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Crazy vegans and social evolution
This horrifying article appeared in today’s AJC
Vegan parents guilty in infant murder
6-week-old died of starvation after being fed diet of soy milk, apple juice
The parents of a baby that died of starvation after being fed a vegan diet have been found guilty of malice murder, felony murder and first degree cruelty to children.
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Prosecutors said it was a chilling case of murder by starvation, a painful and prolonged death. Attorneys representing Sanders and Thomas told jurors the first-time parents did the best they could while adhering to their vegan lifestyle. Vegans typically live free of animal products.It’s troubling in many ways; it raises the question of do we need an official (i.e. government) of raising children (no), and how could these two be so stupid as to not notice that their baby was shrinking?
The truly rare thing is how did these two avoid the self-appointed legions of women who see an infant as an invitation to ask the parents questions on every conceivable subject? It’s not like you have to seek out child-rearing advice when it comes flying out of the woodwork in public places. I imagine it’s decent advice too, just repetitive.
Perhaps it’s an evolved behavior. Post-partum depression being common a society with an army of cooing watchdogs is the first line of defense against neglect or abuse.
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Digital Hobos
Surprising, even in out internet age is the site E-Hobo.com. The most interesting site is of course, HoboTraveler.com (he’s currently in East Africa). The JargonDatabase.com list of Hobo Jargon is of course quite valuable.
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It’s hard to sell domestic violence
While on my way to the Open Mic last night I passed a street performer/near vagrant. As I walked by I got the a pitch for money, with the memorable opening line of “Can you help me out man, I just did six months for domestic violence”. I gave him a dose of the evil eye (look at a spot an inch above his eyes, try it, it works) and he backed off rather quickly.
Why would he think that would be a good way to get money out of anyone? Then again, thinking probably isn’t a strong suit.
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May Day
For those of you that don’t know, May Day commemorates the Haymarket riots in Chicago in 1886. The former Catalarchy (now DistributedRepublic.net) has a nice assortment of articles on the legacy of the Red Crusade.
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A cool flash embedder
The best Flash embedder I’ve seen actually. It’s called SWFObject.
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Passive solar power
Via TreeHugger.com, I came across this interesting how-to article on passive solar power. An expanded article can be found on Instructables.com.
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More wisdom from my old econ professors
The same professor mentioned in the previous post said that it is the natural order of things for
“Those who study the very big see the study of the very small as true, but not relevant. Those who study the very small see the study of the very big as relevant, but not true”.
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Science and truth
Via this episode of BloggingHeads, I came across an interesting article about the philosophy of science, specifically that of Thomas Kuhn. Money Quotes:
Scientists, as Kuhn describes them, are deeply conservative. Once indoctrinated into a paradigm, they generally devote themselves to solving “puzzles,” problems whose solutions reinforce and extend the scope of the paradigm rather than challenging it. Kuhn calls this “mopping up.” But there are always anomalies, phenomena that the paradigm cannot account for or that directly contradict it. Anomalies are often ignored. But if they accumulate, they may trigger a revolution (also called a paradigm shift, although not originally by Kuhn), in which scientists abandon the old paradigm for a new one.
Denying the view of science as a continual building process, Kuhn asserts that a revolution is a destructive as well as a creative event. The proposer of a new paradigm stands on the shoulders of giants and then bashes them over the head.
In other words, science advances funeral by funeral.
On the first day of my Advanced Macroeconomics class in 1994 the professor (I forget his name, I think that was the last class he taught before he retired) said that we should think of the truth as “the consensus of informed opinion”.
In other words, for practical purposes, the truth is the state of the art, as of right now, and we should expect it to change over time.
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1000 posts in just over two years
This is the 1,000th. Not too shabby I suppose. Traffic is finally starting to reach “trickle” status.
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Two good reads
- From Col. Lang (on partial withdrawal)
Iraq, (Mesopotamia) has always been held together (in various eras) by force and coercion. The enmity among the “Iraqis” is not a matter of misunderstanding, or a failure to communicate among themselves.
- From Michael Scheur (on George Tenet’s book)
But Tenet’s resignation would have destroyed the neocons’ Iraq house of cards by discrediting the only glue holding it together: the intelligence that “proved” Saddam Hussein guilty of pursuing nuclear weapons and working with al-Qaeda.
- From Col. Lang (on partial withdrawal)