Sorry, I'm unclear why you are comparing killing a few hundred dolphins a year to killing the buffalo (which were slaughtered by the millions). I already said the international community should intervene if there was any threat to the continuation of the species by the hunting and no such threat has been shown. And livestock raising is as much of an ecological threat (see this U.N. report) if not more so than overfishing, seeing as it is directly tied to global warming.

I'm curious where you got the facts on Japanese cuisine? I'm also curious what you think the Japanese people should eat if not fish? Before replying, please read this incredibly well-researched essay about the state of food consumption and production in Japan. You'll also want to read this article about the state of maritime fishing which shows that Japan is not nearly as much of a culprit as you seem to be implying--many countries around the world rely on maritime fishing to feed their people--and that by properly managing fishing hauls sustainability can indeed be maintained. In Japan's case especially, because the population (and hence demand for food) will continue to decrease over the next 50 years.

I suspect you are not basing your opinions about Japan off of the evidence. Perhaps you read the articles about blue-fin tuna consumption (Japanese consume 80% of all blue-fin tuna caught and stocks are hitting dangerously low levels), in which case you definitely have an argument against consuming that particular fish but it seems a bit odd to extend that argument to say Japanese people should not be eating fish or that they somehow don't care about the environment.

My complaint is the over fishing of the waters, not just in their areas, but in International waters as well. Everyone else has agreed to slow or stop certain types of fishing but the Japanese just walk in and scoop everything up , with a "more for us attitude."

And fishing / killing animals that were bread for food stocks is much different than killing wild animals en mass, intelligent or otherwise. Remember the Buffalo? I would be just as put off if Canadians, rounded up hundreds of Caribou into herds and outright slaughtered them as well, humanly, inhumanly or otherwise.

I believe the Japanese have not solved the "feed it's population" problem, because it relies to much on the over fishing of the oceans. They are having to travel further and further out to catch enough fish to feed their population. So, it's unfortunate, but a slowly spiraling population is not all bad in an over populated area that cannot sustain that population.

I love that they use so much from the sea, I love Japanese food. I just wish they would have a better consideration for the environment. The oceans, although filled with food, is not a viable and sustainable source for food in the long run. They can't even begin to monitor the ecological damage they are doing.

Retailer strong-arming: So what? Movie studios do this to theaters all the time. So what if Best Buy only sells Apple -- in essence becomes an Apple store -- like all the other exclusive Apple stores? There will still be many willing and able competitors who will employ their entrepreneurial savvy by seeing the market need in selling non-apple tablets and make good money fulfilling that need that Best Buy may have (stupidly) stopped serving.

I repeat: Natural monopolies don't exist. And if they come about, they end up very short-lived because the world is full of competitors and competitor-wannabe's who will rush to fill any perceived market needs.

Misinformation: You find your trusted sources. The government is not one of them, I assure you. I, for example, trust way more the "Non-GMO Project" or the "Berkeley Ecology Center" far more than I would trust any (former-lobbyist/government kleptocrat) FDA-crony. Both of these (and many other) non-governmental organizations would still exist without government and in fact would be able to do more without government limiting what they can study or not about the products they inspect.

Patents: No, nothing good will ever come out of patents. If you want I will point you to countless articles I've read which show this to be the case.

New Technology: You're discounting reverse engineering? Why? If what you claim was so, then innovators would not even bother to patent, because then they could keep the technology "secret" forever. Clearly this isn't so. But, they get patents because they know of reverse engineering and other ways that the technology would be copied if they don't get a patent. In fact, right now, they can keep it "secret" by not getting patent. For example, Coca Cola does not have a patent on its secret formula for that very reason. Look it up.

The marginal utility of R&D: This is the standard old argument for patents. But you can find creative ways to make the inventions pay off. Did the music industry disappear because of piracy? No, it is making record profits, actually! Some companies would not be as mega wealthy, perhaps. Bill Gates would still be mega rich, but maybe not as rich as he is now. But, here you are complaining about extreme "inequality" while supporting the very structures which generate it.

Ignorance may be bliss -- but thankfully, we don't all have to be as ignorant as the least informed among us.

I'm sure I'm going to elicit the ire from the sift for saying this but, for all of Beck's usual nuttiness, I actually think he's correct in this instance: we actually do not need an FDA to tell us what "organic" does or does not mean. At this point, the FDA has co-opted the label "organic" such that it doesn't mean anything anymore. In fact, the FDA now prohibits the use of the term "organic" unless it meets their lobby-prone restrictions (thereby driving up the costs). Even the (private!) Berkeley Ecology Center* (which keeps track of these kinds of issues and whose Farmer's Market Manager is actually a good friend of mine) agrees that the government-owned "organic" labeling system means little to nothing anymore.

So, as Beck is suggesting here, having private institutions that you trust can (and in many instances already do) provide you with the information that you'd want/need to get organic food at affordable prices.

For example, the Non-GMO Project (again, a Private organization) that lists and labels GMO-free foods are doing a great job, much better than the FDA care to or even could.

*The Berkeley Ecology Center are a private (!) "ecological think tank" and do not actively publish, but they will give you as much documentation as you'd like, if you request them, of any references, legislation, regulations, etc. and where to find them. If you need documentation, check out their public archive found here.
I'd say that their existence alone helps support Beck's argument here. The Ecology Center can tell you anything you'd want to know from the FDA (and much more that the FDA -- or even the EPA -- wouldn't want you to know) or they can tell you where to go to find out. They don't yet have the resources to conduct studies on their own, so at this point they are more like an "environmental 411" to point you in the right direction to do your own research.

In my opinion, having thousands of these centers throughout the country can do a much better job of tracking these issues than the centralized agencies could ever do.

I'm sorry, but there are lots of bogus points in here. First of all, no one is arguing that the scope or impact of funded science should be anything less than great. The question is who should decide it. It seems the republicans want to take the awarding of scientific grants out of the hands of peer review, preferring that politicians micromanage the appropriation of research grants. Personally, I think that will lead to an end of basic science. Politicians are bound by their sponsors whom for the most part have an interest in public funding of applied rather than basic research.

This particular research is not about ecology or the environment, or some squishy bleeding heart first world problem. It's about the relative value of sexual and asexual reproduction. This particular snail can reproduce in either fashion, and it raises fundamental questions about when and why sexual reproduction would be preferred. It will likely lead to a deeper understanding of the genetic mechanisms that underlie sexual recombination, and how they relate to the success of progeny. Sounds like it's got some scope to me. The competition for grants is so stiff within science today that it's highly improbable that narrow research aims will be awarded. The fundamental question you need to ask yourself is "should basic science be funded, or should the only funding available be for applied science." My answer is an emphatic yes to basic science. It has proven its value beyond all doubt. Further, I personally feel that the applied work should be forced into the private sector as anything with a 5 year pay off will be funded naturally by the market anyway.

You also sing the praises of defense funding. I agree, many great discoveries have been funded by, say, DARPA. However, break it down by dollar spent. Because the money isn't allocated by peer review, but rather the whims of some brass, I personally don't feel it is efficiently allocated. Our impression when dealing with ONR (for example) is that they had absolutely no clue what they were interested in as a research aim, and had no clue what we were actually doing. They just thought we had some cool "high tech looking" stuff. Further, we as researchers didn't really care about their misguided scientific goals. It was sort of an unspoken understanding that we were doing cool stuff, and they had money to burn or else they wouldn't be getting anymore. All the while, the NIH is strapped with many of their institutes floating below a 10% award rate. Most of the reviewers would like to fund, say, 30-40% of the projects. Imagine if a quarter of that defense money was allocated by experts how much more efficiently it would be spent.

As someone who loves science and believe research is absolutely important, I think both sides do a horrible job of trying to address the issue. To say that seemingly insignificant research is obviously unnecessary is wrong, as much of science is built upon research never intended for the purpose at hand.

However the opposite is not always true either. Not all science and research brings enough value to the table to justify the spending to do it.

If you're trying to use "the greater good" as a measure for what solutions to use or what problems are most important, then you have to accept that even some things like ecological research or environmental issues may not cut the mustard if their scope or impact are not large enough.

I also find it interesting when people clamor to cut military spending as if they didn't understand that a lot of current technology and research is piggy backing off research done for military purposes (and some of which may be funded by military spending).

As an ecologist, I resent the fact that this "Moore" person thinks Snail mating science is a waste of tax payer dollars. When people do this kind of research they are trying to answer a larger ecological question, or trying to find what the ecological impact of a species is. And there a lot of seemingly insignificant organisms that contribute more to this universe then the hot bag of air that is Steve Moore.

Interesting read, but I'm surprised that there was no mention of the Holocene extinction. Given the current rate of extinction, especially of plants, we could be looking at a complete ecological collapse in the not too distant future. It seems like a more serious existential threat than asteroids or rampant AI in that it's actually happening as opposed to something that might happen or could happen.

I'm loving it too, although it does have a few problems.

First, it's ridiculously easy. I'm playing on hard and I've ended up playing metagames to keep the challenge (i.e. no guns for clearing bases, knife and arrows only).

Second, the UI is awful. Crafting syringes is a pain in the arse. Everytime you craft a syringe you don't have equipped it asks you if you want to assign it a slot. Also once you've crafted all the holsters etc, you're probably carrying around half a rucksack of useless animal hides and good luck trying to sell them easily (double click on animal hide, confirm, repeat ad nauseam).

Finally, even though they've implemented looting there's no real reward for it. You end up with a few trinkets, and about $10 or so each time (while you've got about 10 grand in your wallet and nothing to spend it on, because you own all the guns).

But these are nit-picks. It's great fun, there are some memorable characters ("watch out for Vaas, he'll enslave your arse!") and the environment is just stunning.

Although I will say it's turned me into an ecological disaster. I was swimming out to an island and I say a manta ray. Did I stop to admire this majestic animal?

Hell no, I knifed that beastie to death in case I could get me a manta ray hat or something.

Then I was eaten by a shark. There's a lesson in there somewhere....

The good news is it's ecological footprint is a Christmas tree light.

I thought the "Rainforest alliance" thing was just a way for big companies to confuse shoppers with a label reminding that of Fairtrade®, while greenwashing a clean conscience for consumers looking to make a difference in the supermarket.

But after seeing this video, I now understand the the futility and absurdity of trying to make an ecological impact by any other means than simply being a responsible consumer and buying shit. All hail the hypnotoad.

In 1981, Frank Tipler[3] put forth an argument that extraterrestrial intelligences do not exist, based on the absence of von Neumann probes. Given even a moderate rate of replication and the history of the galaxy, such probes should already be common throughout space and thus, we should have already encountered them. Because we have not, this shows that extraterrestrial intelligences do not exist. This is thus a resolution to the Fermi paradox—that is, the question of why we have not already encountered extraterrestrial intelligence if it is common throughout the universe.

A response[4] came from Carl Sagan and William Newman. Now known as Sagan's Response, it pointed out that in fact Tipler had underestimated the rate of replication, and that von Neumann probes should have already started to consume most of the mass in the galaxy. Any intelligent race would therefore, Sagan and Newman reasoned, not design von Neumann probes in the first place, and would try to destroy any von Neumann probes found as soon as they were detected. As Robert Freitas[5] has pointed out the assumed capacity of von Neumann probes described by both sides of the debate are unlikely in reality, and more modestly reproducing systems are unlikely to be observable in their effects on our Solar System or the Galaxy as a whole.

Another objection to the prevalence of von Neumann probes is that civilizations of the type that could potentially create such devices may have inherently short lifetimes, and self-destruct before so advanced a stage is reached, through such events as biological or nuclear warfare, nanoterrorism, resource exhaustion, ecological catastrophe, pandemics due to antibiotic resistance.

A simple workaround exists to avoid the over-replication scenario. Radio transmitters, or other means of wireless communication, could be used by probes programmed not to replicate beyond a certain density (such as five probes per cubic parsec) or arbitrary limit (such as ten million within one century), analogous to the Hayflick limit in cell reproduction. One problem with this defence against uncontrolled replication is that it would only require a single probe to malfunction and begin unrestricted reproduction for the entire approach to fail — essentially a technological cancer — unless each probe also has the ability to detect such malfunction in its neighbours and implements a seek and destroy protocol.

wikipedia my friend

I copied my response from another discussion, some reasons to own firearms.

Yes firearms were designed for military use, but for us to cover everything we use in our lives that started out or were improved by the military (essentially to make it easier to kill the enemy) would require more effort and space than is practical in an Internet disscussion.

J) The legitimate use of firearms.
The big Taboo, Killing:
The military uses firearms, and other tools to kill the enemy. This enemy is defined by the state who are elected officials. I won't go into depth as to why, as that is best served by a political debate. Suffice it to say that guns could be perceived to actually combat evil.

Hunting: another form of killing, however for most, the game is hunted as a food source. The only distinction I make between wild game, and beef in the store is who does the killing ( and I could use a uphenism for the word kill, but let's call a a spade a spade )(also keep in mind hunters are the leaders in protecting the ecology, ducks unlimmited was and is a group of hunters)

Defense: when another human desires you harm what recourse do you have? You can try to run, try to hide, hope you don't get caught. Call the athorities (provided it is not them who desire you harm) and hope they arrive in time, or fight back. Should you fight back, hopefully you are more powerfull than your attacker, or that they do not have a weapon of some kind.

Simply the presence of a firearm in a potential victims hands, can dissuade an nefarious individual from attempting an attack. Should that fail, and you need to shoot, I would much rather the criminal be injured or killed than myself or a loved one.

Sporting use: primarily enjoyment, competitions, black powder heritage days and cowboy action shoots promote an awareness of history and promote thought on how life was in days gone by.

Bonding: the passing of knowledge between two individuals engaged in an activity both find enjoyable. In the case of parent/child, or mentor/student, the teaching of the responsibilities of firearm use and the skills involved is important. If more people knew how to safely handle/store firearms, accidental deaths would be greatly reduced.


In closing, while I applaud the idealistic and utopic view that any form of killing is wrong and can/should be prevented, this is simply not the way life works.

Trying to persuade others to view the world as you do is the essence of debating, however, forcing your ideals upon another human being is the essence of tyranny. Irregardless of how honorable the intentions

2 million legal Canadian gun owners DID NOT kill anyone today, or yesterday or the day before...we have about 7 million guns...

You are a troll who has no idea of what you are talking about.

from ChaosEngine

You're right. Clearly the solution is to legalise rape, kidnapping, theft, assault and murder since people are doing it anyway.

Just noticed your postes wern't private, thought I'd post my reply.

LOL I concede I am an ape!

This is long but addresses many of your questions I think. Also your assumption on my thinking was correct...can't remember what it was but I agree.

now on to the LONG post.

A) Willpower while it has limitations, it is not Limited to a finite value. Just ask any smoker who has quit. Or, a recovering alcoholic.

B) Repeat criminals do not appear to have willpower issues, they make conscious decisions to defy the law, and ether justify it to themselves or simply have contempt for the law. Some may feel the law is wrong or simply does not apply to them.

C) If all it took for a human being to lose their humanity, self respect, morality and honor was to be at the losing end of life why have we not seen a violent uprising of the homeless and downtrodden. The addicts who HAVE lost everything and wander the streets trying to survive would therefore be the most justified to go on a rampage would they not?

D) As for American laws relating to firearms, I am a Canadian and therefore will not argue those laws, as I have little knowledge in that area.
As for Canada, the process of licensing requires a full background check, questioning of witnesses towards your character and ultimately is up to the discression of the license issuer, as I mentioned before.

Are there flaws? Yes. But that is a result of the system. Ideally the system would prevent or remove firearms from any individual before violence occurs. However in order for that system to function flawlessly one must live in a system similar to Communist Russia during Stalins reign. Where every action or spoken word is monitored and reported to the government, by agents, or even by family.

Canadian restrictions to licensing are as stringent as the LAW curently allows them to be without infringing ( too much) on an individual's rights.

E) A piece of plastic does not guarantee the holder to be law abiding. However, the process involved to acquire said item does involve scrutiny. And the desire to legally go through that process as opposed to acquiring firearms illegally and with much less effort does say something towards the individuals intentions.

F) Firearms training and safety cources do indeed instill responsibility, confidence in the use, and the safe possession of firearms. Personally I believe everyone eligible should be trained in the safe responsible use of firearms. Whether they choose to own or not. ( we have sex Ed in school, why not gun Ed )

G) As for F*** heads, they will always be F**** heads. One purpose of licensing is to prevent them from acquiring firearms legaly. Thankfully most of humanity does not fit into this category. ( however they do seem to be breeding at an alarming rate)

H) As for the Katana, not only was it a weapon, it was a symbol of honor for samurai and was passed down through generations with a reverence bordering on a relic. Spend time and look up the 7 virtues of the Bushido code.

Regarding Nukes, while their application is abhorrent to any rational human, think about how many were actually used for their intended purpose. TWO!, out of how many thousands. And both were released by human hands. Possession does not equate to application.

I) Yes firearms were designed for military use, but for us to cover everything we use in our lives that started out or were improved by the military (essentially to make it easier to kill the enemy) would require more effort and space than is practical in an Internet disscussion.

J) The legitimate use of firearms.
The big Taboo, Killing:
The military uses firearms, and other tools to kill the enemy. This enemy is defined by the state who are elected officials. I won't go into depth as to why, as that is best served by a political debate. Suffice it to say that guns could be perceived to actually combat evil.

Hunting: another form of killing, however for most, the game is hunted as a food source. The only distinction I make between wild game, and beef in the store is who does the killing ( and I could use a uphenism for the word kill, but let's call a a spade a spade )(also keep in mind hunters are the leaders in protecting the ecology, ducks unlimmited was and is a group of hunters)

Defense: when another human desires you harm what recourse do you have? You can try to run, try to hide, hope you don't get caught. Call the athorities (provided it is not them who desire you harm) and hope they arrive in time, or fight back. Should you fight back, hopefully you are more powerfull than your attacker, or that they do not have a weapon of some kind.

Simply the presence of a firearm in a potential victims hands, can dissuade an nefarious individual from attempting an attack. Should that fail, and you need to shoot, I would much rather the criminal be injured or killed than myself or a loved one.

Sporting use: primarily enjoyment, competitions, black powder heritage days and cowboy action shoots promote an awareness of history and promote thought on how life was in days gone by.

Bonding: the passing of knowledge between two individuals engaged in an activity both find enjoyable. In the case of parent/child, or mentor/student, the teaching of the responsibilities of firearm use and the skills involved is important. If more people knew how to safely handle/store firearms, accidental deaths would be greatly reduced.


In closing, while I applaud the idealistic and utopic view that any form of killing is wrong and can/should be prevented, this is simply not the way life works.

Trying to persuade others to view the world as you do is the essence of debating, however, forcing your ideals upon another human being is the essence of tyranny. Irregardless of how honorable the intentions

So if you read all that I thank you! I'm prepared to say we agree to dissagree and leave it at that but I'm open to more dialog if you wish.

I wish you lived in my area so I could take you to the range to see first hand what it's all about.

Big Ape signing off

I thought I recognized the crazy old goof... I liked the start how he talks of wars and rumors of wars as they are bad things, but then wants to vote for the party responsible getting us into these wars and refuses to cut what is above and beyond the worlds largest military budget and instead wants to sacrifice helping the sick and the working poor Jesus said to help... or perhaps that is why they vote for them, to make the process go faster, even though God said he had an appointed time... I can see it now, they bring about the end of the world conditions by 2025, and wonder where the apocalypse is, and then when they get to heaven they go, "...but God, there were wars and rumors of wars and killed millions of innocent women and children. We put the mark of the beast on everyone, and everyone needed a chip to buy stuff. We let the planet ecology fall apart. Why didn't you come back as you said you would?" Then god says to them "I said APPOINTED time, that was going to be the year 502080, just because you made the conditions happen sooner doesn't mean I was going to come back sooner." I honestly heard somebody once say after Obama won "Well maybe this means god is coming back sooner..."

>> ^Edgeman2112:

That's the third eagle of the apocalypse!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOQsvOkkLq4