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 best evidence you have for your claims (as I see it) is anecdotal at best.
3rd world countries 1) are not at all vegetarian and 2) don't get most cancers Westerners do largely because they don't eat processed foods or expose themselves to carcinogenic chemicals constantly....we do.
Again, NEVER get your science from the internet.

"Pro-life" is by definition "anti-choice".

If you're really pro-planet, a MUCH better way to go about it is try to get people to have fewer children. That will make exponentially more difference than some people eating fewer animals. In fact, if past human behavior is a guide, if we all stop eating animals, animals will cease to exist for the most part, so that's not helpful to them at all.

Again, fewer people is the proper answer, not forcefully change biologically engrained behavior. I made that choice, so I can eat all the animals I ever possibly can and I've done more for the planet and it's animals with that single action than 1000 vegans with vegan children...or more positive difference than one vegan with children, depending on how you want to look at it.

As a living being, I'm standing up for all living beings who certainly object to your choice to breed, both the voiceless and those with voice, and saying stop making choices that negatively impact us all, like having more children and grandchildren. If enough people would do that, eating meat won't be an ecological issue. ;-)

I didn't watch the videos, I don't get my science from the internet. I read scientific publications that contain peer reviewed science papers, and I've never seen one that said ALL the nutrients found in meat could be replaced with vegetable nutrients easily, simply, viably, or without excessive expense.
Also, it ignores that fact that most produce available in the first world comes with a huge carbon footprint and massive ecological damage because of the production methods, so it's not the 'clean' trade off you seem to assume.

Small family farms were plenty to meet demand for all of human history until about the last 50 years. Quit having kids, and it will be enough again and we can stop abusing animals and the eco system just to make enough food for humans.

A short, good life is preferable to no life at all.

Nope. I should have scheduled the one in that picture that's mine to end his life at least a year earlier, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. NOT doing it was immoral. If someone had been willing to eat him, I would be all for it. If someone wants to eat me, go for it...I suggest slow smoking and a molasses based BBQ sauce. Eating my dog would be ecologically sound, as opposed to the cremation we ended up with, or burial, being the only other option available.
If I raised dogs for food, I would not think twice about ending their life in their prime. That would be the reason they existed in the first place, and without that reason they would never get that chance.

Again, milk cows only exist because someone wanted to partner with them to benefit both. Without that symbiosis, they would not get the opportunity to exist at all. IMO, existence is preferable to no existence. Yes, they need to get pregnant at least once, but as I understand it, that's it so long as you keep up with milking them. Veal, now there I'll totally agree with you that IT'S abuse.

Animals are not people. They do not usually have the same need for freedom, and those that do have that need were never domesticated. It is not immoral to form a symbiosis with another species as long as you both benefit in some way, otherwise you're just a parasite.

? Taste, as in how animals taste? BS, that's not all. That's a component, sure, but there's incredibly more to it than that.

I prefer to give animals a reason to exist, knowing that without that human centric reason, they simply won't get the chance, but I do my best to purchase animal products that are created with the least distress and best conditions for the animals in question...granted that's not always possible to know.

Trust me, I've tried vegetarian 'meats', I know the difference, and absolutely don't prefer vegan fare, or vegetarian fare that attempts to emulate meat. If I want meat, I'll eat meat. You'll get my butter only by prying it from my cold, dead hands. ;-)

I don't think taste is quite as simple as you imply. Yes, there is a component of 'addiction' to certain foods, especially sugar rich foods.
There's no such thing as vegan cheese or chocolate, you mean tofu and carob...and I agree, they both suck.

Sorry, that's simply wrong. A poor eating vegan can certainly negatively impact the planet with their food choices. It's easy. Oreos for instance, are most certainly made with ecologically damaging factory farm methods creating the ingredients...well, those methods and chemists. I don't know off hand the carbon footprint and ecological impact of an oreo, but it's not "none".

Yea, I will have to get ROMs and Stella emulator to try it. I tried to see if an existing Flash game existed. Nope.

I had some nostalgia fever recently and ran across these "Let's Compare" videos a day before seeing your Pac-Man homebrew submission, so I had to post this.

Had you not seen that channel before? Between YouTube and emulators it's fun to revisit the old favourites, and the ones you may have missed. Can you guess which company I was a fan of way back when?

Almost forgot to mention I had that Pac-Man table top game they show at the end.

Yeah, I had to get rid of a lot of comics and discarded my magazines as well since then. And I do regret it for sure, but they were such a pain taking up space.

I definitely miss those days but I also am an avid PC gamer still. I think what I miss most about those days were the developers... I mean the studios out there back then were ahead of their time and most fell by the wayside due to publisher problems or what not. I really miss Looking Glass Studios, Black Isle & Bullfrog (& to some degree Bungie releasing something that I actually like). Those studios were irreplaceable, but again - it's all about time and place - even those publishers would have probably hit a sour note at some point and at least we never saw those notes! I remember for example that people really got tired & complained about the Infinity engine from Black Isle/Bioware games. And now look - these days we have games trying to emulate the look & feel (Pillars of Eternity)!

@newtboy

i do not think your solutions will have the easy results you imply.

contrary to the propaganda WE are fed,groups like ISIS are far more sophisticated and culturally savvy,as this video is evidence to and one of the reasons i posted.

it is easy to buy into the media-concocted trope that ISIS members are a bunch of un-educated,backwater,third world countrymen who are just religious zealots pining for the good old days of a world caliphate from 700 years ago.

but to believe that you would have to ignore the disturbing number of westerners who are joining ISIS.these folks benefited from western,secular education etc etc.

religion,like nationalism,has always been an extremely effective tool to manipulate,control and justify.

islam is not the cause of violence,barbarity and war.
it is the excuse used to justify that violence and barbarity.

the simple and disturbing truth is that propaganda works,nationalism works,religiousity works to get normal folk to engage in violent acts against their fellow man.

america has been perfecting their propaganda system for over a century.perfecting their art of unending war and conflict.

considering how we have injected ourselves in the middle east since the 50's.it appears our middle eastern friends have learned from us,and become quite proficient at emulating the very thing we excel at.

so you would never see this on any cable tv channel or news outlet,but i think its important to see just how well they have become at utilizing media to get across their message.

using americas great gift to the world:marketing.

Capitalism is a guideline or system of how to organise aspects of society (trade, labour and services for example), nothing more. How you use it defines its effect on us. I could sell you my child explicitly for the purpose of you raping it and it would show how evil capitalism is. Or I sell you my children's book explicitly for the purpose of you entertaining your own children and that would be quite nice.
The problem starts if you think everything needs to be a for profit business as capitalism should be unlimited. Then you live in a country that makes prisons privately owned businesses and thinks it's ok to bankrupt sick people and their families with medical bills.
Capitalism is as evil as the people controling it. Who allows these people to be evil? Who cares? Apparently not the majority.
However, all that is not the problem of this ad. The capitalism works to nobodies disadvantege here. Edeka tries to brand itself as family-friendly and established part of homelife. That is quite normal and acceptable for a grocery store. It is not like as if VW would be putting out ads on how honest they are.
The version of the ad I described as being better is as manipulative as this one with the exception that it doesn't make everyone look like assholes upon closer inspection.
Nobody nailed grandpa's door shut, he's allowed to step into the world and make new friends and other aquaintances. His isolation is understandable but mostly his own fault. I witnessed stuff like that myself, I have grandparents too.
On the other hand you bemoan the smombies of today. Do you see the irony of complaining about the screen-fixed stare of todays youth (and society in general) on an internet forum?
We created a distraction-addicted, short-term attention-spanned and self-affirming society on our own by willingly swallowing all the crap the distraction industry throws at us.
I don't have a twitter account because nothing I can say in 140 characters without established context is worth saying. That gotta mean something coming from me of all people.
I'm not on Facebook because I know what the 'StaSi' was and see no reason to do their work on my own person for Mr. Zuckerberg and his shareholders.
I have no internet connection on my cellphone because I prefer to know stuff instead of just looking it up. I don't write text messages all the time because I prefer spoken words with their complexity that simplifies communication instead of emojis that emulate things my face did since before cellphones stopped being science-fiction.
I choose not to stare at the palm of my hand and what's lying in it every 5 minutes because I can. Most of our modern society chooses differently. They chose poorly, as the real oldtimers would say.
And here we are, yet again, ranting about the evils of enticing screens in our lives, live on the internet. You know, we would not be this absurd joke if we'd sat at a dinnertable right now. With food and drink from Edeka.

I was surprised to hear John Oliver discussing the "Get Rid of the Penny" topic in the USA, not because the subject is uninteresting, but because he failed to point out the glaring anachronism that Americans still call their one cent coin a "penny".

Do they not realise that they started a revolution in 1765, declared independence in 1776, and started making one cent coins in 1793?

Why do they still call cents pennies? After more than 200 years, I would have thought that even the most parochial or remote American would have heard the news.

The Canadians aren't much better. The penny finally dropped there in 2012, when they stopped minting one cent coins. The first Canadian one cent coin was struck in 1858. One strange quirk is that the word penny in Canada used to refer to a two-cent coin, even though they never issued any 2 cent coins! It is possible they were referring to US 2-cent coins, which were issued from 1864 to 1873, but more likely because a French sous was worth approximately half a (British) penny, therefore a two sous coin was the near equivalent of a penny.

In Euroland, the Irish recently started to phase out the use of one and two cent coins, but most of their discussions were also about dropping the penny!

One solution could be to emulate Zimbabwe, where high inflation means that one US dollar is worth about 360 Zimbabwe dollars, or about 520 to a British pound. This neatly avoids the need for any fractional denominations.

Talking about fractional coins:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/lawrence_chard/7145393421/

...which also reveals a surprising etymological link between coins and anatomy, as does this:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/lawrence_chard/6390568191/

Perhaps the guy he mentioned getting a cent stuck in his anus was going for the closest alternative.

It's not an us vs. them or you against me thing. A Vegan diet is simply unnecessary and doesn't do anything good what a vegetarian diet can do as well. You're not healthier because you don't drink milk. You're not helping any animals because the vast, vast majority of mankind still prefers meat and that industry is still globalized, trying to produce as cheap as possible. All you do by going vegan is increasing the consumption of soybeans and almonds.
It's a silly restriction on what you eat that forces you to constantly emulate the very products you want to avoid with inferior and/or costlier products.
It's the same with that even more stupid food trend of gluten-free products. Don't have celiac disease? Fuck right off! If you don't have medical reasons (and there a few), that diet is as dumb as one the probibits you only from eating red gummibears.
The food and fitness business is full of dubious and downright wrong information and that leads to ridiculous, overpriced products like asparaguswater.

All those stupid, stupid food trends with all that 'good' advice about healthy eating. What I loathe the most are vegans who try to emulate meat products. That's the hight of stupidity. But...
there's money to be made.

Jesus Christ was apparently quite a tolerant bloke. He hung out with the whores, the beggars, the undesirables etc, he told parables about "good" people turning a blind eye to the hurting of their brother while a Samaritan turned out to be the truly good person. He said "Judge not lest ye be judged".

I don't even believe the guy was anything other than an altruistic nutter (if he existed at all) and I know his message better than you, or the douchebag in the video...

Persecution is being tossed in an arena with lions. It's being nailed to a cross. It isn't "co-existing with others and not getting the privilege of being able to make rules on how they live their lives". That's called equality, respect, common decency. You and you're ilk don't know true suffering mate.

Perhaps if you actually emulated the person you claim to worship (you know, the one that is waiting for you in the afterlife with a big fucking stick and an accounting of your years of intolerance) rather than made up your own interpretation, you'd actually be a christian worthy of the name...

And if you want to witness suffering, go minister in Africa for a few years, then get back to us about just how bad it is to be "persecuted"...

Yeah, but it is complicated on my end. Hence I find her brilliant.

I love that you picked that particular "joke". I didn't like it at first -- I thought it was crude and I was instantly uncomfortable. And in the very next moment, I got it. I got what she was doing. She was taking a woman's body and the way it works AND TAKING THE SHAME OUT OF IT.

Now, if you aren't a person who is in touch with the shame that most women have about how their bodies work, that is just a crude nothing of a nothing.

But I am a woman who carries that shame. She exploded it. She made it on par with the tired old joke of men and their skid mark underwear. She turned it into NOTHING.

It isn't a very good joke. I agree with you.

And it is brilliant for what it achieves.

And that is why I love her. She does this over and over and over again. She is de-shaming women about their bodies and their sexuality and their mistakes. Guys are really good at making fun of themselves. It is one thing I really admire about men, and as I get older, even before Amy came along, I have thought we should emulate that characteristic. Amy is doing that for us. Bless her, really really bless her.

But I don't think you get the joke. Many women don't get the joke -- they are stuck in the shame and think she is just crude.

It's okay. You don't have to get the joke. You also don't have to enjoy anal fisting. Ha.

FWIW, I think it is sincere. Varoufakis has two points. 1) Austerity is contractionary. Forcing Greece to raise taxes, cut pensions and run escalating fiscal surpluses makes it impossible for Greece ever to grow its economy sufficiently to pay off its debt. (The debt is likely unpayable in any case, but Greece is being subject to needless suffering and endless debt peonage because Schaeuble and the lenders refuse to cede any ground.) 2) It's not possible for every country to emulate Germany and run a trade surplus, because one country's surplus is another's deficit. If you expect other countries to buy more from you than you buy from them, the money has to come from somewhere. In other words, if it's your policy to run a trade surplus then you will have to finance your trade partners somehow.

It will eventually (when we can run PS4 emulators )

So are Team ICO developing this or not? It's certainly got that desaturated look of Ico and-and Shadow of the Colossus, in fact, it really does look like a PS2 game in terms of the engine.

But I care not one solitary rats arse about the engine. The animation is beautiful and the architectural design is stunning.

Ico and SotC were amazing games. They had great puzzles and genuinely engaging stories, all without a line of understandable dialog.

If this actually comes out, I will rent a PS4 to play it, and it will wreck me

They know to float and hold their breath due to a natural response, which you can emulate by blowing in their faces, to which they have the same reaction. They also flap their arms and legs in a swim-like motion so that a layman might think they know how to swim.

Actually they are not strong enough nor understanding of the concept to hold their head above water to breathe. Your advice is misleading and it could be dangerous if taken in the wrong way. Babies cannot swim and are at significantly higher risk of drowning than older/stronger (even non-swimmer) children, and they're naturally shaped and weighted to float face down.

Suggesting that we have an unnatural, unnecessary fear of babies drowning in the west sounds like jenny mccarthy new-age nonsense.. we have a rational fear of babies drowning because they are at risk of drowning for aforesaid reasons, which is aside from whether this video is safe for a baby or not... some people take their babies on bicycles and in cars in at least equally dangerous environments.

No offence intended, but drowning is a serious risk for small children, and what you say is a hazardous myth... babies will survive being submerged for a short period of time, and will not try to breathe when submerged. They cannot swim and will drown if not retrieved quickly.