money, but that will end when other countries realize we're never going to pay them back. Our government is currently spending money it doesn't even have.

I would disagree. We are currently in a financial crisis because an unbridled, short-term incentive laden banking industry leveraged itself into oblivion. Afterwards, they put a gun to our head and handed us the tab. In other words, print the dough, or the pitchforks and torches tear the whole joint down. The only reason their hustle didn't work indefinitely is because too many of US were spending money we didn't have. Changing that is going to take a cultural shift that is already beginning.

As for China, whom I presume you're referring to. I don't think they want to start selling their position. Ever hear of buy low, sell high? No, I think China is more likely to just borrow against it, and start picking up their part of the consumption. They're already pulling the world out of this recession.


Socialized healthcare as an option , doesn't make the idea any better, because it's still wasting money and it's unfair competition that will further distort the healthcare insurance market. Any reform in healthcare should involve reducing government intervention not increasing it.
I disagree. Also, can we call it a "public option" please? Our good friends in the public relations office spent a while coming up with that one. Listen, the bottom line is we already pay for everyone's health insurance. It's just that it's cheaper to pay for antibiotics than it is to pay for abscess removals on ER beds.


If people are having trouble understanding the rationale behind the Tea Party movement against socialized healthcare, it's mostly about excessive government spending and taxation. Was that too hard?

Yes. Define excessive.


I don't think social liberals will ever take the issue of spending seriously, even after the value of the dollar is destroyed and our economy collapses.

Spending is serious business, it's inflation you all gotta relax about. Is it worth having the "why inflation is good for the economy" argument with you? Or would you rather go back to your non-mathematical Austrian school BS, and we can just agree to disagree?

I think you need to educate yourself out of lies about the insurance business, on the government's major role in causing the housing bubble and subprime mortgage crisis, and on the utter uselessness and injustice of anti-trust laws.

I agree, it's difficult to write laws without unintended consequences. That is, you can always game the rules. One should not conclude from this, however, that you shouldn't try and write rules. Instead, you should just write them faster than the douche bags can game them. You always need more rules. Every time there is an advance in technology, you need more rules. Why? Technology makes it easier to game the rules, and exploit the commons, just like it makes it easier to do everything else.

What chills me as I watch the video is Bill Maher's comments about what is to be done with these people. I'm not one to rush to Nazism or any other group that saw a purge as necessary to ensure purity of ideology, but the logical consequence of what he's asking is that we remove from positions of responsibility those people who show such 'mental defects'. An exemplar of the atheistic ideal is Michael Shermer who, in Why People Believe Weird Things, states that any atheist who doesn't embrace Spinoza's Dictum with both hands isn't worth a mote of intellectual salt. Harris and Dawkins both exhibit extreme exasperation at having to prove the same things over and over and over in debate after debate. Their result, thus, is to mock those who could believe such things. Harris goes so far as to accuse more liberal-minded believers of allowing fertile ground for the more dangerous ideologies to take root. When it comes to his arguments about a modern Christian not believing in Zeus or Vishnu, I think he's missing a bigger picture. I don't think a modern Christian would 'believe' in the G-d of the disciples, or the God of Abraham. He might see the clear chain, and assume that he does, but to worship that God was very different from the one he goes to every Sunday (or not). The idea of God has evolved with human culture. At times I fear that the two are inseparable. Had we the capacity to wipe out all religious thought, we would not find ourselves in a Dawkinsian utopia, but in a world oddly devoid of certain stabilizing influences. I do not think we get our moral sense entirely from religion, but it certainly helps.

Put another way--it is often said that over 50% of Americans believe in a 6,000 year old earth. This doesn't trouble me as much as it probably should, but I take great comfort in knowing that if I were to take one of these 50% of Americans to the top of a skyscraper and tell them, "Jump off. The God of Abraham will _totally_ catch you," he'll look at me as if I were insane, ESPECIALLY if I said, "No, seriously. He just told me.*" The great revolution in human culture occurred when we swapped learning things through revelation for learning things through deduction. If something is difficult to deduce, then people will fall back on the 'revealed' which is pretty much anything anecdotal. Put another way, tell someone that there are a billion billion stars in the sky, and he'll believe you. Tell the same person that the paint on a park bench is wet, and he'll have to touch it to be sure. Evolution as a metaconcept is hard to deduce, but people get that bacteria become resistant to antibiotics. Why can't they bridge the distance? If I knew the answer to that, then there wouldn't be a distance.

* And yes, it is possible with the right listener and the right speaker to find someone willing to jump...but we don't want them breeding anyways, do we? Evolution cleans up its own messes.

>> ^dag:
^You're the one talking semantics. What's a "natural" death - when one group of people gets to live to 130 and the other has to die at 60 because they did not inherit their daddy's Haliburton stock?


Dick Cheney is going to live to be 130? Fuck.

You're correct that obviously modern medicine has enabled us to live longer. Most of which is experienced without an exorbitant, impractical price nearly all should be capable of affording. Antibiotics and vaccines are quite inexpensive, and these or the sorts of medicines that have allowed us to extend our lives.

We all have as much access to them as does the Haliburton exec, so I'm not sure what your issue can be.