themadkat

There are other legitimate reasons not to eat factory-farmed meat. Because of the conditions the animals are kept in, they must be pumped full of antibiotics. They are also frequently fed massive amounts of growth hormones so that they mature much faster than they are meant to. It is possible that consuming these chemicals in the meat you eat is not terribly good for you. If you were to eat instead, say, grass-fed beef and free-range chickens, they may not have quite as much fat content or portion size but they would be better for you and, I venture, taste better as well. I once ate pork from pigs that I could see being raised, mostly on discarded produce as well as anything they could root up themselves. Boy, was that good sausage. Unfortunately this kind of meat is more expensive, more difficult to find, or both. Because of the regulations on slaughterhouses, all farmers are basically forced to send their animals to the same few slaughterhouses to be processed, and so you may not actually know whose animals you are eating, because it is difficult to keep them all sorted. This is no fault of the farmer - he has no choice about how his animals get processed. It's regulated. So even if you think you are buying one thing, you may be buying another. I generally eat whatever meat is on special at the supermarket, usually chicken, pork, or ground beef. If it were cheaper and more easily available (which it probably would be in a free market), I would choose to eat non-factory-farmed meat. YMMV. You have to make choices for yourself in the context of your values.

YES. YES. A THOUSAND TIMES YES. Don't mind if I do.

I love how it conveniently leaves out any mention of Rand's strident opposition to any business, big or small, getting one dime of government money for any reason. Bailouts are not capitalist, they are corporatist.

I'm not sure it's that simple. Racism can definitely be a factor. My WWII vet grandpa hated the Japanese until the day he died despite the fact that he only ever fought in the European theater and the ones killing his boys were all Nazis. The war ended before Grandpa could be shipped to the Pacific. Why would he express such hatred of the Japanese but never the Germans, to the end of his life mind you?

Singer is a self-described utilitarian. There are many stripes and not all of them are trying to maximize good. In fact, not all of them seek to maximize. Mostly what the consequentialist philosophies have in common is a teleological view of the good, intrinsic value or worth (without reference to a valuer).

Any of the various countries that the CIA has meddled around in over the years. Central and South America come to mind most quickly. However, I would not say that any government currently in existence can rightfully declare war on the US - any that might have in the past no longer exist. And the truth of the matter is, I'm not certain what the legitimacy of those various governments would have been in the first place. But I would certainly never call the governments of the many dictators we supported and propped up over the years legitimate. For me this is not about governments. This is about particular people within locations we have attacked or meddled with whose rights have been violated. Those are the ones I think about showing up at my door. I guess the question for all of us is, how responsible can each of us, individually, be held for our government's actions? If you say not very much, then doesn't the same apply to those poor bastards overseas, or do they not get the benefit of the doubt in that way? And if you say we are all responsible for the actions of our government, then there are many, many folks out there who might in fact be justified coming to kick in my door. And then I would have to defend myself against them. Then we have a situation somewhat like Iraq. I've realized this discussion has strayed somewhat from the posted topic. My point is that in foreign affairs the US government, and the government of our allies, has committed downright evil actions over the years and violated rights in my name. I'm exploring the implications of that in my own mind (more or less how I described it above).

Not necessarily. We've kicked in lots of people's doors over the course of various wars and operations. I wouldn't have had to do anything besides live "in the way", basically.

You know, I've had the same thought before, myself. But I don't even consider it a future question. This country has already done some unjust things and if one of the victims of that injustice came to my door and kicked it in, I'd do what I had to in order to defend myself and my house, but I couldn't exactly call the guy wrong.

I want to second this. Most emphatically Not Okay™. I am in favor of legitimate self-defense. But wiping the population from a swath of several countries goes far beyond that and could never be justified on the basis of self-defense or any other means. It is wrong, it is evil, and I won't condone it.

Singer thinks he can. He is a utilitarian and so takes value outside the context of a particular valuer. He is attempting to assume the "view from nowhere" when he makes these kinds of arguments (which of course he cannot do). So to him all units of value are equivalent and can be mathematically parsed in such a way. This type of thinking is why utilitarianism continues to exist.

Did people not notice that this is a haiku? I think this guy is yankin' our chains.

A retarded 2 year old orphan is a human being with rights, and that's all that matters, so no.

If it's in a public space why presume it's the man's dog at all? For all you know he could be torturing someone else's dog that accidentally got under the fence.

No, it doesn't.

I disagree. I have seen some truly beautiful tattoos. I don't currently have any of my own, but I can appreciate other peoples' when done well.

Where in Texas? I'm a student at Texas A&M myself. My best friend is from a super-small public school in N. Tex.

My point is, don't you think it says something about a piece when exactly opposite interpretations of that piece are both equally valid? I think, to me, this is the crux of the "non-objectivity" label when applied to art. I am not much for a visual art person, unless you count my expansive geeky love for all forms of comic media and animation. So I don't know too much about paintings as such and I don't spend a whole lot of time looking at them (in fact I spend far more time listening to music). But the point I suppose I'm trying to make is this: can't you think of some forms of art where exactly opposite interpretations are NOT equally valid? Take a book, which would fall into Rand's definition of art as literature. Let's take a well-known book like Catcher in the Rye. There are many interpretations we could make of this book, but there is absolutely no textual evidence to support the conclusion that Holden Caulfield is a happy, well-adjusted and functional kid who is getting along just fine in life. There is no textual evidence to support that it is all a fantasy in the mind of his dead brother Allie, who is not really dead at all and is picturing the pain his older brother would be in if he was to die. In other words, some interpretations are CLEARLY not supported by the actual work itself. I think you could even say this with music. Would anyone seriously argue that "Black" by Pearl Jam is a cheerful, lively tune? For anyone not familiar with "Black", let's just say it lays on the E minor chord pretty thick and here are some of the lyrics: I take a walk outside, I'm surrounded by some kids at play I can hear their laughter, so why do I sear And twisted thoughts they spin round my head, I'm spinning How quick the sun can drop away And now my bitter hands cradle broken glass Of what was everything? All the pictures have all been washed in black, tattooed everything Can you say that there are any interpretations of these two abstract paintings which are clearly unsupported by those paintings, other than just silly things like saying that blue is actually yellow?

Oh my gosh that's Bones! Wooo Bones! (Though I still find it jarring to see David Boreanaz in his Booth role since I was so conditioned to think of him as Angel)

Not really. This reference might be of interest to you: Rivas, E. 2005. Recent use of signs by chimpanzees in interactions with humans. J Comp Psych 119: 404-417. This researcher finds that the chimpanzees trained and filmed by the research team founded by the Gardners (advocates for the ability of their chimps to use language) are using the signs to get what they want, but do not have any semblance of syntax or semantics in the way they use their signs. Instead, the longer the string of signs they make, the more they use repetition of a sign or what Terrace et al. dubbed "wild-card signs" (from his studies with his own animal, Nim Chimpsky) such as their own name sign or that/there/you (which is pointing), which the humans almost always interpret as appropriate given any context of conversation and so hasten to get the chimp what it wants. In other words, it seems the chimps have excellently trained the humans to fulfill their wishes by using these gestures, but they are not using the signs as a language per se. There is no evidence they attribute any symbolic meaning to the signs beyond the behaviors they provoke in their human caretakers. Thus, Rivas concludes that the use of "language" by these chimps is not the same pattern shown by, say, human infants as they acquire language.

The first painting looks like a kitchen tile floor to me. Its splashy color palette and angular lines evoke a mental image to me of the "futuristic" design style employed in the 60s, and I associate it with a "modernized" house where technology is able to save time and energy for the housewife. The colors are playful and make me think of children. So what this painting evokes for me is 1960s on-the-go mothering. The second painting is very cold and sparse, and the wavy lines make me think of readings on an instrument panel of some kind. It's as if some scientists are in a lab measuring a phenomenon in their clean white lab coats and everything is very clinical. In keeping with the 60s-esque style I see in this painting of course all the scientists are going to be men with cropped hair and spectacles, and I feel like it could be used as the first panel of a "careers in science!" educational video. I'm not trying to be contrary here, but is my interpretation any less valid than yours? I'm not completely making this up. I really do get this from these paintings much more so than your interpretation. I never would have seen these pictures the same way you do in a million years (not that anything is wrong with that).

Usually it consists of taking a branch or stem and stripping off the leaves and/or shaping it (perhaps chewing on the end to create a brush) and then using it, generally to acquire food. In more experimental lab settings chimps and other apes have had to either construct or deconstruct a particular object in order to render it appropriate for getting food from whatever orifice the experimenters have constructed. There was an interesting report about a gorilla in the wild who pulled up a small tree and used it as a depth probe, then a bridge to cross a mucky area (laying it down and walking on it), but our class could not decide whether that counts as tool use. Where is the line between tool use and tool creation? What constitutes a tool? We discovered during our discussion that under a broad enough definition of tool use even nest-building behavior could count, which is of course widespread, but that sort of behavior is not what we normally consider "tool use".

It is attested with animals regularly, notably with the great apes but arguably with some birds as well. Of course then we started to argue among the class what really constitutes a tool (if you throw out the hammer and anvil chimps use to open nuts you pretty much have to throw out the Oldowan tool industry of early Homo as well). You are correct that tool use and volition are separate lines of discussion, however. The nitpicky biologist must be coming out in me today since I'm cramming five or six papers into my head today. Incidentally, they're on ape language, so they might interest you.

Anyone got any advice as to how to get started riding? I'm interested in a crotch-rocket type sportbike but I know those are not what you really want to be starting out with...don't want to end up like Ben Roethlisberger. So far the only bike I ride is the pedaling kind.

It's hardly controversial. In fact, it's nearly devoid of any kind of content whatsoever. But that was not the ad that was originally slated to run, from what I understand.

I always thought Eminem had some good songs. Grad school has me listening to the long version of "8 mile" a lot.