Ok I'll try to divide up my wall text a bit better this time

I totally acknowledge that people in the past, and even in present day, some people have to live a certain way in order to survive, but for the vast majority of people that doesn't apply.


Taste:
Like most of the senses in the human body, the sense of taste is in a constant state re-calibration. It's highly subjective and easily influenced over mere seconds but also long periods of time. They say it takes 3 weeks to acclimatize from things you crave, from salt to heroin. That's why most healthy eating books tell you go to cold tofurkey (see what I did there ) for 3 weeks. It's all about the brain chemistry. After 3 straight weeks you aren't craving it. (The habit might still be there but, the chemically driven cravings are gone).
Try it yourself by eating an apple before and after some soft drink. First the apple will taste sweet, and after it will taste sour. Or try decreasing salt over a 3 week period, it'll taste bland at first, but if you go back after 3 weeks it'll be way too salty.



Food science:
One of the major things stopping me from not being vegan, was the health concerns, so I read a number of books about plant-based eating.
There is a new book "How Not To Die" by Dr. Michael Greger. If you want scientific proof of a plant based diet this the one stop shop. 500 pages explaining tens of thousands of studies, some going for decades and involving hundreds of thousands of people. I was blown away at the simple fact that so many studies get done. Most of them are interventional studies also, meaning they are able to show cause and effect (unlike observational or corrolational studies, as he explains in the book). 150 pages of this book alone are lists of references to studies. It's pure unbiased science. (It's not a vegan book either in case you are worried about him being biased).

At the risk of spoiling the book - whole foods like apples and broccoli doesn't give you cancer, in fact they go a long way to preventing it, some bean based foods are as effective as chemotherapy, and without the side effects. I thought it sounded it ridiculous, but the science is valid.
Of course you can visit his website he explains all new research almost daily at nutritionfacts.org in 1 or 2 minute videos.
He also has a checklist phone app called Dr.Greger's Daily Dozen.

There are other authors too, most of these ones have recipes too, such as Dr. John McDougall, Dr. Neal Barnard, Dr. Cadwell Esselstyn, Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr Joel Furhman.
Health-wise it's the best thing you can do for yourself. And if like me you thought eating healthy meant salads, you'd be as wrong as I was I haven't had a salad for years. My blood results and vitamin levels are exactly what the books said they would be.

Try it for 3 weeks, but make sure you do it the right way as explained in the books, and you'll be shouting from roof tops about what a change it's made to your life. The other thing is, you get to eat more, and the more you eat it's healthier. What a weird concept in a world where we are constantly being told to calorie count (it doesn't work btw).

Environmental:
I've read a lot about ethics, reason and evidence based thinking, as well as nutrition and health (as a result of my own skepticism). So I could and I enjoy talking about these all day long. On the environmental side of things, I'm not as aware, but there some documentaries such as Earthlings and Cowspiracy which paint a pretty clear picture.
Anyone can do the maths even at a rough level - there are 56 billion animals bred and slaughtered each year. Feeding 56 billion animals (many of which are bigger than people) takes a lot more food than a mere 7 billion. Therefore it must take more crops and land to feed them, not to mention the land the animals occupy themselves, as well as the land they destroy by dump their waste products (feces are toxic in those concentrations, where as plant waste, is just compost)
The other thing is that many of these crops are grown in countries where people are starving, using up the fertile land to feed our livestock instead of the people. How f'd up is that?
It's reasons like that why countries like the Netherlands are asking their people to not eat meat more than 3 meals a week.

Productivity and economics:
Countries like Finland have government assistance to switch farmers from dairy to berry. Because they got sick of being sick:
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/dietary-guidelines-from-dairies-to-berries/

The world won't go vegan overnight, and realistically it will never be 100% vegan (people still smoke after all). There will be more than enough time to transition. And surely you aren't suggesting that we should eat meat and dairy to keep someone employed? I don't want anyone to lose their job, but to do something pointlessly cruel just to keep a person working seems wrong.

Animal industries are also heavily subsidized in many countries, so if they were to stop being subsidized that's money freed up for other projects, such as the ones in Finland.

The last bit:
If you eat a plant based diet, just like the cow you'll never have constipation, thanks to all of the fibre
When it comes to enzymes, humans are lactose intolerant because after the age of 2 the enzyme lactase stops being made by the body (unless you keep drinking it). Humans also don't have another enzyme called uricase (true omnivores, and carnivores do), which is the enzyme used to break down the protein called uric acid. As you might know gout is caused by too much uric acid, forming crystals in your joints.
However humans have a multitude of enzymes for digesting carbohydrate rich foods (plants). And no carbs don't make fat despite what the fitness industry would have you believe (as the books above explain).
Appealing to history as well, when they found fossilized human feces, it contained so much fibre it was obvious that humans ate primarily a plant based diet. (Animal foods don't contain fibre).

The reasons why you wouldn't want a whale to eat krill for you is:
1. Food is a packaged deal - there is nothing harmful in something like a potato. But feed a lot of potatoes to a pig, and eat the pig, you're getting some of the nutrients of a potato, but also heaps of stuff you're body doesn't need from the pig, like cholesterol, saturated fat, sulfur and methionine containing amino acids etc And no fibre. (low fibre means constipation and higher rates of colon cancer).
2. Your body's health is also dependent on the bacteria living inside you. (fun fact, most the weight of your poop is bacteria!) The bacteria inside you needs certain types of food to live. If you eat meat, you're starving your micro-organisms, and the less good bacteria you have, the less they produce certain chemicals and nutrients , and you get a knock on effect. The fewer the good bacteria also makes room for bad bacteria which make chemicals you don't want.
Coincidentally, if you eat 3 potatoes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you have all the protein you need - it worked for Matt Damon on Mars right?

@transmorpher

It's a little difficult to 'debate' your comment, because the points that you address to me are numbered but don't reference to specific parts of my post. That's probably my fault as i was releasing frustration haphazardly and sarcastically, and that sarcasm wasn't aimed at you. All i can do is try and sum up whether i think we agree or disagree overall.

Essentially everything is a question of 'taste', even for you. There's no escaping our nature, most of us don't drink our own piss, many of us won't swallow our own blood, almost all of us have a flavour that we can't abide because we were fed it as a child. So yes, our decisions are defined by taste. But taste is decided by the food that is available to people, within reasonable distance of their house, at a price they find affordable according to the society around them, from a range of food that is decided by society around them. Your average person does not have the luxury to walk around a high street supermarket selecting the most humane and delicious foods. People get what they can afford, what they understand, what they can prepare and what is available. Our ancestors ate chicken because of necessity of their own kind, their children are exposed to chicken through no fault of their own, fast forward a few generations, and thus chicken becomes an affordable, accessible staple. Can we reach a compromise here? It may not be necessary for chickens to die to feed the human race, but it may be necessary for some people to eat chicken today because of their particular life.

I don't like the use of the phrase 'if i can do it, i know anyone can'. I think it's a mistake to deal in certainties, especially pertaining to lifestyles that you can't possibly know about without having lived them. Are you one of the many homeless people accepting chicken soup from a stranger because it's nourishing, cheap and easy for a stranger to buy, and keeps you warm on the streets? Are you a single mother with coeliac disease, a grumpy teenager and picky toddler who has 20 minutes to get to the supermarket and get something cooking? Or one of the millions using foodbanks in the UK (to our shame) now? I don't think you're willfully turning a blind eye to those people, i'm not tugging heart strings to do you a disservice. Maybe you're just fortunate you not only have the choice, but you have such choice that you can't imagine a life without it. I won't budge an inch on this one, you can't know what people have to do, and we have to accept life is not ideal.

And within that idealism and choice problem we can include illnesses that once again in IDEAL situations could survive without dead animals, nevertheless find it necessary to eat what they can identify and feel safe with.

Yes, those damn gluten hipsters drive me round the bend but only because they make people think that a LITTLE gluten is ok, it makes people take the problem less seriously (see Tumblr feminism... JOKE).

I agree that we must look at what action we can take now - and that is why i keep reminding you that we are not in an ideal world. If the veganism argument is to succeed then you must suggest a reasonable pathway to go from how we are now to whatever situation you would prefer. My "ideal farm" description was just me demonstrating the problem - that you need to show us your blueprint for how we start again without killing animals and feeding everyone we have.

And on that subject, your suggestions need to be backed by real research, otherwise you don't have any real plan. "It's fair to say there is very little risk" is a nice bit of illustrative language but it is not backed by any fact or figure and so i'm compelled to do my Penn and Teller impression and call bullshit. As of right now, the life expectancy of humans is better than it has ever been. It is up to you to prove that changing the diet of 7 billion people will result in neutrality or improvement of health and longevity. That proof must come in the form of large statistical analyses and thorough science. I don't want to sound like i'm being a dick, but any time you state something like that as a fact or with certainty, it needs to be backed up by something. I'm not nit picking and asking for common knowledge to have a citation, but things like this do:

-- 70% of farmland claim
-- 'fair to say very little risk' claim
-- meat gives you cancer claim - i accept it may have a carcinogenic effect but i'll remind you so does breathing, joss-sticks, broccoli, apples and water
-- 'the impact to the planet would be immense' claim - in what way, and what would be the downsides in terms of economy, productivity, health, animal welfare (where are all the animals going to be sent to retire as of day 1?)
-- etc. etc.

Oh, and a cow might get its protein from plants, but it walks around a field all day eating grass, chewing the cud and having sloppy shits with 4 stomachs and enzymes that i don't have................. I'm a bit puzzled by this one... I probably can't survive on what an alligator or a goldfish eats, but i can survive on parts of an alligator or fish. I can't eat enough krill in a day to keep me going, but i can let a whale do it for me...?

I could watch these all day.

McDonald's serves breakfast all day?!?!?!?!

i have watched a few of this guys videos,and while he has great energy,passion and a penchant for sly humor,but he tends to impose his understandings as somehow being more valid and accurate.

just take his example of the role of government.
he makes a valid point,and then solidifies his position by implying his view is set in this countries original documents.

which is fair,but only to a point...he literally ignores the federalist papers,which he actually references,and it was these 200+ papers and/or arguments that debated the actual role of the federal government vs the role of state government.

@MonkeySpank he is actually right.america is not a true direct democracy but rather a democratically elected representative republic.

after he makes some valid,if fairly biased points,he devolves into the gospel of capitalism and how it is a natural extension of our democratic republic.

really dude?
name ONE corporation that is democratic in any fashion?
you can't?
maybe that is due to the very obvious and plain fact that corporations are tyrannical by their very design.

this semi-educated man is just preaching the gospel of his religion:capitalism.

and referencing lenin like 20 times?
dude...read a fucking book on the history of the soviet union.

oh jesus..now he defending trickle down economics.....
sighs..how the zealots adore their doctrine of their holy texts,even if those texts are just figments of some economists wet dreams and has been proven to be an utter and glorious failure.

sanders is a democratic socialist,not like a denmark flavor but more of a FDR flavor.you know...the most popular president in this countries history and ushered in the most prosperous era in this countries history.

i could do a play by play on this man all day,and make him cry like a pretty little thailand ladyboy who cant afford his life-changing surgery into a actual woman.

well..he does have that douchebag hair.so he may already be looking for a surgeon.

yeah..im with @MonkeySpank,this dude just needs a good cock punch.

Anyone ever use the OS called CP\M on old Kaypro computers? My first computer job in 1985 was supporting an auto salvage yard database on those computers in Texas. CP\M was painful, you could erase the hard disk you booted from, if you weren't careful. Which I did, I spent a whole day entering inventory into the hard drive, then went to back it up by erasing a bunch of floppies first. The one time I forgot to specify A: for the floppy drive to be erased, it defaulted to the C drive. So when it said "Are you sure you want to erase this disk?" I tapped Y and it erased the boot drive, with the OS, the inventory program and all that data I had typed in all day. I took a long walk and considered a career change, I was so angry. Then went back and typed it all in again.

That idea came directly from ahimsa, (who I've been going back and forth with all day) who specifically said today that convincing people to adopt veganism is about 'social justice'.
I'm sincerely sorry if I attributed that sentiment to you inappropriately.

What I find insulting is the sudden influx of a number of vocal, shaming, guilt spreading vegans here trying to make everyone think just like they do or else feel ashamed and like they're terrible, evil, abusive people...or unthinking idiots. I'll only speak for myself, but I don't want to see that here.
You're welcome to your opinion, and welcome to share it, but when you start telling other people what THEY should or must do/feel/think, you've crossed a line into social justice warrioring, and I'll rail against it every time I notice that happen. When you add multiple propaganda links, the bile will build quickly.

I read the update. It gave some insight to your thought process, but didn't solve my issue.
You're mistaken, and it seemed a bit narcissistic, to think everyone that doesn't agree with you must just be naïve and has never considered this subject thoughtfully. The anger stems from THAT (apparent) insulting thought, not from some internal logic struggle about loving some animals and eating others (or maybe loving AND eating some), it's anger at people telling others how to think, how to act, how to feel, how to eat....and vitriol when the reasoning behind that direction comes from questionable at BEST, completely discredited at worst, internet propaganda posing as science. THAT is a big pet peeve of mine, no matter what the subject may be, and I've been dealing with it all day long.
It may have been inappropriate to lump you in with him, again I apologize if the complaint didn't fit.

This is where drones come in. They can loiter literally all day long and identify targets. Without putting a pilots life in danger like with the A-10.
A fast mover comes in and releases munitions on marked locations if it is in deep territory. Or a helicopter will do it to support close by infantry.

That's the theory anyway. Whether it's realistic and works I have no idea But that's how 70% or so of air support is already done with current planes.

If anyone ever flies a stealth plane low and slow. They're an idiot. So I really hope that never happens.

Pretty much every plane ever built has a had a rough start. The F-35 is no different, expect it has more systems to tune so it takes longer. Although it's probably being milked by the manufacturer by the sounds of it.

I could listen to this guy all day. Voice as clear as a bell.

My first instrument was the drums and I would rather listen to my neighbor's dog bark all day then hear most drum solos. She's competent and has done her homework but it's still as formulaic and predictable as most drum solos are.

Now THIS is a drum solo, Dennis Davis was Bowie's drummer for a number of years and I still crank this 8 minute solo 40 years after it was recorded in 1976. I have yet to hear any musician top this solo on any instrument, for my money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPk3_X00ld4

Least interesting titty picture I have seen all day.

Weird, I just enjoy being a fat dude sitting all day long on his couch. I'm either severly broken or the happiest man on earth. I dunno.

It's alright. I got bored. Forwarded through a bit and the baseball smash was super like totally wow cool. Smashing a baseball. I think I did that with an electric vice. Used to smash shit all day smoking pot, whiskeyed out, at least 6 beers into an LSD trip.
Was there music then? Not sure. Might have been real.
Anyway, what is reality these days? I think it's
4 hours of sleep, 6 hours of driving, 12 hours
of working, and 2 hours for divided by all
the entertainment leading to such a
density of complexity the grey
matter in my head has
liquidized and oozed
out through my
ears, dripping
drip
drip
drip
drip
drip
dr
i
p
.

God watching them cut the dough was the most orgasm inducing thing I've seen all day...

Yap, wheat and rye, mostly. Some maize. It's been a week since the last snow fell, but it remained cold enough to maintain a thin layer on top of everything.

Those wind turbines on the second picture were in the process of going offline. There's hardly any wind at all. Solar panels are working splendidly though, cloudless sky all day and perfect working temperatures.