Pliny

I admit to being a salt addict. I like salty things even more than sweet things. I do think sugar consumption is way too high and sugar is a killer if over-consumption continues over a long period. What's over-consumption? Entirely a personal matter and some have a higher tolerance than others but I don't even consider raw sugar to be a food. Can't say I don't eat it though. I have never thought salt was a big problem and have never moderated or curtailed my intake because of health concerns, as I do with sugar, but of course there is a limit to salt intake as with any food. I remember my great Aunt who at dinner one night mentioned she had to cut out salt as it contributed to water-retention. I had read Dr. Atkins and been on the Atkins diet and thought well if you want to reduce water-retention just stop eating simple sugars and starches. Salt? Really? I, of course never mentioned it to her as it was her Doctor's advice and I would not want to override that. I have mentioned too that I use butter and have never used margarine except for a short period in the seventies. Most of them were made with hydrogenated oils which today have been proven to be unhealthy. I think what I got from Atkins was that there are different kinds of calories and the body will use them according to the ease with which they supply energy. Simple carbs and sugars are broken down easily by the body and supply an instant energy boost, what isn't used is stored as fat, which is another source of calories, and more easily used than calories from protein which takes a lot for the body to break down and are thus not the preferred source of energy for the body yet is essential to provide all the amino acids it needs for healthy cell-building Just my theory. Here's an article on the salt study. http://kfor.com/2013/07/09/cdc-admits-long-standing-error-there-is-no-benefit-in-reducing-salt/

I generally agree with your posts concerning economics but can't understand your view here especially with your grounding in science.You have expressed an interest in creating a robot of a sort, one that could endure long trips in space perhaps. Something that resolves problems and barriers that the human organism would encounter such as radiation. Really though what is it you would like to transfer from the human organism to the robot? I don't know if you have ever thought about the fact that your definition of life actually makes the human organism a robot. A simple electro-chemical carbon-oxygen machine. It has taken a little while to develop through an evolutionary process and perhaps we can further improve on it by making parts out of steel or something more durable. But the current form repairs itself and and is quite flexible. What is it that you would like to transfer from a piece of protoplasm, our current robotic form, to a piece of steel? Hi. Wild Bill. I really enjoy reading your posts. You say what you have observed and experienced, and express your thoughts about them. There are some very intelligent posters here but I personally think some haven't bothered to sort through it all and strip out expert and authoritative opinion and "theory" from fact or correlate it with experience. Frankly,they have learned their experience means nothing as it is entirely anecdotal and if it doesn't jibe with their "education" then they deny the experience. It's a sad comment that the only ones that can offer any "truth" are those that have presented a double blind peer reviewed study and one's experience can only be interpreted or evaluated through those parameters.Certainly, on the subject to hand, Mark McCutcheon has some work to do to have his "theory" given any serious consideration but it answers a few questions. Time will only tell if we have a Galileo in our midst.

He obviously didn't accept the conventional definition of the time. No one has modernized it since the concept was first propounded. Maybe it just needs an update.

What makes us think at all? A purpose certainly isn't a necessity but it is in general prior to action, and if thought is an action then purpose generally precedes it. kimmy, for instance, has a purpose and it generates a lot of activity from her to accomplish her purpose. A different purpose would generate different activity.

You've gone and resurrected an old favourite thread of mine. Gee thanks!My fridge magnet is still hanging there. And I'm not surprised that you quote Cracked magazine as your scientific reference. Certainly, I think the theory is interesting and deserves some scrutiny especially when science can't explain my fridge magnet. I realize your intent in bringing up this old thread but really as far as all the subjects we disagree on, economics, physics, secular humanism, etc. all I suggest is that none of them are settled and perhaps there are things we should be looking at if we want solutions to problems we are facing. Those that simply propound the status quo from a know best or erudite position certainly have an interest in maintaining it and are not likely to wish anyone actually look anywhere else.Keynesian Economists, Pharmaceutical companies and Physicists have all invested effort in their pursuits of understanding and I doubt many, in any of those areas, have much interest in any new ideas that could prove to upset their apple carts. Just like those that had studied Copernicus were not anxious to accept Galileo. The point to be made is to look and observe and maintain the ability to look and observe. Keynesian economics was developed and works best in a Fascist State. Pharmacuetical companies deal in drugs so their solutions all have to do with drugs and if there is different solution they will attempt to undercut it or at best ignore it. Physicists are looking for phemonomena regarding the theory of relativity and special relativity and have run into problems, with string theory and quantum mechanics as offshoot theories. Anyway, thanks for bringing this up. I guess I'll just remain a crack pot because there is a possibility that those subjects mentioned have stagnated and vested interests wish to keep going down the same road. It is possible that government and banks like to manipulate the economy, and there does seem to be a connection between drugs and bizarre, senseless random acts of violence, and perhaps the Higgs-Bosun particle will simply turn out to be a paper chase. Higgs, himself says that if the there is no Higgs-Bosun particle found then he absolutely knows nothing about physics. Does the whole theory really depend upon that? I know that scientists at CERN are excited about last summers find and think they have it, maybe they do, but maybe some assumedto be true fundamental has led them down the garden path. The fact there are questions mean we still have to look. We aren't going to get anywhere continually going over the same ground. You can just continue supporting the "truth" as you have been told and I'll just keep looking. Your desire to help by keeping people on the straight and narrow, making sure they have only expert and authoritative data is notable. We are only interested in helping, after all. In resolving the problems we have in being human perhaps someone else will be looking as well. Time will tell.

They never used to charge a deposit and softdrink companies bought them back. It wasn't government that started that program. But it is just an example, not meant to be THE entrepreneurial enterprise of last resort. There are a hundred things someone can do for a little cash as long as cash still exists and that may be going the way of the horse and buggy too, thanks again to the leviathan state that needs to know where every one of its precious pennies nickels are.

yes, waldo. Even Africans don't want the 8 billion. They know that the imperialist US only too well.

Actually, it was scientific genetic research that created a superior race and inferior people not "doubting the existance of a supernatural creator". That's for later. Generalities are indeed generally wrong. Glad to see you remain a tolerant and understanding individual, that like myself recognizes that no race or group of people is inferior and do not ascribe to such statements as religion has been the cause of all wars or that Christians are spreading all kinds of nonsense on the internet and that needs to be stopped. Are those generalities true? Have you ever taken issue with them? Unfortunately, I believe that most athiests/secular humanists do see religionists as intellectually challenged and I stand by that statement. While we should be able to voice our opinions, our likes and dislikes and even make general statements about those with differing views, it being a matter of freedom of speech, they become a real problem when they are politicized. That is what we have to be vigilant about and I see both sides of the religion/anti-religion debate becoming somewhat political. You do not know that someone believing in a God is wrong, by the way. Or am I just being stupid? And by the way, some of my best friends are secular humanists.Ha Ha.

Well, kimmy, let's just continue along with having to tolerate greedy Wall Street bankers duping the public and lining their pockets. The Dodd-Frank Bill should curtail that form ever happening again, I suppose, but things will remain the same as long as money for mortgages can be created out of thin air whenever monetary policy is used to heat up the economy. The fact is that if those greedy bankers couldn't create money out of thin air they probably would have run out and been entirely unable to provide all those unqualified greedy people with mortgages for greedy Wall street to turn into derivatives and sell to equally unwitting and greedy investors. With all the regulatory boards and agencies that already exist how could this mortgage lending have gone unnoticed by Federal and State authorities? Mortgage backed Derivatives were under-regulated, as you say, but the mortgage has to exist before it can be turned into a derivative. Is the creation of the mortgage the first step in the boom? How did Countrywide escape the scrutiny of the HMDA?And how about the CRA did that play a role in creating mortgages? And how about low interest rates did that help to create mortgages? Widening the volume of "qualified" buyers? What were the parameters that defined a qualified buyer? No one, in government knew the quality of the mortgages being created? Barney Frank was buying them at Fannie and Freddie, didn't he know what he was buying? We know he thought all was well and wanted to keep the ball rolling. Later he co-writes the Dodd-Frank regulatory Act, what a joke. I suppose no one was more qualified to see what happened since he was basically at the forefront of encouraging mortgage creation. The Federal Reserve is currently busy buying MBDs but watch out headlines are screaming that the GOP sequester has affected the ability of the government to police Wall Street. I guess that's just so they can later lay blame on Republicans should the new boom take a tumble (which all booms do). Your dislike of Wall Street bankers and wishing to stick the blame on them for the whole boom and bust is rather futile in itself. While Wall Street undoubtedly contributed to the motion, as did many others the buck has to stop at regulators pushing the whole cart. It wouldn't have happened without the aid of the Federal Reserve and the monetary and social policies of the Bush Administration and Congress who were whistling dixie as it all went down. I know, I know it was the bankers and Wall Street who did it all. Let's not keep on going over the same ground. Barney has managed to keep the focus on wall Street and washed his hands of the whole thing. Quite a trick surpassing anything willard could have conjured up. The story remains - Wall Street greed creates housing crisis. Take a deep drink.

Obama just gave Africa 8 billion dollars. Not enough money for some Fourth of July fireworks or White House Tours due to sequestration. But there is enough in the pot for a $100 million dollar tour to dole out 8 billion dollars to develop the electrical grid in Africa. It's going to get more and more like that as Obama levels the playing field. If one can't read the intent through the generalities and demagoguery you can sure see it in his actions. It's called social justice, or equality, or being fair and balanced or leveling the playing field. Now one might say, poor Americans can't tour the White house or miss their fireworks on July the 4th...awwww. But those are just indicators. The reality is the number of people on food stamps and disability, an unemployment rate that won't come down (and is highest among youth and Afro-Americans) and an unprecedented divide in social and political attitudes. All while numerous scandals rock the White House - there's fast and furious, Benghazi, NSA, IRS and the AP/James Rosen affair. But it's summertime not much to report in the news....yawn...oh yeah - by the way.. BMW got hit for its hiring practices. It seems in their South Carolina operation more Blacks than Whites were being turned away. BMW was doing criminal background checks on job applicants and using them in an indiscriminate manner. Some 79 Blacks and only 6 Whites were turned away. I don't know, those numbers don't look fair to me. Pepsico apparently had to pay 3.1 million under similar circumstances awhile ago. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323495604578539283518855020.html

Not denying warming, waldo. It's proven that the temperature over the last century has risen 1.5 degrees fahrenheit (that's about .8 degrees centigrade but 1.5 is a bigger number and much scarier so we should use that). The contention lies in the anthropogenic factor. A 'decadal perspective'? But the global surface temperature hasn't gone up in the last decade, contrary to the predictions of scientific models. Are you sure a decade is enough time, waldo?

I laughed. It was funny.

Restated: No job is not needed anymore.

Popular media criticizing IPCC fans and alarmists!!! It's the end of the world for sure!!

Aren't you talking about weather here,waldo? We need long term data in order to make climate change claims.

Holy cow!! Over the last century it has risen a whole, well almost a whole, centigrade.

The Africans don't like it and neither do the first world countries. Obama is for fair and equal and he shall legislate it so.

Well, what do I really mean, Mike?

Rarely do you comment on another quote. I take it as a compliment.

Not an indirect comparison at all!

Politicians of all stripes have been deceitful or at best not quite forthright in what they say. I believe that Obama wishes to make everything "fair" and "equal". He is quite straightforward about that but he is not quite forthright about how he will achieve it. de Tocqueville mentions that despotism can be reduced down to the single principle that "the only condition one needs in order to reach a centralized public power in a democratic society is to love equality or to make men believe you do."

The idiocy of the statement that "everyone having their own car and mansion will make the planet boil over" is what I was pointing out. Contrary to what you think, he did say that. Whether in context or out of context, its an idiotic demagogic statement. Wealth redistribution seems the aim from the full statements you quoted.

Under .95 cents and showing no signs of coming back. Is the TD banker right? Is .90 cents inevitable? I still don't think so.

I would like the liberal constitutional democracies to continue but somehow you confuse today's leviathan State with the liberal constitutional democracy that was the promise at its inception. If you see no difference, no change in the State from then to now, then nothing can be said. If the liberal constitutional democracy you so cherish has not devolved into a pigsty of special political and social interests squealing for their privilege from the public purse then what is their to be said? I don't get where this concept that libertarian minimalist ideology will create Utopia comes from? Utopia is the promise of the Statist, the politician, the central planner, the do-gooder.

The problem is the subsidies - a market distortion. Why pay a fair wage when taxpayers are anteing up to subsidize it. It is a subsidy to employers, who can pay lower wages to have someone stick around, it only appears the subsidy is to the employees. If someone can make more picking up pop bottles why would fall to that level? It will fall to the level where people are willing to work not to the level where employees set it. The millions of migrant illegal aliens in the US kept wages low for unskilled labour but it had to be above a level that attracted them. They want high wages and low prices which is what government tries to bring them. Economically, it fails. There's a natural balance to wages and prices.