All right, I'm probably feeding a troll, but since I'm starting an advocacy group I'm inevitably going to have to deal with a lot of them so here goes. Wish me luck.

I've heard this argument so many times. So many times. Almost as many times as I hear "how do vegans get enough protein"? (I'll stop asking you about your fiber intake and cholesterol if you stop asking me about my protein levels). So, in retort, I thought I'd appeal to logic. I went to ol' wikipedia to find all the fallacies that you are using. I thought I'd find 1, 2, or maybe 3. Instead I found 8. And I crossed off the ones that were true, but not necessarily in this specific argument:

1. Straw Man - I don't believe any vegan is proposing to save the whole world. We are trying to make a difference in the lives of animals. Your straw man is that our goal is to save the world. It is not.



2. Tu Quoque/Appeal to Hypocrisy - Regardless of whether we're supposedly hypocritical or not, you have refused to address the moral question at hand. Not the morality of saving the world, but of the moral importance of animals.



3. False Dilemma - Your proposition is that either we save the world or we do nothing. It is not a problem with only 2 solutions.



4. Ignoratio Elenchi/Irrelevant Conclusion - Again, we are not discussing the saving of the world. We are talking about the moral treatment of animals.



5. Nirvana Fallacy - You'll never have heaven on earth. That's not the argument.



6. Red Herring - A favourite argument for many. We are not talking about human suffering.



7. Vacuous Truth - Surprise! There will always be suffering in the world! I know that. We're not talking about that.



8. Moral High Ground Fallacy - I think this one speaks for itself.

Just try and consume the WHO recommended sugar intake. About 24 grams per day. One can of Pepsi, 41 grams. Eat processed food and you will get up to 24 by breakfast.

"A new WHO guideline recommends adults and children reduce their daily intake of free sugars to less than 10% of their total energy intake. A further reduction to below 5% or roughly 25 grams (6 teaspoons) per day would provide additional health benefits.

Free sugars refer to monosaccharides (such as glucose, fructose) and disaccharides (such as sucrose or table sugar) added to foods and drinks by the manufacturer, cook or consumer, and sugars naturally present in honey, syrups, fruit juices and fruit juice concentrates."

OK, his studies beat my anecdotal bias.

...That being said, I will continue to eat breakfast cereal with milk pretty much every day (as I have since I was very very young), and be strongly tempted to attribute my own lack of having ever broken a bone to that.

The other anecdote I have in my favor is coming from a farm family that raised chickens. I grew up in a prairie grassland area (converted to irrigated farmland thanks to aquifer access), while my cousins lived a couple hours away in limestone hills ranchland. Both of our families raised free range chickens.

Our chickens produced very thin-shelled eggs, and displayed behavior to suggest they were calcium-deprived. For example, our chickens wouldn't cannibalize their own viable eggs, but if we threw empty shells to them they would fight to eat the shells. Same but to a lesser extent for leftover bones, etc. (I assume they fought less over these because bones are harder to near impossible to break down with a beak). On the other side of the table, we sometimes exchanged eggs with my cousins, and their chicken's eggs were always extremely thick-shelled and hard to crack open.

When I asked about that, my folks told me (and later my Biology teacher confirmed) that was because the sod/soil around my home and flora and fauna growing from it contained very little natural calcium. Chickens raised in our area would often be supplemented with commercial feed that contained extra calcium, but we let ours range for food and eat table scraps; almost never supplementing their food with any commercial stuff. But the limestone (aka calcium carbonate) around my cousin's house contained very high amounts of natural calcium, which was naturally infused into the plants / grains / insects that their chickens ate, giving them incredibly thick shells.

So, I guess that while calcium intake apparently doesn't have a very statistically significant impact on human bone growth, I think that it must have a much more significant role to play in egg thickness if you happen to be a chicken... At least if you compare extremes of low natural calcium diet versus extremely high natural calcium diet.

There is evidence that having a diet with higher than average protein (and obviously you're aiming for lean meats) is more conducive to weight loss. As you wouldn't want to lose muscle mass, it's not so much the protein intake you're wanting to cut.

However, obviously whatever you're doing is working fine as it is, and perhaps the overall smaller portion is better for some.

I've got my own experience exercising and losing weight, 3 stones in 3 months. What i did was extreme and i'd eat only 1500 calories (over a thousand deficit), spend about half of the day sleeping, and swim hard enough to be exhausted after 30 mins every day. I definitely noticed that changes to my diet caused rapid and obvious benefits over, for example, increasing the exercise or mixing it up with HIIT.

It gave me a newfound respect for Bale and Gyllenhaal and their weight transformations. Absolutely incredible, i don't know how they managed it because i felt like death warmed up at times and compared to them mine was a life of excess.

This jives perfectly with my own experience over the years. I struggled with weight my entire life, diets, gym, etc... nothing worked or sticked.

A year ago I hit my peak weight of 335lbs, since then I've lost 70lbs, ALL due to diet. I go on walks and get little to moderate exercise occasionally but the weight loss has been 100% due to diet.

The secret? Counting calories, just reduce it to simple numbers, all the different and often contradictory shit people say about diet and weight loss I just threw out the window and focused on my daily caloric intake.

The best part about this "diet" is that I basically still get to eat whatever I want, as long as I stay within my daily calories, I still loose weight.

It's important because some people are very illogical when it comes to diets many overweight people have tried punishing diet and exercise and evolve two modes of being that of 'dieting and exercise' or fall off the wagon and 'eat anything and no exercise' which endlessly cycle for decades. The better approach would be to have constant manageable exercise regardless of food intake to reduce cardiovascular risk and alongside that generally healthy eating which can tolerate the occasional teat or indulgence.

The idea that exercise solely exists to burn off dietary excess can only lead to unhealthy ideas.

Oh, okay. So using profanity pointlessly, repetitively, and boringly is his shtick. I guess I won't allow it to annoy me too much.

Fun meal if you're not watching your carb intake. I wonder what crunchy spaghetti is like.

Sugar/sand in the gas tanks/air intakes people. Drill rigs don't work too well when their motors seize up, and oil and gas companies will only try so many times before realizing the community won't let them be super villains (who else has earthquake machines?).

Sure lucky760, I'll do Splenda, since some varieties of Coke Zero have Splenda in them.

First off it is important to note that the majority of the anti-sweetener "science" has been done by one man: Dr. Joseph Mercola. Now, watch out here, because his name is deceptive. You see, Mercola is an osteopathic physician. Osteopathy is a form of pseudoscience that believes that all pathology can be solved by manipulation of the bones and muscles. There is little science to back up these claims because they are clearly insane and worthy of ridicule. So, much like his doctorate, the claims he makes against sweeteners are pseudoscientific. A number of his beliefs are: that AIDS is not cause by HIV but by psychological stress; that immunizations and prescription drugs shouldn't be prescribed but people should instead buy his dietary supplements; that vaccinations are bad for you and your children (a belief which is the cause of recent outbreaks of whooping cough, measles and mumps); and that microwaves are dangerous machines that irradiate their products (they do, but not with the kind of radiation he is thinking of). Since he made a movie called Sweet Mistery: A Poisoned World, he has been at the forefront of anti-sweetener rhetoric. If you watch the movie, note how hilariously bad it is at actual science; the majority of the "evidence" is people claiming side effects after having ingested something with a sweetener in it (anecdotes are worth nothing in science except perhaps as a reason for researching further). So, you have a movement against something seen as "artificial" by a man who is not a doctor, not a scientist and is clearly lacking in the basics of logic.

Now, Splenda. Created by Johnson and Johnson and a British company in the seventies, it's primary sweetener ingredient is sucralose. The rest of it is dextrose, which as I have said above, is really just d-glucose and is safe for consumption in even very large quantities. So really, we are asking about sucralose. Sucralose is vastly sweeter than sucrose (usually around ~650 times) and thus only a very small amount is needed in whatever it is you are trying to sweeten. The current amount that is considered unsafe for intake (the starting point where adverse effects are felt) is around 1.5g/kg of body weight. So for the average male of 180lbs, they would need to ingest 130g of sucralose to feel any adverse effects. This is compared to the mg of sucralose that you will actually be getting every day. The estimated daily intake of someone who actually consumes sucralose is around 1.1mg/kg, which leaves a massive gap. Similarly to aspartame, if you tried to ingest that much sucralose, you would be incapable due to the overwhelming sweetness of the stuff.

There is some evidence that sucralose may affect people in high doses, but once again, this is similar to the issues with aspartame, where the likelihood of you getting those doses is extremely unlikely.

The chemistry of sucralose is actually way too complicated to go into, but suffice it to say that unlike aspartame, sucralose is not broken down in the body at all and is simply excreted through the kidney just like any other non-reactive agent. The reason that it tastes sweet is because it has the same shape as sucrose except that some of the hydroxy groups are replaced with chlorine atoms. This allows it to fit in the neurotransmitters in the tongue and mouth that send you the sensation of sweetness without also giving you all of those calories. Once it passes into the bloodstream it is dumped out by the kidneys without passing through the liver at all.

In sum, if sweeteners were bad for you, they wouldn't be allowed in your food. Science is not against you, it is the only thing working for everyone at the same time. The reason sugar has gotten around this is because we have always had it. If you want to be healthier, don't drink pop, drink water or milk (unless you are lactose intolerant, then just drink water). Don't drink coconut milk, or gatorade, or vitamin water. Assume that when a company comes out with something like "fat free" it really reads "now loaded with sugar so it doesn't taste like fucking cardboard." Assume that when a company says something is "natural" it is no more natural than the oils you put in your car. IF you want to live and eat healthy, stay on the outside of the supermarket, avoiding the aisles. All of the processed food is in the aisles, not on the outsides and the companies know that you don't want to miss anything. Make your food, don't let someone else do it. And never, ever buy popped popcorn, anywhere, the mark-up on that shit is insane.

Another problem with NDTs words in this video, he tells us that 50% of scientists believe in god/are religious, and this is somehow proof there is no contradiction, or that science does not lead to non-belief. But this is a laughable failure of statistical analysis by NDT. I think the 50% number seems quite high, like he has been using a really bad sift on who qualifies as scientist (is it anyone with a science degree on any level?) But fine, lets make it 50% of scientists in the US. The takeaway from that is that the number of religous is MUCH LOWER than in the general population.
T
he general population is like 85% religious. That means that if 100 people go get a science degree, 85 will be religious, and 35 of them will lose their faith on the way to becoming a scientist. That means that if you study science, and you are religious, theres a 40%
chance youll lose your faith along the way. (This doesnt take into account that many of the 15% non-religious are probably already scientists, so the general population number is probably even higher.)

If you make it all the way to the National Academy of Sciences, a whooping 78 out of the 85 will have lost their faith. Thats about as damning for the no-contradiction/conflict-hypothesis as you can get.

Its like arguing that most drunk drivers never actually crash, therefore alcohol-intake does not influence your driving skills.

I would have given them a little less. Dairy may be bad but it's more about the calorie intake. Most animals are lactose intolerant, but in that there are still many individuals of each species that handle milk fine. After that it's about the calorie intake. Our cats love milk, so occasionally I take a shot glass and fill it 1/4 of the way and let them paw the milk out. Never noticed any Diarrhea and I know the calories are around 8-10. Which is fine for them.

Ebola is very destructive to health care systems. It is silly to compare it to other viruses that do not create the panic, fear and lethality of Ebola. Ebola has the potential to get out of control because it takes a very serious toll on health care systems. Once panic is in place, it becomes very difficult to screen patients and process intake. Once a region has just a handful of cases, everyone with a simple fevers thinks they have Ebola and overwhelm the intake system - and ironically, the best place to get Ebola will probably be the waiting room. This virus can very quickly sap the resources of hospital staff, and once a few staff and patients in the waiting room get infected, panic just gets worse. Ebola is very unforgiving to mistakes by health care providers.

The media is quick to make out everyone in Africa as naive and child like. This is a mistake. Many in Africa know all about viruses and how they spread. They suffer greatly by a an absolutely dismal and bankrupt health care system, but I think it would be naive to think of our system as so superior that we would not have the same panic.

Ebola is very serious. It needs to be taken seriously. Anyone that belittles the problem is making the situation much worse.

Just as an FYI, health care workers who are exposed to HIV-infected blood at work have a 0.3% risk of becoming infected. In other words, 3 of every 1,000 such injuries, if untreated, will result in infection. : Source CDC.

Yeah, try that with Ebola.

Oh yes, it is a fantasy car part, but even so they should keep their fantasy as realistic as possible. We have to suspend disbelief to think a single push of a cable/button re-tunes the carb, the timing, and re-routes the intake (and maybe even exhaust) to go from blower to no blower, but that's the fantasy they sold me as a child and I want them to stick with it.
I'm also upset to see the car apparently be destroyed in the trailer, when it has to survive unscathed to be in Road Warrior intact.
Still, can't wait!

Me, I like my science-fiction when they don't cheat and make up silly stuff like a 'selectable' blower. Anyone who knows even a tiny bit about how a roots supercharger works sees those scenes from TRW and groans. The blades of the impellers need to spin because the carburetor is sitting on top of it. No impellers turning, means no air or fuel passing it, means the engine no worky .

That being said, I could see how a Paxton (basically a belt driven turbo) style supercharger could be set up to work, using an electric clutch from a air conditioning pump and some interesting intake plumbing. Instead of the best of both worlds, it's probably the worst of both.

You'd be better off with a variable boost NO2 system.

Now, don't think that I don't know about the 1920s Mercedes engageable roots superchargers, it's just that the one on the Interceptor in the movie isn't that style, and they merely shot the engine starting up when Max "pulled the switch".

A rotary (Wankel) engine has a triangular device that acts as the piston, which rotates in a chamber close to a figure 8 shape. Each side of the triangle acts as it's own piston as it rotates, first intake through a port (no valve) then compression, detonation, expansion, and finally exhaust through another port (still no valve).
Radial engines (what I think you meant) are relatively normal piston driven engines where the pistons are arranged in a circle around the crank at a 90 deg angle from the cranks rotation. These are usually used in prop driven airplanes.
This motor arranges the pistons in the same orientation as the cranks rotation...a 90 deg difference from radial engines. This makes it far more compact, but also puts the pistons in a single, rotating, revolver like arrangement of cylinders. It's a bit of a combination of rotary and radial engine features.