Cells have no "purpose"?

I think that depends on how you define "purpose". I don't think humans (or other animals / organisms) have any particular intrinsic purpose. At least, nothing granted to us by a higher power or outside influence or whatever. We assign purpose to ourselves, and to other fuzzy-boundary collections of things. Things that are "alive" exist to use energy, move, reproduce, etc. Things that are "tools" exist to be a preferable means of accomplishing some task. Etc.

If any of those things have "purpose", certainly cells can have a "purpose" as well. Neurons exist to transfer bio-electric currents. Rod and cone cells in our eyes exist to react to light in general or particular wavelengths of light.

I don't think that we have any physical or intangible soul that serves as the core of our being. We have cells, organs, and organ systems that make up a "meat computer" that provides us with consciousness (a word that we invented, but which describes a fairly concrete idea), and I would argue that consciousness is the closest thing that we have to a "soul".

At some point, if we can create a machine that emulates / replaces the functionality of all those cells, organs, and organ systems that are responsible for consciousness, and copy a snapshot of the states of all of that in an organic being (like us) into a mechanical counterpart, then ... yeah. I think that machine would be the organic being that it was a copy of, in a far more meaningful way than Henrietta's cancer cells are "her".

The warplane is designed to kill, but who is it killing - is it killing an evil dictator in order to save innocents? It might be on a peace keeping mission to discourage any killing. If it the warplane is killing only people who would otherwise be killing the innocent, then it's a tool used for good, it's saving more lives than it's taking, and more importantly it's saving lives that are more important to maintaining a civilized society.
I'd even say that it would be less moral to not build the warplane and let innocents die through inaction, when the consequences are well known.

Even further down the chain, killing isn't inherently bad, there are plenty justifiable reasons to kill someone.

It's the same with veganism -making choices which are less harmful, not necessarily perfect.


Non smokers are definitely way better people than smokers. Especially given that 2nd and even 3rd hand smoke causes cancer. Even if smoking only harmed the smoker, it's still a strange idea to be harming yourself. Perhaps they lack the appreciation of how lucky they are to be alive. I mean the odds of being born are like winning the lotto, let alone being born healthy, being born in this day and age, in a civilized country, being born to the dominate species, being born on the only planet that seems to have developed life. Some people have rough starts to life, but harming themselves isn't going to make it better, just shorter.


I agree that everyone is capable of making good moral stances, you've obviously drawn the line somewhere (otherwise you'd be going all Genghis Khan on everyone). But where the line is drawn is tends to be influenced a lot by misleading information and lack of information. And that makes it very hard to make logically sound choices. It's even harder when in order to understand the real impact means having to watch footage of animal cruelty. Most people find it confronting and uncomfortable at best, so it's easier to put it away, not think about it and continue consuming.

I know most people are moral, but if they don't act on it, it doesn't mean much to the puppies being strayed in the eyes with chemicals, or to the piglets being slammed into the concrete floor for the crime of being born male.


Regardless of how you categorize it, analyze it, or philosophize it, this always remains true: Animals feel and respond to pain, they will do their best to avoid suffering, and they have a will to live.

It's pretty hard to have a sense of humor about this subject matter after you've seen a dog moving around right after it got skinned alive so that some douche nugget Kanye wannabe can wear a fur coat.

This whole video seems to fall under the misconception that vegans are vegan because they don't like meat. When the reality is that it's from an ethical stand point. Otherwise you aren't vegan, you're just eating a plant based diet. People are vegan for all of the same reasons you guys aren't eating dogs and cats.

You really do have to have a disconnect once you realise that people love eating a creature that has the intelligence of a 3 year old child, has it's testicles ripped out, tail chopped off, and teeth pulled out all without anesthetic. Lives a tortured life for about 6 months in a small cage with a concrete floor where it hasn't got enough room to turn around, until it finally gets either forcibly impregnated, to keep the cycle going or just killed, so someone can eat smoked bits of it's flesh. Because apparently they've never heard of smoked paprika powder.

It does get pretty tiresome when you can speak pure logic and reason, and people brush it off with something like "bacon tho". Especially when they're otherwise intelligent people. But when it comes to this issue, they throw up a wall, because years of advertising has done it's job very well.

It's now proven fact that bacon gives people cancer. Yet people are still eating it. I have a feeling people would still eat bacon if it made their dicks fly off.

Chernobyl was a big cock-up allright, as was Fukushima, although that seems to have been less severe.

What would you say is the most dangerous form of energy production we have now? What about the safest? Look up "Deaths by terawatt hour", you might be surprised.

Even wind power has killed about 3 times as many people per TWH produced as nuclear, AFAIK mainly due to the amounts of steel and concrete used in constructing the plants, the production of which is relatively dangerous. Coal is on a different planet altogether, killing about 1500 times as many people per TWH as nuclear.

Even if you assume the total deaths from nuclear power production are underreported and underestimated by a factor of 10, that would still only put it on par with solar power in terms of people killed to produce energy.

Now, nuclear isn't a cureall solution to our energy problems. Even if we wanted to, we simply couldn't build enough power plants to cover all our energy needs with nuclear, you've got the storage issue, you've got the issue of plant placement, and in general relying on one technology alone is a bad idea.

Still. Coal. 1500 times as deadly. How many articles and videos have you seen on how scary coal is? What gives?

After reading some more on the subject, this has been that way for many decades, possibly longer but the history is spotty further back. The CSIRO thinks it is possibly due to the nearness of a coal seam to the rifts and/or drought.

The recent fracking has drawn attention to it, with many locals claiming it has gotten worse since the fracking. Scientists are still researching it further to see if this is true.

I don't support fracking, but some of these reports usually are about things that were pre-existing due to the natural layout of the region. However, there are some cases where it is definitely a cause of the companies fracking in the area.

For instance, a recent study proved that drinking wells in Texas and Pennsylvania were affected by the fracking company not following the correct procedures. This led to the wells being contaminated with gas. They found that there were clear cases of substandard work that led to cracked steel and concrete in the casing of the drill sites. They said in the study that if the companies had followed the correct procedures, the contamination could have been easily prevented.

More on the wells - http://www.newsweek.com/fracking-wells-tainting-drinking-water-texas-and-pennsylvania-study-finds-270735

They probably should use the same method to check the origin of the noble gases in that river.

A wise man would have found an alternate route. A Boss would have just driven across on that concrete embankment.

Water be like f'in concrete. It does not want to get out of your way.

What's the difference between a pet pig and a livestock pig though?
They both want blankets and cookies. Or at the very least neither of them wants to stand in a tiny metal and concrete cage and be pumped full of antibiotics, hormones and god knows what else for their short miserable lives. Neither of them want to be bruised because they have only enough room to face one direction their entire lives. Neither of them want their testicles ripped out without anesthetic while they are piglets. Neither of them want to be beaten when they don't eat.

Also, despite what the marketing people say, humans are not omnivores, everything healthwise and physiologically suggests we are somewhere between herbivores and frugivores. It's also backed up historically too by analyzing fossilized poop!

Here is a quite simplified chart, but I think it does a pretty good point of showing how far away we are from typical mammalian omnivores http://www.whale.to/c/10013268_676368449097110_1949968139_n.jpg

I'm not having a go at you, but I just hope you aren't acting according to a few labels that some organisation has set.

I want to react seriously but the "Oh my God! OooooooH!" just ruins it...

Speedy recover to the nutty bastard though. Kinda looked like he was bouncing off concrete when he dived forward there...

hmmm..i don't know.
this seems awfully tame.
where is the guy getting in the bouncers face chest thumping and questioning his sexual orientation?
or pleading his case after you caught him throwing up over the railing onto a toyota celica?
or being busted for passing out on the concrete,curled up into a cute little ball and begging "i just need a few minutes".
or the guy that loses his shit for being asked to leave,runs out into the middle of the parking lot,tears off his shirt and declares "i am from new york you fuck,i will bench you!"

for new years eve this is pretty damn tame.
where is the river of vomit?
the never ending male posturing and attempted fights with alcohol levels that would drop a horse?
where are the threats?
name calling?
constant bargaining?
tears?
and where the hell is the paddywagon parked just to the side for easy transportation to the drunk tank?

i think they edited the real juicy stuff out of this video.i feel cheated!

Sadly, it really doesn't matter what they call them, because the term terrorist has become meaningless. I've said this all the way back when GWB "declared war on vague abstract concept"

The definition stated earlier is not wrong, but you can use that term for just about anything. Americans were terrorists against the British when we revolted. We also had the audacity to not march shoulder to shoulder against the Brits as was the standard for every "civilized" army back then.

The only difference is who wins and who loses. if you win, you're a revolutionary. if you lose, you're a terrorist. and if you're white, you're a militia group.

This was a calculated move by the terrorists though. I think they deliberately picked some piece of shit building of no value that no one cared about and was unused, made sure they didn't kill anyone but yet still forcibly occupied it with weapons. It's a dare...it's an attempt to goad. They want the feds or police to go in guns blazing. They want suicide by cop because it will ultimately benefit them and gain sympathy for them. They took something that is completely inconsequential other than it was owned by "the gub'mint"

The Fox pundit thinks they're peaceful? armed occupation is peaceful now? Just because they haven't physically hurt anyone doesn't make them peaceful. They stopped being peaceful the instant they picked up their weapons.

Love all the usual buzzwords and sound bites from the fox pundit without any actual specifics. Once again, who specifically is this "left wing media?" They never actually say who. more accusations of "big gov't" without any specifics. They keep talking about these intrusions into our lives, but yet, can't seem to name them.

All fear, no concrete issues. Standard geriatric (that means old, bob) Fox audience.

This has become a pretty big issue in Japan recently, especially since a couple of years ago when it was discovered that prosecutors in the city of Osaka had unlawfully obtained confessions fabricated evidence for dozens of cases. The scandal led to lots of resignations and calls for re-trials.

There have actually been a lot of people in the past couple of years let off death row here because new evidence (DNA, crime reconstructions, etc.) has shown that they could not have been responsible for the crime. Still, the system is totally borked right now and the police/prosecutors have most of the power. There's been a lot of talk about the changes that need to be made (limiting interrogation times, requiring all interrogations to be video recorded, etc.) but nothing concrete has happened yet AFAIK.

Nice idea, although LEDs have an extremely low power draw. Not sure if the gravity plus gearing would generate enough watts for the Pi.

USB is 5 volts at usually under 1 amp (.5 amps for USB 2 and .9 for USB 3). So I think that suggests about a 2.5-5 watt draw for USB, although I could be wrong -- long time since I took any EE classes. With very quick googling, I'm not getting a concrete number on the wattage of the (single?) LED in the Gravity Light, but one result suggested in the milliWatt range (60-80mW). Same post says that a cheap hand crank generates about 1 watt with vigorous cranking that will wear out your arm/hand quickly.

So, I'm thinking that 2.5-5 watts would require a much more heavy-duty and less portable gravity-fed system. Very much doable (bicycle pedaling can generate 50 watts fairly easily), but probably only with more bulk than what can power LED lighting.

Can I take this commercial to imply that the warranty will cover any damage resulting from collisions with other construction equipment, collisions with buildings, rollovers, scraping the drivetrain over concrete highway dividers and general exploding?

Clearly they're implying the truck can survive this, so that's a pretty good warranty right there.

Back in '88, my admirably stupid cat randomly jumped off the sixth floor window of our apartment into the concrete sidewalk below. There was not even a scratch on him and he didn't look phased by it. Then again, he was really really stupid.