One item that OP doesn't touch on that is very important is a discussion of the changing overall demographic of retail, w.r.t who is selling what kind of product, and what customers are buying.

Specifically, fast-fashion in this context.

Sears, JC Penney, Macy's et al today are the vestigial remnant of last century's 'Great American Department Store'. They derive from an era where they provided middle-class America with well-made, modestly priced mid-range products across the full spectrum of customer need. They occupied the space between bottom of the line and extravagent.

But the value curve and the purchasing decisions it motivates no longer support this kind of product. Fast-fashion has dropped the floor of the market so low that consumers are calculating value by comparison to products that are dirt cheap. Consider, for example, that in the past a decent pair of jeans would cost between $50 and $100, with the higher end being more, and Walmart being less. Then H&M moves in selling jeans at $20, and these seem to be comparable in value. Thereby the consumer becomes trained to use the $20 jean as the value benchmark, and suddenly those Levi's or whatever seem overpriced.

That has happened to a significant number of textile products. The key is that where consumers might once have operated on a 'you get what you pay for' idea and rejected H&M products on the basis of quality, they have now been trained (brainwashed) to expect both a lower quality and a lower price. They don't mind because if those $20 jeans fall apart in 10 washes (or less), they just buy another pair and discard the old.

That is something totally alien to the old Sears model; it's hard to have hand-me-downs if nothing survives that long. And this is a contributing factor to the decline of Sears, outside explicit financial negligence.

On the other extreme, a number of brands and products have patently rejected the Fast-Fashion model. They have elected to use the most premium materials and construction and charge a premium price. Think high-end denim, raw, selvedge (made on old looms in Japan), constructed of Cone Mills or Okayama fabric. It costs nearly $200 (or more), is supposed to be worn to death (literally), with 'sick fadez' being a sign of its value. It patinates, which as William Gibson remarked 'is a sign of the quality wearing in,' and 'distressing is a sign of a lack of quality.'

Those kinds of products are thus a high-value signalling premium product and buying experience.

And the issue is that there is no longer much in the middle between Naked & Famous and H&M. All these failing retailers are in that sense simply people who failed to choose which direction to go. Their intransigence in changing their business model and re-branding meant that they were bypassed by the new fast-fashion giants, or the premium brands either selling d2c or through 'selected' (curated) retailers (like DSM or Nordstrom).

It's also probably possible to tie this to the economic reality of middle-class America, gentrification, and other economic demographic shifts. But that's another topic.

What I wanted to point out is that B&M stores aren't failing as a model. Some B&M stores are doing very well--stores like H&M, Primark, Zara, Forever 21, etc on the low end, and d2c locations of higher-end brands and stores like Urban Outfitters and 'select' boutiques like DSM on the upper end. Amazon fits in to it by providing the specific brands consumers are looking for which don't have d2c locations in their neighbourhood. It covers the full spectrum, which is why it is untouchable.

Finally, the key I think to revitalising these ailing department stores is, to the extent that it may be possible, in counteracting the fast-fashion movement. It means either pushing consumers to reject products made by 'sweat-shop' labour, which is the foundation of dirt cheap prices, and to expect products to be made in a responsible way by workers paid a livable wage. It means educating consumers on what is and is not an acceptable level of quality, and encouraging consumers to buy products made locally, or at least in a first-world country.

It's a tall order; likely impossible. The model right now supports consumers who align with either pole, with those not thinking or caring about it normally aligned with the fast-fashion end. There is an enormous amount of media supporting cheap products, with a bazillion YouTubers showing off all their 'hauls' and glamourising the purchase of unethically produced products. It's what the NYT called 'cheap chic.'

For those who are interested in this subject, I would encourage people to read up on the Slow Fashion movement, as well as books like Overdressed: the Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion which chronicle the changes to the market over the last century.

I have heard the Pre-Columbian Americas described as a biological time bomb, in part because of the reasons you state which is attributed by some to the pleistocene extinction.

Whatever the reason for mass extinction, it is clear that it allowed Europeans to

1. have livestock
   
2. live in very close quarters with livestock species and spread/share diseases, parasites, etc.
   
   European agriculture was also different from Native American agriculture in that is used livestock for plowing. This was more rough on the earth (for lack of a better word) which is thought to have selected for more tenacious weeds which, when introduced to the Americas, were invasive.
   Read Changes in the Land
   
   Edit:
   Read up on the Columbian Exchange.
   
   Wiki, of course, is not most reliable. But in a pinch . . .

Ethically made clothing is expensive! I read a super interesting book on the topic called Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion for anyone interested.

Something that really helped me cut back on my fast fashion purchasing was learning more about how exactly those clothes were made. Once I better understood the environmental impact, poor labor conditions, etc it was easier to switch my mindset.

I recommend the book Over-Dressed, but there is also a ton of info available for free online.

No, that’s not the point. It needs to entice the customer to pick it up in the first place. However, a hanger appears two dimensional. So a lot of three dimensional clothes look like crap while on a hanger but fine on, and vice versa.

These style mannequins are also modeled off stylized high-fashion drawings, which again are trying to make a two dimensional drawing appeal to three dimensions. We don’t do that terribly well as a species and will think “oh! That’s how it looks on me!”

It’s all based in art and psychology. I highly recommend [Overdressed: the shockingly high cost of cheap fashion](Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion https://www.amazon.com/dp/1591846544/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_u6G6Ab93RKDW5). Very interesting and informative.

That book is awesome and very relevant to your question! If you have an appetite after for more info Overdressed is also excellent, as is the documentary The True Cost (which is on Netflix now I think).

>He keeps claiming that "there has been no better time for any human to be alive"

Completely wrong and modern brainwashing done well. Humans were better off as Hunter-Gatherers. Chronic diseases? Overwhelmingly unheard of. Mental health problems? Overwhelmingly unheard of. Physical fitness and proper bodily development? Impeccable. Leisure time? You'd be surprised. Social situation? None of the brutal and rigid social stratification that is so often ubiquitous among agriculturalist societies. Mostly all we have on these guys is modern medicine which grants us the ability to not die from simple infections or have to deal with infant mortality at an alarming rate.

This extends to women as well. Women were often better off when Humans were Hunter-Gatherers whereas they're almost always fucked over in agricultural societies; made to be submissive so they can keep being used as baby-making machines for the expansionist, world destroying way of life.

_________________

Also, to hell with your boyfriend, dear. He sounds like a tool. You can do better than him.

Basically, I think this is about Deep Green REsistance. Edit: fixed the link, sorry 'bout that.

They are a hardline environmentalist group that believes in complete de-industrialization and the return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. They also believe that violence is an acceptable means to achieve this end. Lierre Keith, one of the group's founders, is a radical feminist who does not believe in transgenderism (which is where the "TERF" part comes from).

As for the "white veganism" part, it is not really accurate. DGR are actually critical of veganism (remember the hunter-gatherer part I told you about?). Keith authored a book called The Vegetarian Myth which, to her credit, I think actually had some interesting ideas.

> He was not an environmentalist. The very idea is ludicrous.

Ludicrous! Preposterous! The very idea!

> And your attempt to cast an innocent girl into the Nazi uniform is really quite out there. Wayyyyy out there.

Yes, when I said I didn’t care what Lindsay Shepard believes, what I actually meant was that I care passionately what she believes, and it’s Nazism.

> She shares no philosophical characteristics with Hitler.

Except the two you just admitted, which is vegetarianism and animal welfare. And in your math, 2=0.

> The fact I like beef doesn't make me Churchill.

There’s a difference between arguing that vegetarianism doesn’t disprove Nazism and that vegetarianism proves Nazism. Keep up, kiddo.

> And Adolph wasn't in a romantic relationship with another ethnicity.

I didn’t claim he was. So, three-for-four? Not that that would’ve changed anything of your opinion anyway, so it’s kind of irrelevant, isn’t it.

> Nor was he ever a SJW.

Now what are you arguing? That Sheperd is an SJW? Or that I am? Or that I’m a Nazi?

> Of course you will, because first of all, that is not what I said, and second of all, you have no effective counter to the argument I did make.

You’re right. Of the tens of thousands of stupid arguments being made on the Internet at any one time, I engage in all of them all the time except the ones I can’t counter.

I feel like I’m competing in the Logic Olympics tonight but the other teams didn’t show up.

Boring books about the electric grid you say?

food will be more expensive, insurance will cost more, people fleeing from worse off places will strain governments

The Long Emergency

I'm hoping to change my shopping habits this year.

It's been a slow descent into zero waste so I've been buying my clothes from thrift stores, but I left a little wiggle room for myself. New clothes have got to be ethically made from natural materials. Goodbye Forever21! If you're interested in reading about the detriments of fast fashion, I suggest Overdressed: the Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion by Elizabeth Cline.

In my opinion, impossible. I'm taking advantage of a paleo lifestyle, but I don't think it's practical on a large-scale level. Like leevs11 said, the only reason there are 7 billion people is because of agriculture. While many were saved from starvation, the long-term outcome was more mouths to feed, and of course, starvation continues.

Lierre Keith is interesting talks specifically about this topic. You can download a speech by her here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?007hq967v7xy937
Her book:
http://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myth-Food-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804

Also, read this article, written in 1987, describing agriculture as, "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race":
http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html

Your body will thank you. Raised vegan, sometimes saw my parents “lapse” into vegetarianism, went to mostly vegetarian as an adult but rebelled by trying inconsequential quantities of meat. I had a myriad of mystery health problems that I couldn’t understand and neither could my doctors; I’m early 30’s. It was a horrible journey, but I feel like a new person on carnivore/zero carb and I’m only three months into it. Also everything is starting to make sense which is glorious.

I’ll be honest with you, changes in weight or muscles are not as visually dramatic for me initially. If your experience is like mine, your body will spend a lot of time nourishing deprived joints, bones and muscles in the beginning, but you’ll feel more energy and stronger. I also experienced extreme oxalate dumping which was tough. I wrote some of my experience here (kind of went on a tangent, tbh!):
https://www.reddit.com/r/zerocarb/comments/df5qdp/optimizing_my_way_of_eating_for_further_health/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

If you have more questions, feel free to message me. I’m still learning about meat (I didn’t even know what each cut was or how to cook it) but I hope you enjoy that first steak as much as I did!!!

Oh I suggest some good reading for recovering vegetarians/vegans, message me if you’re interested in a book list but “vegetarian myth” by Lierre Keith is a good primer:
https://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myth-Food-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804/ref=nodl_

You're not alone. Menstrual problems are extremely common in vegetarians, and so are mental health issues. There's plenty of stories similar to yours over at the WAPF, Let Them Eat Meat, and Beyond Vegetarianism. Personally, I gained a whopping 55lbs, developed B12 deficiency (despite taking 1000mcg of methylcobalamin per day), and ended up with a bunch of other nasty things. I'm proud to say that I've lost all of that weight plus seven pounds. (Who would've known a slice of bambi's mom could be so satisfying?)

So, a lot of people have clearly experienced health problems as a result of a vegn diet. Why does the ADA still insist that a "well-planned vegetarian diet" (a clear oxymoron) is healthy and even beneficial? [Seventh-Day Adventists and vegns have so much influence on the ADA to the point that it's rage-inducing.](http://letthemeatmeat.com/tagged/American-Dietetic-Association)

The Vegetarian Myth, The Mood Cure, The Meat Fix, The Ethical Butcher, The Whole Soy Story, and Defending Beef are all worth giving a read. Were you tested for B12, iron, zinc, Vitamin A, Vitamin D, magnesium, and/or iodine deficiency during your vegn years? If you quit recently, it's very likely that you're still deficient in some of these vitamins and will need to supplement for awhile. DHA and EPA are also very important due to how poorly ALA (such as that found in flaxseeds) converts to these essential nutrients.

I was vegan for nearly six years. No cheats. I always had my doubts about it, but getting to learn what other vegns look like was my last call. Just keep in mind that some lifelong meat-eaters will insist that a vegetarian diet is healthier. And some people are really mean.

Appliances in product design and product engineering have some specific traits. Number one is User Interface design and the concept of "affordances" which generally translates to "Form suggests intuitive Function".

The second trait is focus on narrower design requirements. A toaster is for toast, not washing dishes. It's not about "general purpose" but rather "focused purpose" done really well.

The classic case (from Norman's TDET book below) is door design: a horizontal bar suggests "push me" for operation while a handle suggests "pull me" for operation. If you see the operation in opposition to the affordance hint, you have bad UI and bad operation. Another good link - PDF from CMU.

Another axiom of this is "if you have to apply a text label to explain the operation, you've already done the basics wrong". Think about the case of having to RTFM just to use some piece of software compared to seeing the "obvious" usage of the software.

Don Norman, who had a stint at Apple in his long career in UI, wrote what is probably the best book on this idea of appliances and affordances: The Design of Everyday Things and its successor books. The cover shows a teapot, which I think accurately portrays the inane stupidity of generations of Microsoft products compared to Apple products; the latter would be an intuitively obvious "correct" teapot.

Once you are aware of the idea of affordances (which in software GUIs are all the "fluffy" design stuff you read about in Apple's Design Guidelines), you start to see problems with every design (no design is perfect) and you start designing better yourself. Another useful subject for software UI design is to study up on the concepts and background of GOMS which is the basis of UI design of the Xerox Alto which was the inspiration to Apple for the Lisa and Mac.

I recommend Alex Epstein's The Moral Case For Fossil Fuels for a philosophical view on the subject.

I have an eccentric obsession with the oil/energy industry. Some of these books were mentioned already, but below are my absolute favorites:

• The Prize
  
• The Frackers
  
• Oil 101
  
• The Big Rich
  
• The King of Oil
  
• Fundamentals of Investing in Oil and Gas
  
• The Smartest Guys in the Room
  
• The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels
  
  If you're looking for a history of oil and gas check out The Prize, and The Frackers covers the more recent energy revolution. Oil 101 and Fundamentals of Investing in Oil and Gas deal more with the technical side.

You are right. Agriculture based on grass fed ruminants is by far the most sustainable and environmentally benign. I’d highly recommend Defending Beef: The Case for Sustainable Meat Production by Nicolette Hahn Niman. It covers the subject thoroughly, is well written and enjoyable to read.

If you haven't read it already and would like to be depressed about the sketchy details on studies like this - the book, Meatonomics goes into a lot of detail about the funding and shortcomings of various studies the meat industry relies on to influence consumer opinions.

Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills

I wish that I could find some actual research to back this up, but what I read was in a 'book'. (Cradle to Cradle http://www.amazon.com/Cradle-Remaking-Way-Make-Things/dp/0865475873). Anyway, bottled water, soda, etc, is put in bottles that aren't really made for reuse (washing, bending, smashing and unsmashing) so the plastic degrades pretty quickly. You're then drinking plastic gas, more or less.

I haven't read much about runway fashion but over the past year I've become more interested in the business of fashion and how clothes are actually made. I enjoyed reading Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion. A lot of the information I kinda knew already just from this sub but it was still a good read.

Your comment is basically the summary of (and written right into) this entire book http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/dp/0385267746 . You would like the book.

I believe they spent 11 pages touting 9 errors that were found in a 540 page book. Amazon.com

I will probably get downvoted for this unfortunately, but:-

Minimise (don't completely eliminate, but restrict) rice and all other forms of carbohydrates, such as potatoes and primarily starchy vegetables. Conventional opinion assumes (as the people in this thread have) that weight gain is caused by animal fat in the diet, but said conventional opinion is wrong. The lipid hypothesis is BS. Carbohydrates are the real problem; they get converted to sugar, and then directly to body fat.

The Vegetarian Myth. The author of this is a prototypical cultural Marxist, but she provides the best debunking of the lipid hypothesis (why animal fat in the body is supposedly destructive) that I've ever encountered.

Wheat Belly. This is an accompanying book about why wheat and cereals, rather than milk and fats, are the real enemies of weight loss.

That book has been debunked by several credible people (dieticians, nutritionists, the scientific community, etc).

Long story short, there is no research and Keith just cites her favorite authors as proof (at one point she cites Wikipedia). The fact that she is so heavily supported by the Weston A. Price foundation (and cites their information as proof of her claims) is enough to question everything in the book. She uses one book by two physicans with no background in anthropology or evolution and puts forth their ideas about dietary evolution and presents it as incontrovertible evidence. No, it's not incontrovertible...having one source say something and then presenting it as incontrovertible (especially when the authors have no expertise in the area) is dishonest writing.

Please, do your own research or at least further investigate her sources and consider making an appointment with a dietitian.

Edit: Here are some reviews on Amazon which include some of the more egregious problems with the book. Obviously, take both those and the book with a grain of salt. But some of the problems with the book are so glaring that you can do your own research after reading reviews (where errors are pointed out).

And beans and rice are cheaper than either. People are just too married to the idea that every meal needs to be centered around a giant chunk of dead flesh and that everything else is a side dish.

If our culinary culture instead focused on stir frys, stews, chilis, and curries, bibimbap, casseroles, burritos and such where the meat is chunked up and mixed with stuff, it'd be much easier for people to change their habits. Beans already fit those perfectly, and meat substitutes can be stretched more easily.

Not to say that making meat more expensive wouldn't be a deterrent. We pay an artificially low price at the grocery counter, but end up paying way more on the back end with our taxes in the form of subsidies, state-sponsored advertising propaganda, and more. (Meatonomics is a good look at that if you're curious.)

>What on earth is he talking about? Millions do starve every year.


Share of undernourished people in the developing world:

Year 1970 1980 1990 2005 2007 2009
37 % 28 % 20 % 16 % 17 % 16 %

link

The predictions of the 70s and 80s about resource collapse and famines were exactly opposite to what actually happened when you look at the numbers objectively. If you only read the press releases of the NGOs who have this as a cause (and the newspapers who uncritically reprint them) you'd conclude the opposite, but it's not what's really happening. Millions upon Millions have been lifted out of poverty in the last couple of decades. Indeed high grain prices now are largely because these millions are upgrading their diet to include more meat.


I think you should do some research before dismissing the claims that contradict your worldview as 'lies'. At least try out a few authors. One that will challenge your belief system is Lomborg's Skeptical Enviornmentalist

I'm positive there is a direct relationship between eating meat and funding animal abuse and if you want to dispute that, try /r/debateavegan.

I don't think his job is to sit and convince you on Reddit, and if you want him to anyway, you can look up his resources for that. Meatonomics is a good book to start with.

My favorite book for this sort of stuff and everything similar is Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills, Third Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/1602392331/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_OKxMxb9TA4AX7


I'll post pictures of the soap and table of contents in another post. I hate mobile lol.


Edit: here's some quick pics. I can scan whatever pages if you guys want a better look. Before you buy the book. Mind you I've only ever used the bread making recipes and they turn out well. I can't vouch for the rest. Sorry.

https://imgur.com/a/4iTMH

Kind of a homesteading book, http://www.amazon.com/Back-Basics-Complete-Traditional-Skills/dp/1602392331/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318997900&sr=1-1

I frakking love this book, I've read it over a dozen times since I was a kid. Next year I will be living my dream!!!!

One thing I would add as the submitter: This blogger sounds as though she has read The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith, and while I don't fault her for that if so, I do think it would have been better had she been upfront about it.

Here's some books from my library:

The Affordable Housing Reader - Basics on how affordable housing in the US works (or how it doesn't work...)

Cities for People/Walkable City/Death and Life of Great American Cities - Classics that really pertain to most things

The Public Wealth of Cities - How to leverage public/city assets to benefit the most amount of people

The Color of Law - How racism has shaped our cities

Happy City - Planning for social health

> especially leftist urbanism (anti suburbs and single family housing, pro mass-transit etc)

I'd be weary of calling this 'leftist urbanism,' since all of these are perfectly compatible with right-wing viewpoints, just handled very differently. You're looking more for sustainable urbanism and the social impacts of it. The books I have recommended above do all have a centrist or left lean to it though.

Here is a good summary of the issue: The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability

I'm reading an excellent book called Happy Cities right now and the author brings up this exact point. Not just HOAs, but municipalities are obsessed with micromanaging property owners over the most minor things. For a nation that is so anti-authoritarian a lot of the time we sure do have a lot of rules about our property.

“Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things” is a book I am currently enjoying that covers these topics. The anti-corporation sentiment is unrealistic, though, as large companies are what develop and set in place sustainable energy via solar, wind, etc. and are able to invest in recycling programs to reuse plastics, etc. in the first place—but that’s my only qualm about the book so far. Here’s an Amazon link.
https://www.amazon.com/Cradle-Remaking-Way-Make-Things/dp/0865475873/ref=nodl_

Try Cradle to Cradle and The Green Collar Economy.

edit:punctuation.

A really good book about the application of these concepts in the development of new technology and tools is Why Things Break by Mark Eberhart. It provides some easy-to-understand explanations and recounts some really fun stories about actual product development (e.g., Corelle).

Ah yes, I'm an old dude. Being free of debt helps too. I'm just so ready to do this but have to fulfill one more of lifes obligations before I can make it a reality.

I've got this Back to Basics version. I haven't seen the one you linked to. I wonder how much alike they are.

Get at least 2 copies of this book..

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1602392331/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1303161105&sr=8-16

"Back to Basics" its just about all the information you need.

As a reference, Back to Basics provides an interesting overview.

The author's intended audience seems to be the naturalist or eco-friendly person, rather than the "prepper", but that doesn't detract from the content. It doesn't cover any single topic deeply enough where you'll be an expert, but it covers a number of traditional living topics that mirror what would be necessary in a post-collapse scenario: farming livestock/crop, food preservation, natural irrigation, milling flour, sustainable home design, edible plant recognition, etc.

It also includes lots of diagrams/pictures, so it's a quick read and easily-skimmed reference.

doors that do not make it evident if/where you're mean to push/pull. there is a book on this topic:
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/dp/0385267746
MANY design flaws on flash drive technology. it should be ONE piece (no top to lose) with a tether dealie or something that makes it easy to attach it somewhere. most brands have some sort of flaw. the ones that really bug me have no TETHER & only one tiny little indentation where you should be able to get a keyring in there, but the physics are all wrong. it's built for a wee bit of nylon thread to pass thru (not included.)
they've done 95% of the job. it's like they design these things for people to lose.
Yeah, too, those "automatic" lights that go off often & WILL NOT GO/STAY back on.

Lomborg, serial misleader?

The guy whose book was found to contain: "Fabrication of data;
Selective discarding of unwanted results (selective citation);
Deliberately misleading use of statistical methods;
Distorted interpretation of conclusions;
Plagiarism;
Deliberate misinterpretation of others' results"?

The guy whose next book, Cool It!, was found by a different person to contain: "misrepresentation of academic research, misquotation of data, reliance on studies irrelevant to the author’s claims and citation of sources that seem not to exist"?

The guy who received millions of dollars from conservative organisations linked to Koch?

The guy who keeps writing columns with scientific credibility very low?

The guy who blithely described a 20-foot sea-level rise (6 meters – a plausible outcome of unmitigated global warming in a few centuries) which would inundate about 16,000 square miles of coastline where more than 400 million people currently live as:

> That’s a lot of people, to be sure, but hardly all of mankind. In fact, it amounts to less than 6% of the world’s population – which is to say that 94% of the population would not be inundated. more details

Now if you don't believe or care about any of that, I have a challenge for you.

Use Amazon's Look Inside the Book and choose "Surprise Me!" and read a few pages from his book. Tell us the page numbers.

Now visit the catalogue of errors for those pages, and read those, and judge whether the extract from Lomborg's book had any value?

Amazing. Every word of what you just said is wrong.

Recommended Reading(As v3, I'll try to add a book before each checklist now): The Ultimate Resource by Julian Simon

^(I assume that's the book you were referring to by "people are the ultimate source of capital")

[✅] American People will Die!

[✅] Doesn't know how guns purchasing power works(Only looks at nominal wages decreasing from immigration and assumes PP does as well, ignoring price decreases also from immigration and thus possible increases in real wages)

[✅] Not Real Socialism/Communism Collectivism™(THE GLORIOUS NATION™ is still a collective)

[✅] Anyone who disagrees is a shill for Berkley and CEOs

[✅] The Greater Nationalist Good™

[ ] Hoodie's Law

[ ] Esoteric's Law

[✅] Sargon's Law(Says OP is hurting Americans with more immigrants, hurts America with r/badeconomics)

[ ] I used to be a libertarian

[✅] Lovejoy's Law

[✅] Ban things and people I don’t like(The immigrants/outsourcing)

[✅] Who Will Build the Roads Protect the Disabled?

[ ] We need TO DO SOMETHING!

[✅] Breaking windows will boost GDP

[ ] Fake Nuance

[ ] Sunk Cost Fallacy

[✅✅✅] Fearmongering(DEY TERK ER JERBS!)

→→[ ] The Koch Brothers Conspiracy

→→[ ] Someone of Group X did something, therefore Group X is EVUL!

[ ] Distinction without a Difference

[✅] The God that Failed

[ ] Just-in-Case Fallacy

[ ] Nirvana Fallacy

[ ] But that’s not PC!

[ ] RESPECT DA LAUH!

[✅] Move to Somalia

[ ] Spotlight Fallacy

[ ] r/AsABlackMan Fallacy

[✅] Questionable Cause(The immigrants & outsourcers did this!)

I enjoyed "why things break" by Mark Eberhart. It's about the development of materials science.

If you read this book, it's pretty clear it's a conspiracy. That is, the government has been pushing for it, hiding evidence of its harmful effect, etc. Bunch of scientists pushing for it; those that do studies showing it's harmful find their careers practically over and/or research funding dries up.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Fluoride-Deception-Christopher-Bryson/dp/1583227008/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397678223&sr=8-1&keywords=the+fluoride+deception

Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Luster is incredible and important in today's market that focuses on aspirations towards high end purchases.

Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Fast Fashion is another good one.

> What I've wondered is if there's any sane way of removing the carbon from the atmosphere other than just planting trees. I understand why trees are crappy as an offset vehicle, but I'm wondering if they ultimately are needed to just pull carbon out of the atmosphere.

Look up "geo-engineering".

What you're referring to is "carbon sequestration". It is less plausible than other ways of controlling global temperatures, since it would be very expensive and resource-intensive.

The more promising areas are things like cloud seeding and injecting reflective aerosols into the atmosphere to reduce the amount of light actually coming to the Earth. Even a single volcanic eruption emits enough particulate matter to significantly reduce global temperatures. With relatively little expense, it would be possible to inject similar particles directly into the stratosphere and very slightly reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the ground.

Of course, there are risks and challenges, but I think that such proposals are much more reasonable solutions to the problems of global warming than radical cuts in the use of fossil fuels and carbon emissions. Cutting emissions to the extent many environmentalists want to cut them would be an economic disaster, cutting growth and the standard of living, especially for the global poor.

It makes more sense to maximize the amount of energy and resources we can generate and use, then use some of that surplus to mitigate environmental consequences, than to try to minimize our energy and resource consumption, giving us less ability to deal with environmental and other problems that will happen regardless. For example, look at the number of people a hurricane kills when it hits Florida, vs. when a cyclone hits Bangladesh. It's much smaller in Florida, since their ability to build safe, sturdy buildings is much higher.

I recommend Alex Epstein's book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels for a look at the importance of generating as much energy as possible for people to use. He recognizes the existence of climate change, but he argues that "minimal impact" is not the solution.

It's the blog of the author, and that's the first chapter of his whole book where you can find references to further reading. The main issue is about the fundamental differences between animal fats and proteins versus vegetal fats and proteins and how they're metabolized in completely different ways by the body. This among hundreds of other bits of information, especially the critics upon ethical and social aspects of vegetarianism and ecological concerns like sustainability itself. Like I said in another comment, veganism is better than the average post-industrial world diet but is no better than a healthy omnivorous diet. Furthermore, vegan diet is extremely easy to mess up and end up hurting yourself and is mostly impossible to attain a perfect vegetarian diet without chemical supplements of nutrients.

EDIT: Further read: New York Times article can be backed up with this article.

Additional data

There's also the issue of what does a true vegetarian diet consist of. Eggs or milk count? yogurt? fish? bugs? Morally would you renounce to reading books, using plastics, wearing leather, and consuming certain medicines and other product produced out of farm animals? how does this would play out on an ideal Vegan world?

Go visit them before you eat them. See them being treated well and having good lives even though (because?) they're being raised to be our food. It's the cycle of life, they eat their food, we eat them--and, eventually we die and rot and become plant food and it starts all over again.

Edit: you might also want to take a look at Lierre Keith's The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability.

Out of curiosity, the fact that you are vegan, is it a health life style choice, or are you not eating meat and animal products because of a moral objection?

If it is simply a health choice, i recommend reading the book Vegetarian Myth this might help. If it is a moral objection to eating meat, can't really help you, but solute your resolve.

Also, 40 min HIIT, either you are an animal or you are not giving the proper intensity. HIIT workouts shouldn't really last longer then 15 - 20 minutes. Tabata for example is ideal to only last 4 minutes.

Anyways best of luck to you.

Edit: spelling

Sure. Read this first, it will explain more to you about the state of the US electrical grid and issues with powering the modern world in general. If that one is a bit too "pop science" for ya, despite being one of Bill Gates top 20 reads, here's a little older one from The Institution of Science and Engineering that is still a good read. Secondary storage through the use of LI is dangerous, poisonous, and downright horrible for the environment.

And in case this comment wasn't clear enough, not only are you wrong, but you are a condescending dick who likes to pretend he is better informed than everyone. The Grid mentions the Li shortage in the first 20 pages, so it won't take you long to actually bone up a bit.

I am relatively new to this subject and these books have been useful for me:

The Urban Homestead A good introductory book that touches on a lot of relevant topics.

Gaia's Garden This is not specifically a homesteading book but it is a very useful book for growing food and learning about small scale permacultural design.

Four Season Harvest Another useful book for growing, especially for those of us in cold climates.

Country Wisdom & Know How A fun reference for many homestead topics.

Lots of great ideas here.

You could also get him a copy of Cool Tools which is basically an encyclopedia of tools and gadgets. Tons of stuff that he may not even know exists, but lots of creative or efficient ways to get the job done.

I'm a huge fan of JD; but this just doubles-down on my concern that he is ruining his health by being vegan.

Silly list of evidence;

Low energy - need to lean on things to stay up right.

Depressed - Lack of animal based nutrients and healthy fats impacts mental health. I note his older songs seemed to be dark, but on the average less morose. Saw a concert recently and have to admit that I was disappointed he played mostly "sad, relationship songs" and few of his more exciting songs. I really wanted to hear Autoclave and Michael Myers Resplendent but you can't please everyone I understand. Still - I left feeling really down in a way that I did not expect from listening to the albums.

His teeth are falling apart and he doesn't know why - this is often the warning sign that turns vegans into some version of paleo-type eaters. Happened to Robb Wolf, Lierre Kieth, and others.

When I see photos he just doesn't look well. This is what my vegan (not the fat ones that eat vegan junk food but the ones that actually eat vegetables) friends look like - thin but without that warmth in their skin, lines, wrinkles, etc.

I'd recommend the book The Grid as a primer on how stuff like this can happen. Energy is strange, in the sense that everything produced needs to be used more or less immediately. Maintaining the energy grid is a careful balancing act between preventing surges and blackouts.

There are a lot of grid-related engineering problems that come from increasing decentralization (e.g. wind, solar, hydro) because it increases unpredictability in supply.

https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Fraying-Between-Americans-Energy/dp/1608196100

If you think that we're all doomed due to overpopulation, or any other big world problem, I recommend reading Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler.

Personally, I don't think a full repeal to all of the residential zoning is the best practice. A full repeal would likely only increase land values
(here's a good explainer as to how that can happen). I do believe they need to be loosened significantly. At the rate this city is growing, it needs to have all of the tools necessary to help increase density and banning thing such as having both an ADU and DADU on single family lots and requiring their sizes to be such that they cannot accommodate families is a bad thing. Duplexes and triplexes also should be legal in single family zones. These allowances also should be paired with strategic rezones that allow for some sort of corner market/commerce zone within a 5-10 minute walkshed of every house in SFZs in order to make it reasonable for people in SFZs to live without a car in these now densified neighborhoods.


In regards to more reading: are you looking for more reading regarding Seattle zoning law exclusively or are you looking for reading recommendations that follow an urbanist bent? For Seattle specific stuff, The Urbanist and Seattle Transit Blog post a lot regarding land use in the city. If you are looking for books that talk about general city planning the gold standard is The Death and Life of Great American Cities. I personally really enjoyed Walkable City, Suburban Nation, and Happy City.

Not necessarily. In a very large proportion of so-called “natural” environments humans play a key role in fostering biodiversity. If anything this would result in massive ecosystem collapse.

Buy the book today!

Pic of the cover

Interaction Design

• About Face 3 by Alan Cooper
  
• Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge
  
• Designing Interfaces by Jenifer Tidwell
  
• Designing for the Digital Age by Kim Goodwin
  
• Making Things Talk: (2011) (2007) by Tom Igoe
  
  Interior Design
  
  
• The Decoration of Houses by Edith Wharton and Ogden, Jr. Codman
  
• Domino: The Book of Decorating by Deborah Needleman
  
• Design*Sponge at Home: A Guide to Inspiring Homes by Grace Bonney
  
• The Vintage/Modern Home by Katherine Sorrell
  
• The Fundamentals of Interior Design by Simon Dodsworth
  
  Landscape Architecture
  
  
• Landscape Architectural Graphic Standards by Leonard J. Hopper
  
• Landscape Design: A Cultural and Architectural History by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers
  
• Landscape Graphics by Grant W. Reid
  
• Cities for People by Jan Gehl
  
• Design with Nature by Ian L. McHarg
  
  Lighting Design
  
  
• Stage Lighting Design by Richard Pilbrow
  
• The Architecture of Natural Light by Henry Plummer
  
• Painting With Light by John Alton
  
• Made of Light by Anthony Tischhauser
  
• Color, Environment and Human Response by Frank H. Mahnke & Rudolf H. Mahnke
  
  Product Design
  
  
• Sketching: Drawing Techniques from Product Designers by Koos Eissen
  
• Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek
  
• The Craftsman by Richard Sennett
  
• Mythologies by Roland Barthes
  
• Cradle to Cradle. Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough & Michael Braungart
  
  Product Design
  
  
• In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World by John Thackara
  
• The Experience Economy by B. Joseph Pine II & James H. Gilmore
  
• Universal Methods of Design by Bruce Hanington & Bella Martin
  
• Cradle to Cradle. Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough & Michael Braungart
  
• Mental Models by Indi Young
  
  Sound Design
  
  
• Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice and Sound Effects in Cinema by David Sonnenschein
  
• Designing Sound by Andy Farnell
  
• Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen by Michel Chion
  
• The Sound Effects Bible by Ric Viers
  
• Sound Theory Sound Practice by Rick Altman
  
  Urban Design
  
  
• The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
  * Cities for People by Jan Gehl
  
• A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander
  
• The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler
  
• The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch
  
  Web Design
  
  
• Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug
  
• HTML & CSS: Design and Build Web Sites by Jon Duckett
  
• The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird
  
• Responsive Web Design with HTML5 and CSS by Ben Frain
  
• Hardboiled Web Design by Andy Clarke
  

I have a book like that, the pages are some sort of polymer. The book is actually about sustainable methods of production. Cradle to Cradle

I think your argument is sidestepping a critical issue; probably 90% (that seems pretty generous too) of these cows wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for the meat industry. Here's a quote from a quick Google search:

>Among mammals 41,700,000 cows and calves were killed for food in 2000, as well as 115,200,000 pigs and 4,300,000 sheep, for a total of 161,200,000. These stats are also expected to continue to rise. Thus, the total number of all animals killed for food in 2000 was 9.7 billion.

There's no way 161 million cows, pigs, and sheep would be killed in the wild each year. There's tons of research coming out discussing how much more animal agriculture we produce each year due to the growth of populations consumption of meat (regions that are now consuming a larger percentage of meat as opposed to plants).

You might find this book to be really interesting. I keep meaning to read it myself but I've had several people tell me how shocking it was.

You hit the nail on the head when you brought up Alex Epstein: he is the best source for rational climate/energy information I know. Here are a few steps you should take if you want to get educated in that realm:

-Read his columns in Forbes (and follow him so you get notified of new articles when they're posted). The best one that's most about "climate change" per se is the recent piece The Unscientific Consensus.

-Absorb everything on his site Center for Industrial Progress. There are podcasts, blog posts, e-books, and more. You might be particularly interested in the "Environment" category and the Fossil Fuels Improve the Planet e-book.

-Pre-order a copy of his upcoming book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. It's guaranteed to be awesome.

-If you're on Facebook, like the Center for Industrial Progress, I Love Fossil Fuels, and I Love Nuclear pages to keep updated.

-This page on The Objective Standard site ("Exploit the Earth or Die. It's not a threat. It's a fact.") also does a great job of compiling links to more educational resources.

I hope this wasn't too overwhelming. If you're just looking for one quick hit, your best bet is the Unscientific Consensus article I mentioned before. (But IMHO, it's so good that you'll be hooked on Alex's clarity and authority and want to continue with all the other steps I mentioned :).)

To be redpilled on the energy issue in general, and a balanced rational look at the climate change issue, I highly recommend this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Case-Fossil-Fuels/dp/1591847443

It doesn't discuss nuke as much as I would like, but it covers all the other forms energy including all the "green" energy forms.

No matter what your views currently, you will learn something useful from this book.

I interviewed at a large software company a few weeks ago for a PM position. They aligned me with multiple UI/UX teams which I interviewed with. I prepared pretty rigorously for a few weeks leading up to the interview. Specifically I read a few books that we're recommended by the recruiter from the company. The one I would highly recommend is the design of everyday things. I had no prior experience in UI/UX designer and this book forces you to think like a designer.

Second I found a great paper pertaining specifically to the postion of PM. You know they will ask you why you want to be a PM so its important to have a proper understanding of the position and its responsibilities: Zen of PM.

Best of luck with your interview and feel free to ask questions!

Web design books? Meh. However, I highly recommend books like "The Design of Everyday Things" and "Don't Make Me Think". The latter does take a bit of a web focus, but they aren't your typical how-to book, they're just intended to give you some perspective on ux design (as applied to the web and elsewhere).

I first saw this idea in Donald Norman's "The Design of Everyday Things", which every engineer should read.

I'm usually annoyed by "Grrr! I'm angry all the time!" character designs, but I like Millie's style. Maybe it's because she still relaxes sometimes. Maybe it's boobs. But, it's probably because she reminds me of some girls I knew back in high school --or at least how they wanted to be.

I don't play a lot of flash games, so I'm struck by how difficult it is to control a game like this with a keyboard. Controls really influence how much patience people will have when starting a game. Here are a few random suggestions:

• Consider moving interact to Enter and maybe move jump to Space. ASD is comfortable and convenient, but it is also confusing for noobs. "quick! need to.. which button? home row, home row or home row?" Some separation would help highlight the differences. I strongly recommend the book The Design of Everyday Things to all game designers for issues like this.
  
  
• The effects of the rage meter are not clear. There are no indications of when or why I lost the ability to kick and do the air-attacks. I thought it was a bug for quite a while. Berserk mode is too brief. I still haven't figured out what difference it makes. For a while, I thought blue/green clouds upped the rage meter instead of health. I'd recommend different sized green clouds if they all up health. I'd also recommend red/blue instead of red/green because of colorblindness issues.
  
  
• The neutral air attack doesn't read as an attack. It just looks like a different jump pose. I see the connection with charge, but... Maybe a repeating horizontal slashing anim that has the same effect would be more clear. At the moment, repeatedly hitting attack while jumping looks like a twitch. Being unable to jump when pressing down is annoying.
  
  
• In general, I'm looking for more moves. Trying to discover moves and seeing nothing happen is frustrating -especially when kick and air-attacks disappear. Maybe, jump+forward+attack = upper-cut would help.
  
  
• I'm not feeling much benefit from blocking or kicking compared to the risk of mistiming and still getting hit. The enemy attacks are too brief for me to plan a block and blocks don't stumble opponent timing, so there isn't much motivation. Maybe down+forward+attack=duck-attack to dodge high attacks would help.
  
  
• I'd recommend against auto-hopping. It's fun, but hard to control. Only jump on the jump button down-edge. When it comes to side-scrollers, let the wisdom of Super Mario Bros be your guide. I strongly recommend the book Game Feel for issues like this. It has a whole chapter on the controls of SMB.
  
  
• You should be unfairly forgiving when it comes to platformer jumps. Let the logical edges of your platforms extend a bit farther than the visible edges. The goal is to let the player be a frame late when jumping, or an inch short when landing without making them fall. Otherwise, real or imagined keyboard latency will enrage your players. I also tried way too long to time my jumps off the flowers before I figured out that I could just hold jump. Some forgiveness there would help too.
  

plan for political unrest and social upheaval.

move to a resilient community. shorten supply lines. strengthen social ties with people who have consequential knowledge relevant to off-grid survival.

the less dependent you are on the work of random others, the less likely any kind of disruption to the current order will affect you directly in ways you can't adjust for.

you should still stockpile food and weapons, but a crate of 5.56 and a basement full of MREs isn't a sustainable solution to anything.

https://www.amazon.com/Long-Emergency-Converging-Catastrophes-Twenty-First/dp/0802142494

Yes, You are completely on the money. The problem that we face as a world today is that we are in this 15-20 year period but we are pretending like we are not facing a shortage in the future.

Therefore, if we don't pull it together now -- during this 15-20 year period (please enjoy the read), it will seem like a 1-2 year period.

See China for best practices.

Probably not exactly what you are looking for but this book talks about Native Americans and how they existed prior and during the colonial invasion. He touches on the eating habits of the natives.

A very interesting read nonetheless.
http://www.amazon.com/Changes-Land-Indians-Colonists-Ecology/dp/0809016346/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1393820108&sr=1-1&keywords=changes+in+the+land

https://www.amazon.com/Changes-Land-Indians-Colonists-Ecology/dp/0809016346

Very interesting.

I've got a book on the shelf about the changes that we've seen to the Northeast/New England area ecology since Europeans first set foot there. Changes in the Land. Still gotta give that one a read. But if anyones interested, it looks pretty good.

Ok - a great place to start is Carolyn Merchant's textbook, Major Problems in Environmental History. It's a fantastic mix of documents and essays, and to a certain degree also gives you an idea of what directions the field has come from and where it's going.

If you are interested in any specific sub-genre of environmental history I can give you more detailed recommendations - history of environmentalism, history of conservation, enviro-tech, environment and gender, environment and race, urban environmental history, etc. etc. etc.

If you want to start in the places the field started I would go with William Cronnon's Changes in the Land - it's an environmental history of the colonization of New England, and is still excellent, although it has been disputed, revised, and corrected by a variety of historians on points big and small (as happens with any classic work of history over time!).

I read a book called Cradle to Cradle which, in order to practice what it preached, was printed on a material that was designed to truly recycled rather than down-cycled. The material was some sort of paper-like plastic that could be melted down and remade into another book of the same quality, as opposed to being turned into lower quality pulp for brown paper bags or paper towels, etc.

A consequence of that design was that the book was waterproof and you could read it in the shower. It was actually pretty awesome. The book felt a little different from mass-market paper books (it was a little heavier and pages a fraction thicker) but it didn't feel wrong at all. The book said that it was possible and viable to print other books on similar material, which I have been looking forward to, but have yet to see.

in short, it's about designing high quality products from the bottom up(cradle) with materials meant to be completely recycled into new high quality products (to cradle), without downcycling of the materials in the process.

here's the Amazon link to the book they are talking about

100% bullshit article. Anyone w/ a half a clue about veganism knows that there are many studies that show that societies that have higher dairy consumption have higher rates of hip fractures (in older people) and osteoporosis vs societies that have little next to zero dairy consumption.

Read the book Meatonomics if you want to see about crazy fucking amounts of $$ being pumped into advertising and bogus 'research' against peer reviewed studies that show that animal products are bad for people

https://www.amazon.com/Meatonomics-Economics-Consume-Much-Smarter/dp/1573246204

There's a really interesting book you could read with Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion that goes into this. It's really eye-opening, and gave me a bigger understanding when the media started focusing on factories in India after that horrible collapse. Another one is Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster that ties into the whole modern phenomena of cheap, "affordable" fashion.

The idea is that we have built the world with fossil fuels and there is a correlation between how well-developed a nation is with how much fossil fuels they have consumed. The moral reasoning is that even if coal is very dirty, it is better to pollute the world than to have millions of people starving by denying them access to coal, because westerners want them to be green.

Then after polluting the world for a century more, some future generation can figure out a way to clean things up.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Moral-Case-Fossil-Fuels/dp/1591847443

back to basics a complete guide to traditional skills.

We moved to the area because her family's from southeast Minnesota and I managed to get a job nearby. The village, we don't know anyone in, but we got the place at a low cost on an acre lot in a pretty area with a low crime rate. It's been pretty neat because the residents are all older and are looking for younger people to come to the village, partially because we gave a pretty prominent landmark that they're trying to preserve. Conveniently, my college-educated, liberal self minored in folklore, which branches into museum studies, so I'm going to be helping them bring their landmark into the 21st century.

We're literally in the midst of moving into the place, but I picked up Gehring's Back to Basics Book and have been looking at the 1 acre farm homesteading plans and urban farm plans people have made so we're more self-sustaining.

Our area is reserved, but it's surprising how many liberal people you can find in the country. A lot of my coworkers are liberal, but live in the country, because they're interested in controlling their food production, or they just like not having to be bunched in with others and the headaches it may bring.

That's neat about your chicken farm. Our new place has a small egg producer up the street we plan to use. We're not livestock people, but I've looked a lot at starting into vegetables and fruits, then building out from there.

Back to Basics: How to Learn and Enjoy Traditional American Skills

Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills

The Encyclopedia of Country Living, 40th Anniversary Edition: The Original Manual for Living off the Land & Doing It Yourself

That's a crap ton of knowledge right there. Remember to practice and learn before you need the skills.

http://www.amazon.com/Back-Basics-Complete-Traditional-Edition/dp/1602392331

This book is amazing.

I just picked up:

The Hungry Brain: Outsmarting the Instincts That Make Us Overeat https://www.amazon.com/dp/125008119X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Blr0Cb8X9XAMW

For real, why do we over eat?

Defending Beef: The Case for Sustainable Meat Production https://www.amazon.com/dp/1603585362/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Zmr0CbKVN2MJX

I'm very interested in the regenerative ag movement, and am not entirely convinced red meat is the scourge of the earth.

https://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myth-Food-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804

It's written by a former avid Vegan, and covers what she's learned about how Vegtarianism/Veganism affects health, the environment, and animal rights. It's not a hard scientific study, but covers a wide range of topics to enough of a degree to possibly reshape your thinking. I suggest reading it as a overview, and then start digging into select areas that concern you more deeply.

She didn't go ZC, but instead is omnivore with a focus on fresh unprocessed food.

Absolutely, supporting farms who treat their animals well is an active vote against meat from a factory farm. Money talks.


Agriculture is also hugely deadly to animals and bad for the environment. There's a whole book about this written by a woman who was vegan for 20 years. The Vegetarian Myth

Reminds me of some of the material in this book

Krill, Shrimp, and Sardines are each one of the largest biomasses on the planet. They're actually more sustainable than most plant and vegetation which we have to actually actively grow to get enough of. Those farming practices actually help destroy the planet even worse than krill, shrimp, and sardine fishing do. This is because these three species are pretty much as the bottom of the food chain in the ocean. We couldn't actually wipe out any three of these populations from fishing practices if we actively tried to.

The same isn't true of salmon though, which is why it's often farmed (or because it's difficult to catch large amounts of in places like Alaska where there is still an abundance of it).

Have you ever heard of this book?

There are several reasons that many of us in the strength and conditioning field outright avoid all grains.

The primary concern with grains is the presence of lectins, which are proteins that are only present in grains and have unusual qualities. Normally, when you ingest proteins from a meat source, the enzymes in your stomach cleave apart the peptide bonds that hold the proteins together, and you then easily absorb chains of 3 to 10 aminos, which are used throughout the body. Lectins, however, are of a design such that they aren't readily digested and are absorbed in their full state. Now, here's where the science gets somewhat cutting edge, but from what I've read, here's what happens: Once floating around in the blood, the body has a hard time recognizing them for whatever reason. They then readily bind to all sorts of tissue, inhibiting cellular turnover, most especially in the intestines (keep in mind that the intestinal lining replaces itself very rapidly). Plus, while only about 1% of the US population has Coeliac's disease (a genetic disorder which produces a marked autoimmune response in the gut leading to pain and GI issues due to a sensitivity to wheat and other grains), there's evidence to suggest that a majority of people in the US have minor autoimmune reactions to wheat and other grains. Constant autoimmune reactions to what is supposedly the basis of our diet is certainly not conductive to good health, and after all, lectins are classified as an anti-nutrient.

Another aspect is that, to me at least, it's a junk carbohydrate. It provides almost nothing other than carbohydrates. The fiber in wheat isn't nearly as high-quality as the fiber in actual vegetables, and I believe the FDA is even moving to classify grain fibers differently than vegetable fibers for that very reason. Other carbs like sweet potatoes and white rice are much more superior, in my opinion. For those that just can't get away from bread though, there is an option called Ezekial bread, which is sprouted grain bread. Sprouting doesn't get rid of all the anti-nutrients, but it does eliminate many of them.

Last of all, the evolution argument is one I find interesting but one that is difficult to consider anything more than psuedo-science without more hard data. In short, agriculture has only existed for roughly 10,000 years. Humans have existed for around 200,000 years, and during that time, they thrived on a diet of meats and vegetables. Even before that, pre-human ancestors maintained a similar diet as well. While anthropologists do note that life expectancy increased with agriculture, general wellness decreased pretty drastically using a measure of pelvic depth and height of the human. Between humans that were hunter-gatherers and humans that were farmers that lived at the same time, the hunter-gatherers were on average taller, had greater pelvic depth, and lower body fat. Agrarian cultures saw a drastic reduction in quality of life based on those biological markers.

If I may suggest, there is an incredible book that talks at length on this subject called The Vegetarian Myth. I don't think I could do the author's work justice by trying to repeat it, but she's certainly done her legwork on the topic.

Your wife has done research slanted toward what she already believes. Check out these books:

The Vegetarian Myth

Nourishing Traditions

Yes until you die from malnutrition https://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myth-Food-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804

On youtube, Cultivate Health and Beauty. It's targeted towards women and their channel is not about being anti-vegan, but they are pretty anti-vegan. Also Primal Edge Health. I watch Sv3ridge for the exvegan videos and the Epitomy of Malnourishment videos but be careful in venturing to anything outside of that. For podcasts, listen to Bulletproof Radio, Fitness Confidential, The Paleo Solution, Primal Blueprint Podcast. For books, The Vegetarian Myth and the works of Weston A. Price. Look for people with an internet presence who are paleo. Most a very educated about veganism. Nina Teicholz work is worth mentioning too. She did a great breakdown of all the problems with that piece of propaganda "documentary" What the Health.

You can always comment stalk him in the meantime ;) http://www.reddit.com/user/fatmalcontent - I think most of what you need to know is already there in his comment history.

About returning to my omnivorous ways: this was not an easy or quick decision, I had been thinking about this for at least a year now. I had ben a vegetarian for 15 years, it was a big part of who I was and I did not want to give it up. One problem were my iron levels (I'm female, from what I've heard males tend to have less problems with iron) that I barely managed to keep at a good level by using supplements. But since iron supplements tend to cause a permanent state of constipation that was just a temporary workaround but not a solution. But this was only what started to get me thinking, not the only problem, otherwise I would have done this years ago. Even with good iron levels I was still tired and pale. The fact that I was using a lot of carb heavy stuff (lots of grains and legumes) to make up for meat was not helping either. After noticing a couple of problems with supplements I started to be very suspicious about them, wondering how many other side effects they had that I did not even notice yet. So I decided that I did not want to keep taking various daily supplements, wanted to get most of the stuff mainly from my diet and started to have a detailed look at my vitamin and mineral intake (I use a software called "cronometer" for this; screenshots: http://imgur.com/a/YWUCk/cronometer_screenshots_2). I noticed after a while that I wasn't meeting many of my nutritional goals (mainly B vitamins and of course also iron) even though I was trying my best to do so.

Based on that I started to question my belief that being a vegetarian is a perfectly natural and healthy way for humans to live. I had always used the typical "no short intestine, no claws,.." arguments to defend my position. I did not want to see that you could also turn these around just as well (we don't have the long intestines of plant eaters either, but we lie somewhere in between which would make us an omnivore if you take this as a sign; we don't have claws and sharp teeth but an essential part of us being human has always been tool making so there was no need to keep wasting energy on building them).

Have you heard about the Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith? From the reviews I've seen that it is a bit controversial (veganism and vegetarianism tend to be very emotional subjects and I definitely understand why that is) but I've talked to quite a lot of people who found it very interesting and who stopped being a vegan or a vegetarian afterwards. To be honest I haven't read it since my decision was already made before I stumbled across it but if I decided to stay vegetarian I would have read it. I think it's always better to be able to consider aspects that one didn't know about before and then decide whether one wants to take them into consideration or not.

You might also have heard about the voraciouseats girl who stopped being a vegan: http://voraciouseats.com/2010/11/19/a-vegan-no-more/ she also links to a couple of other blogs of former vegans who made the same decision. In case you are interested in health related concerns I would at least have a look at these.

My personal compromise is that I am now even stricter when eating at a restaurant or party than I used to be (which is also a result of cutting out all grains). I still don't eat meat and most of the time I just have a salad, sometimes just water if I don't feel like eating (which is a completely new experience for me...). When I'm at home I cook meat for me but only when I know it has been grass fed and raised in the best way possible which I think is best for me but also the comparably best thing for the animal. There are a couple of local farmers who stopped producing milk and who instead let their cows live together with a bull on the pasture. Their calves are slaughtered at the farm and only afterward transported to a factory for processing. I also know where my eggs come from and I don't consume any dairy. This is of course more expensive but it's not like I eat nothing but meat now, it is just a small part of my diet. And I also eat much less than I did before. Upping fat & protein and cutting out anything that causes cravings (for me that unfortunately currently also includes fruits and nut butter) has helped me a lot already and so I need smaller amounts of food now. Sorry for the long comment. I've thought about this a lot and thus obviously like talking about it....

---
Edit: there was one thing that I forgot to mention. I've read this so many times and I remember when I first heard it: around 10 years ago when my doctor had checked my iron levels for the first time he looked me in the eyes and said "not everyone of us is born to be a vegetarian, you know". I did of course ignore him back then and only now remembered this. Not everyone might have the same problems when being vegan or vegetarian and as far as I know we have absolutely no idea why that is the case. So if being vegan works for you, you feel and look "alive" and if there is nothing that is missing or wrong with you then of course do whatever you believe is right. The question might however be how many people are indeed not having any problems and how many just ignore them. I always thought that I was "just pale" and that was just the way I am. Thinking about it, I have lots of pale, thin vegan friends who don't look very good but who are probably in denial just as I was. I do in fact not have a single vegan friend that looks really healthy but at least from what I've read online they might be out there.

May not answer this particular question, but a fascinating read on your grid system is "The Grid" by Gretchen Bakke: https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Fraying-Between-Americans-Energy/dp/1608196100

https://extension.umd.edu/hgic

Consider signing up for gardening classes, lectures, and seminars. Try your local extension service, garden clubs, botanical gardens, and plant nurseries. Youtube has a wealth of information, but it may not apply to where you are. There's a regional aspect to growing.

Start gardening where you are right now. Skip trying to start things from seeds (it's July), and just see if you can keep some herbs alive in pots for now, like basil or mint. Learn to cook from scratch and how to can/preserve/ferment your food. Reddit, youtube, and the internet in general is full of countless resources on this and other related topics, everything from r/gifrecipes to r/cooking to /r/EatCheapAndHealthy/ to r/baking to r/homebrewing - and of course there's tons of garden-related subreddits.

Buying your actual piece of land is step #4209 of homesteading, not #1. Without experience, you'll have no way of evaluating whether the land actually fits what you want to do or not.

Here's two books to consider, to help you learn how to garden where you are currently -

https://www.amazon.com/Grow-Great-Grub-Organic-Food-from-Small-Spaces/dp/0307452018/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/The-Urban-Homestead-Expanded-Revised-Edition-Your-Guide-to-Self-Sufficient-Living-in-the-Heart-of-the-City-Process-Self-reliance-Series/dp/1934170100/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8

Other how to books of an anarchistic nature:

• Making Stuff and Doing Things
  
  
• Recipes for Disaster
  
  There are a whole ton of books and military surplus gear out there, a lot of which can be found with a simple amazon or google search.
  
  I personally like this series of books because they are not bug out only. There is a lot out there that is more prepper/survivalist oriented. For a more rural perspective the Foxfire books a long with the Country Wisdom books and Mother Earth News
  
  In addition there is stuff like the Open Source Village Construction Set and quite a few other online resources like make and instructables that are the same deal just in a different format.
  
  A piece of advice would be not to get caught up in the cultural presentation of information there is a lot of great post-collapse, survivalist, whatever, information out there that is not presented as such.

The book Cool Tools by Kevin Kelly. It will point you to cool things that you might never have seen before. Many are ridiculously inexpensive and amazing.

It really depends on a lot of things, lot size, the size of the outdoors spaces for either the building or the house, the size of the house itself, etc. It isn't going to answer your question, but perhaps you'd be interested in this book: https://www.amazon.com/Happy-City-Transforming-Through-Design-ebook/dp/B009LRWHPY?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

I suggest this book: http://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myth-Food-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804

Vitamin D with calcium, cuts the overall general cancer risk between the lowest and highest quartile of people measured by about 75%. And cuts the overall general cancer metastasis risk by about 50%. See: http://www.ajcn.org/content/85/6/1586.short

Proper supplementation is around the 75 IU D3 per kg bodyweight per day mark. But actually you have to measure your 25(OH)D3 bloodlevels to be sure, is has to end up between 100-150 nmol/L (40-60ng/mL).

Vegetarians being healthy is myth, though in general they have to be more obsessed with foods so they tend to know how to balance it with special healthy supplemental foods that are not as well known by the general populace.

For bone health you may want to look into vitamin K (K1, K2:{Mk4, Mk7}) and other vitamin D cofactors.

https://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myth-Food-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804

https://authoritynutrition.com/7-nutrients-you-cant-get-from-plants/

You should, it really showed me just what grains to the earth and where Veganism can ultimately lead to. Here's the link on Amazon

Give Good Calories Bad Calories a read first. Then try reading The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith. She was a vegan for 20 years and it caused her some major health issues. She really points out the fallacies that the vegetarian lifestyle is based on very clearly. In the mean time you can watch all the videos found here, and this post from March 14 by Taubes is great, pay special attention to the second paragraph. Does she want you to watch Forks Over Knives? That movie fails entirely to address the weaknesses inherent in observational studies.

Read The Vegetarian Myth. Make sure that you are doing this for the right reasons.

Anemia and vegetarianism don't mix very well. You will want to see a doctor/nutritionist so you know exactly what you need to be eating. It might feel more moral, but being a veggie is more work to make sure you eat right and more odds of things going terribly wrong with anemia. This is doubly so since you say that you aren't going to have people supportive of your choice who you still have to feed. If you can't afford to eat so that it won't kill you, don't do it.

I had a friend in high school who almost killed herself being a veggie because she's anemic. It wasn't until she had the chance to be out of her house and got some extra income to be able to eat so it wouldn't kill her.

tl;dr: Anemia and vegetarianism don't mix very well, see a doctor instead of asking the internets.

>Why we shouldn't complain that meat eaters use 10 times the land resources.

Red herring alert.

I believe that agriculture uses more land, and is more ruinous to the environment than pastoralism[1]. Animals can be grown on marginal land, which incidentally is all that is left after agriculture's done with it. Just because your food does not bleed does not mean it is more moral. Forests were destroyed and animals displaced/killed to create your fields. Look at a historical map of Europe and see the historical extent of forest that was destroyed.

Fuel and nitrogen fertilizer are used, pesticides that poison the food chain, agricultural machinery that destroys topsoil, irrigation systems that lower the water-table. Unfortunately agriculture as without pesticides will simply not sustain the current population level (not that I think it's a bad thing). I have great hopes for things like micro-ponics though, small self-sustainable systems, but again, it will not support anywhere near the current level of population unless we, say, farm the seas or something. And that hasn't really turned out well at all, has it?

>Living things that feel pain, can be mutilated, maimed, abused, tortured. Then consider how carefully we construct and pack iPods, computers, TVs, and cellphones that nobody needs and will discard in a year or two. Then tell me why vegans and vegetarians should shut up[3].

While I sympathize that it is a painful issue (I once threw the picnic lunch for 7 people into a river because someone shot a pigeon) as evidenced by the apparent non-sequitur in this quote, I agree that animals should not be "treated like crap".

I completely agree about humane, ethical and conservational. You know what's interesting? Where animals can be freely hunted in the wild (USA) is where they're preserved in the wild in their greatest number. That is conservation. Why have leopards and lions disappeared from all over Europe and up to Iran? Why are there pumas in North America, but virtually none in Argentina (except for a small range in the south?).

Get a government to mandate that animals be protected and not hunted, and people will displace animals from their native habitat. The evidence is there all around the world. Regulated hunting keeps habitats and animals alive. Photo safaris do more to damage the African bush than hunting safaris. Hunting safaris save the future of African wildlife and have almost zero impact on the environment compared to hordes of tourists in their safari jeeps. The animals that are killed in a hunting safari are those that would naturally die in the near-term. Nobody hunts a 1 year old male lion. I am sorry if this upsets you, but it is true. It seems paradoxical, but remember the anteater is not the friend of the ant, but of the antheap. Where hunting is perversely not allowed the Forest Service must cull animal numbers (eg, elephant herds in South Africa).

>Consider, for a moment, that those animals are living things. Living things that feel pain, can be mutilated, maimed, abused, tortured.

It often seems to me that vegans have not thought their policies out to the very end (I am not accusing you of this since you said you will accept eating meat, grudgingly).

What happens to the animals we don't eat? What happens to wild animals? Either they get old and die, or more likely they get eaten in the wild. Watch a wildebeest being killed by lions, not a pretty sight. If they get old and die without predation, they will desertify their environment. If they are wild animals, human pressure will push them out of their habitat.

The role of Man at the apex of the predatory chain means that if animals do not serve our purposes they will die. All that you are recommending is that the only purpose they serve for us is a sense of wonderment that they exist, a benign pleasure on our part at watching them. And we should protect them for this. I am not opposed, I fully support natural parks, wildlife and habitat preservation etcetera. Unfortunately it doesn't work. Consider the huge stock of domestic/agricultural animals: Who would keep and feed cows and chickens if they were not eaten? [2] The same thing would happen to them that happens to stray dogs: they would have to be put down. Or allowed to live out their lives on land, and be made not to reproduce (if they did reproduce, under human protection, they would displace wildlife).

In sum, the only logical ending to "stop their suffering" is to make a species extinct. If animals do not serve us, we will destroy them (I don't mean personally, I mean as a species. Nothing you can do will change this, no legislation, no government policy) or displace them. It's not just us in the West, it's the 4 billion people in the rest of the world (who incidentally, do not have time for such moral hair-splitting).

Also, I am not making the argument that because lions kill animals it is moral for us to do so as well. I merely posit that everything is part of our economic system and must find a role in it. It seems that for you, animals should fulfil that role merely by being cute, watchable things that it makes us happy to protect for their own sake. That they should eat and live for no other reason. While I am not opposed in principle, in practice I do not think it will work. It may work for us here in the western world, but certainly not in the rest, and certainly not for long, only while we have disposable income to use for this purpose.

>By sticking your fingers in your ears every time a vegn complains, you're just ignoring the evidence in front of you.

I don't do this at all. Where what they are saying goes against my libertarian philosophy I merely point that out. Fascism is still fascism, even when done with the best of intentions. What evidence do you mean, specifically?

>Perhaps you don't care about the rights of the animals, the environment, or the future of this planet; but don't bitch about the people that do.

I actually care a lot about the environment and the future. If it weren't for agriculture I do not believe humans would have put the pressure on the environment they do today.

If you care too, and have an open mind, may I recommend this?

Also you also say animals have rights. Here I must completely disagree with you. Rights come with responsibilities, and are an exclusively moral and human construct. An animal cannot have rights, it can only have a human champion* who demands certain privileges be accorded it. You are that champion in an all-encompassing way. I am merely more limited in the privileges that I demand be accorded to animals, a "limited-rights for animals" campaigner, if you wish. Do you understand the distinction I am trying to make here? It is not a distinction without a difference. You could loosely use the word "right" for privilege, or if privilege sounds condescending think "we owe them humanity", or "we owe them a duty".

A common problem I have with PETA-sympathizers (and I was one myself, once) is they fail this test: "A puppy dog and a homeless, snotty beggar-child are both about to be run down by a car. The puppy is yours, the child is (say) an abandoned, dirty thing. If you could save just one, which would it be?" I used to think they were morally equivalent. Now I do not.

Interestingly PETA believes animals should not be "pets". How many dogs does Ingrid Newkirk have? Saying they're not pets is like saying Catholic priests did not molest children, they just educated them in the ways of the world. Do you know how many animals PETA puts down every year? In a world without human champions (dog-owners) dogs would die out, or become feral and ultimately wolves. Whereupon their habitat would get destroyed over time, as has happened all over the world, or they would end up living with us, in which case how is the situation any different?

Please note: I bring up PETA only because on many of these issues people who feel the way you do (and as I once did) agree with them. And their example shows the logical outcome of such a philosophy.

Well, this has become too long already. You can PM me if you wish, but I don't think I'll be following through in this discussion.

Cheers.


[1] (there's plenty of evidence, but rather than debate the evidence, which I've no time for, I'll just say it's a belief. Google is your friend)
[2] (If they were not eaten but we use their milk and eggs, how is that more moral? Eating fetuses and depriving calves of mother's milk? In this at least I understand the vegans, they have a principled approach.)
[3] I don't want to be rude, but humans are naturally predatory and meat eating. Evolution supports this hypothesis (google Efficient Tissue hypothesis) and so do morphological and behavioral differences between humans and primate relatives, not to mention the archaeological record. I can accept the argument that "I have become morally enlightened enough to go past that" though, and to that extent I am fine with vegans, of which there are a few in my immediate family. Also, as far as "what to eat" is concerned, I am ok with locally grown, sustainable vegetable farming. I do believe that humans (again, biologically speaking) are not meant to eat grasses since we are not ruminants, that large scale agriculture will destroy (and has destroyed in the past) soil-health through desertification (Nile valley comes to mind, and all of the Euphrates).

Find farms that are local to you. I buy grass fed beef direct from the farmer. (I even get to pet my dinner during their happy, but short lives on the farm.) It's like $5 a lb, but I have to buy in bulk.

The same farmer though also sells individual chickens. They are TRUE free range. Not like CAFO chickens - these birds literally could leave if they wanted too. There is no fence or gate preventing them from just heading out and walking down the road. The meat is incredibly dense and the birds are huge. I am a big eater and single breast is more than a meal for me; while I could pretty much eat an entire Publix chicken on my own.

Also - buy a slow cooker and find a source for quality meats in the cheaper cuts, like a roast.

You may like to read this book; The Vegetarian Myth. The title is a bit confrontational but most of the book is about the author reexamining her relationship with food and the earth. I am not a "spiritual person" but I found it quite moving and it really changed who I think about my food. The first chapter was free on her website - google it.

TL:DR: You can afford good meat; you need to buy it from a farmer not from Whole Foods.

The Vegetarian Myth

Well, the idea is that if the whole world went vegan, or even vegetarian, that it would be even more unhealthy for the earth than the mixed diet we eat now.

The basic premise is that crop production of that kind, enough to feed a fully vegetarian human population worldwide, would actually destroy much more land than we already do now. Many of the world's great deserts have grown because of farming practices that denuded the land and sped desertification.

There are also smaller ideas like the fact that we'd probably just lose many species that we've domesticated. The cow, the chicken, etc. would go extinct within a few generations in the wild with no human intervention.

The real problem is human population. If the world's population was much, much smaller, we could all live like North Americans and West Europeans. That's unlikely to happen voluntarily.

The ideal solution if we aren't going to reduce human population is to start transitioning back towards a hunting/gathering model -- but combined with small acreage/high yield organic farming techniques that have been mastered over the last century. There's a "farm" in Los Angeles that is just the back and front yard of an average LA one story ranch house. It has broken world records of yield/Sq Ft using organic permaculture principles. It can produce hundreds and hundreds of pounds of produce every year using these principles, all organic, all sustainable using output from plants synergistically to reduce and eliminate inputs needed for the system. There's about 7 people in the house who tend it full time.

Now imagine if every neighborhood had one or two of these houses?

The industrial farming system is unnecessary and a crime against the earth. Whether produce or animal. They all need to go, we can do far better.

I understand what youre saying but it doesn't work that way. Current industry standard inverters need to see voltage and frequency from the grid to work. If they functioned the way you are suggesting without grid connectivity they could create an issue called islanding. This is when a generator (aka inverter) exports power to a grid when there is no active power on the line. If there is a grid event happening, and power is exported into that event then it can exasperate the event and cause catastrophic damage. Which would take even longer to fix. This is because the grid is a dynamically balanced system. If there is a power sink (outage) the power wants to flow to that area as it will take the easiest and all paths to get to that point. That inverter could easily be overloaded by a power surge if it were to remain on.

What you are calling for and describing is an ATC or automatic transfer switch. You're right, these are pretty common but mostly on large commercial and industrial structures. They can be somewhat complicated, require connection to utility grid information system, and access by the utility operation center to view status. Due to these requirements they are quite expensive and would put residential solar systems out of reach of most consumers.

Now, battery back-back-up systems are really what you're describing. However, the technology is still a bit old, expensive to maintain, and are expensive to install on small scales. I believe Outback Solar still has the best battery system design for residential and off grid applications butbit comes with a price tag. System designs and battery/energy storage are designed a bit differently and do allow for some off grid applications during normal or emergency operations. The technology is coming a long but not as quickly as we would like.

The other issue is that the utilities have not been modernizing over the last 20 years as they should be to keep pace with modern technology. If the utilities had been using the money they were collecting appropriately and spending it on modernization of their grid instead of emergency only projects and then pocketing the rest (contrivirtual claim I know) then we wouldn't be as behind as we are now.

Honestly, the biggest benefits of the push for renewable energy isn't the saving of resources or of our environment but it is forcing the utilities to modernize in a way they haven't had to for 100 years.

If you're really interested in more I highly recommend you read the book/paper "The Grid" by Dr. Gretchen Bakke. It's a history of the US grid in an accessible and easy to read form.
https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Fraying-Between-Americans-Energy/dp/1608196100

Source: 8 years in renewable energy project development.

I suggest a copy of the book Cool Tools, a great antidote for boredom.

Useful?

Kevin Kelly - Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities

Trailer

None of these authors would probably call themselves modern communists but I do view them as such. Some of the material here goes into great depth to outline a possible post-scarcity scenario while some stay on the surface but are non the less a great read and great thinking exercices about a possible future.

​

Peter Joseph - The New Human Rights Movement: Realizing a New Train of Thought

https://www.amazon.com/New-Human-Rights-Movement-Reinventing-ebook/dp/B01M3NWW48/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1550425640&sr=8-1&keywords=peter+joseph+the+new+human+rights+movement

​

Jacque Fresco - The Best That Money Can't Buy

https://www.amazon.com/Best-That-Money-Cant-Buy-ebook/dp/B0773TB3GX/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1550425758&sr=8-2&keywords=jacque+fresco

​

Buckminster Fuller - Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth

https://www.amazon.com/Operating-Manual-Spaceship-Buckminster-Fuller-ebook-dp-B010R3HVOW/dp/B010R3HVOW/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1550425647

​

Jeremy Rifkin - The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World

https://www.amazon.com/Third-Industrial-Revolution-Lateral-Transforming-ebook/dp/B005BOQBGW/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1550426107&sr=8-1

​

Peter Diamandis - Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think

https://www.amazon.com/Abundance-Future-Better-Than-Think-ebook/dp/B005FLOGMM/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1550426273&sr=8-1

​

Ray Kurzweil - The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Trenscend Biology

https://www.amazon.com/Singularity-Near-Humans-Transcend-Biology-ebook-dp-B000QCSA7C/dp/B000QCSA7C/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=

Some recent-ish architecture/urban design books that are really good reads & from well respected practitioners!

Walkable City by Jeff Speck

Happy City by Charles Montgomery

Cities for People by Jan Gehl

Otherwise, most stationary/art stores should stock some [Rotring] (http://www.rotring.com/en/) pens/mechanical pencils. They are high quality drafting pens that are always in high demand.

source: I own a lot, and still want many more. Always handy.

Definitely! Good places to start are Buxton's Sketching User Experience and Norman's Design of Everyday Things


Also, the people over at Kicker Studio keep a list of the top 10 books of all time as well as a very good essential reading list.


Interaction design is a huge field, as deep as any other, so it's not just something you can pick up a book or two and become an expert in or know all the details that go into a good design, but it's definitely worth learning something about it.


One nice article that will start to change how you view interfaces is Raskin's Intuitive Equals Familiar.

Good luck!

I like The Design of Everyday Things

Read The Design of Everyday Things.

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/02/trade_and_hegem_1.html
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/index.html
http://www.amazon.com/Skeptical-Environmentalist-Measuring-State-World/dp/0521010683/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214607181&sr=8-1

I've been reading this book and when I mention something I read out of there often I get looked at like I am some kind of crazy. I hate that the word "skeptic" is becoming pejorative.

Here you go.

Don't worry too much about the lack of "domain knowledge"...most companies understand that industry knowledge is something that only really comes with experience. It's usually enough just to be able to speak to a subject conversationally at the layman level.

For instance, in defense simulation, being able to verbally summarize the original Bay of Biscay analysis would be a fantastic discussion point in an interview (in fact, it would probably go over most managers' heads). Likewise, for environmental science, being able to discuss a few of the chapters from Lomborg's Skeptical Environmentalist would be a good way to express interest and rudimentary knowledge of the topic (being careful to tiptoe around any emotional political / philosophical positions, of course).

As to getting your foot in the door...you can't always seek out such things. Often you simply maintain yourself in a state of readiness, such that when the opportunity appears before you, you're ready and able to step into it.

By way of comparison, I had been programming odd jobs for 10 years before I randomly met a Discrete Maths professor while tinkering away at a Master's Degree (never completed). It turned out that in his day job, he was a hiring manager for the Operations Research department of a major local defense company. There were 30 other students in that class simultaneously vying for his attention, but...I was more prepared, and more forthright in expressing my interest (that was a gamble), and in the end, I got offered a job.

You can make such chance meetings more likely by seeking out opportunities to meet more people. As I said, I made some life-changing contacts through taking some extra night courses. I've met some interesting people by attending local Java User Group meetings. I even met a young undergrad, possibly not unlike yourself, similarly interested in careers in Operations Research, by attending a Reddit meet-up at a local alehouse. I've even made some interesting career contacts through my family's church. And if you chance to be in a job involving travel, you can strike up some absolutely fascinating conversations in airports and airline seats (see, "Is this seat taken?").

Wherever people are, potential contacts maywill be in hiding. But they won't speak up if you don't. You need to break the ice and get conversation rolling.

Oh, and as for companies / agencies: Lockheed Martin Simulation & Training Systems (STS), Mission Systems & Sensors (MS2), Missiles & Fire Control (MFC), Aeronautics (LM-Aero) and the like are all good, as are their many competitors (Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, L3, etc). There are all the "Beltway Bandits" surrounding D.C., like Booz Allen Hamilton. There are the big generic consultancies like SAIC and Accenture (not my favorite niche, but they do land some juicy contracts).

Don't overlook gaming experience. A year or two on SimCity, CityVille, FarmVille, etc can actually provide some authentic and useful experience, as long as the game is architected in a reasonable manner. Then there are the big gaming giants who are almost always hiring, mostly because they tend to burn people out after a year or two (EA Tiburon, etc).

As I'm sure you've seen posted elsewhere, open-source contributions are a great way to get your feet wet. Find the open-bug or requested-feature lists for OpenSim, FlightGear, VDrift or similar, and implement a couple. That counts as real experience (I've hired people based on their open-source commit log), and will give you a chance to decide if this is really something you want to delve into.

Well, if things are as bad as you make out, what do you care about bullet trains?


Tell you what, I'll read a bunch of articles on /r/population if you read a Julian Simon book.

> States would compete to see who could exploit their finite resources the fastest.

I am reading this right now; it's quite germane -
http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Resource-Julian-Lincoln-Simon/dp/0691003815

Much of the reason it's hard to find an example (part of which someone already mentioned) is that as the price begins to increase for a resource that becomes rare, the technology used to refine, extract, or use it is upgraded to be more efficient. This drives the price back down as suddenly you can keep the same output, or even increase output, without using as much of the resource as before.

Julian Simon famously won a bet with another professor that the price of several precious metals would go down over time. The other professor (Ehrlich), believed the price would go up because we would begin to run out of those resources as demand for them increased.

Basically - the economic argument that Julian Simon makes is that as our natural resources become more scarce, the more there is to gain by investing in efficiency. For example, when we first discovered oil and it's benefits, it was extremely unrefined. All the money made from oil was used to find more oil since it was cheaper to find more than it was to figure out more efficient ways of using it. Since then, the refining of oil has become a massive process and the oil we use for energy today is so different from the oil used a long time ago. Basically, if we never put any effort into the refinement and use of oil, we would have run out of it decades ago - but the reason why we keeping pushing back "peak oil" is because we keep figuring out how to be more efficient. Just look at the current trend with cars. If you're interested in learning about this theory more I highly recommend Simon's book "The Ultimate Resource". Essentially he argues that our brains and the ideas we come up with are the "infinite" resource we need. It's flawed but really interesting

https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Resource-Julian-Lincoln-Simon/dp/0691003815

(Edit: I'm thinking of non-living resources like metals, oil, wood etc. This argument/idea doesn't really hold up with animals/species)

I'd recommend Cronon's Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England when you're done with 1491, and 1493.

Cronon covers some of the same sort of territory that Mann does, only his focus is New England and in particular the way that inhabitants of New England (both native and European) used the land and changed it.

There are three American history audiobooks I've enjoyed. One was recommended by a friend who is a big American history buff, Braddock's Defeat (https://www.amazon.com/Braddocks-Defeat-Battle-Monongahela-Revolution/dp/B014LJJMM2). It's set about 20 years before revolution and features George Washington working for the British.

Washington's Spies, by Rose, is what the series "Turn" was based on and it's also quite excellent: https://www.amazon.com/Washingtons-Spies-Story-Americas-First/dp/0553383299

Last of the 3 is "Changes in the Land" which is look at how European colonization of New England changed the land. The author weaves interesting material from various domains to paint an interesting story: https://www.amazon.com/Changes-Land-Indians-Colonists-Ecology/dp/0809016346

I would recommend this book: Meatonomics - David Robinson Simon

While the majority of the book doesn't directly deal with your question, the final chapter touches on it.

The book Meatonomics goes into the hidden costs of meat consumption. http://www.amazon.com/Meatonomics-Economics-Consume-Much-Smarter/dp/1573246204

Other than that, r/VerlorenesMetallgeld did a good job explaining.

Not really a fan of New Balance sneakers.

I hate fast fashion. It's terrible for the environment and workers. Here's a good book in the issue.

If you want a good overview of our side, read this. A moral case for fossil fuels.

First we have hundreds of years of recoverable oil. I think every person who is like me, figures technology will get better, but for the foreseeable future, oil is our friend.

If you want a great read that will at least make you consider why oil is so amazing, read The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

Its a good book to show just how much food you can grow on given sizes from 1/4 acres and up etc.

Good books: Back to basics / Encylopedia of country living /

http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Country-Living-Carla-Emery/dp/1570615535/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323093223&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Back-Basics-Complete-Traditional-Skills/dp/1602392331/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323093275&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Book-Self-Sufficiency-John-Seymour/dp/0751364428/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323094521&sr=8-1

Back to Basics covers a lot of it. This is a great book because it starts with selecting the land for your cabin, follows through on how to build the cabin, and then right through stuff like how to forge your own tools, stock your own food and make your own clothes. It's practically a field guide on how to start from scratch.

When Technology Fails is also a pretty substantial resource. I haven't finished reading it yet, so I can't really say much about it.

This book has lots of info about more primitive type skills: smithing, alternative energies, plant use, canning, log cabins.

Some good books for reference.

http://www.amazon.com/Mini-Farming-Self-Sufficiency-Brett-Markham/dp/1602399840/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333634510&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Back-Basics-Complete-Traditional-Edition/dp/1602392331/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333634541&sr=8-1

So the meat industry created some slaughterhouse videos in their Glass Walls series on youtube. This is a good 'other side' to vegan documentaries that focus on welfare during slaughter (like Earthlings).

As for the environmental side of things, there's not really any great documentaries with specifically a pro-meat focus. But you will find a few books with that focus, such as Simon Fairlie's Meat: A Benign Extravagance or Defending Beef: The Case for Sustainable Meat Production by Nicolette Hahn Niman or Cowed by Denis Hayes and Gail Boyer Hayes. But even these books concede we must not feed human-edible food to animals and also should reduce meat consumption.

EDIT: And, even though it's neither pro nor anti-meat, there is a two-part documentary on BBC called: Horizon: Should I eat meat?. First half is about health, the second part environment. But if you're not in the UK I don't know where you'll find it.

Mostly it's just general knowledge from various history courses as well as reading on Paleo, Keto and Traditional diet topics. The problem with living in the wild and eating only plants and fruits is that they are pretty low calorie. People tended to use up more energy looking for those foods than they would gain from eating them. Another problem is that before agriculture plants were way less productive. Here is a comparison of ancient vs more modern corn. Another problem is that you can't find wild strawberries in the middle of winter. Plant based food was much more reliant on seasonality and went bad very quickly. Meat on the other hand has tons of nutrients and can be dried or smoked and kept for the winter.


Nutrition Density Challenge: 5 lbs of Fruit vs. 4 oz Beef Liver

Here is the chart, the liver is on the bottom. http://imgur.com/k84944M


You might enjoy this book. The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability. PB has a torrent of it.

Isn't The Vegetarian Myth horribly sourced and full of bad science (example: author states there are no bacteria in the human stomach pg.142)? According to the top review on Amazon (follow that link):

The author cites 207 references in this book.

62 of those references are websites (~30%)

18 are newspapers and magazines (~7%)

32 are journals (~15%)

95 are other books (~46%)

I love this book in part because he shits from such great height on bad door design.

If you need to print words on it, your design failed.

Please read this: The Design of Everyday Things

All non-fiction:

• Chaos: Making a New Science - It's a little dated now, but still a very interesting read on chaos theory and it's uses in science and math. I picked this up in high school and found it very inspiring to read.
  
• The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition - An insightful examination by Frederick P. Brooks of his experiences with developing a large mainframe and it's OS. Originally published in 1975, it is still very applicable now. I first read this in College and it's still on my shelf as a professional.
  
• The Design of Everyday Things - An interesting look at the psychology of design.
  
• Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality - An interesting look at what evolutionary psychology suggests about human sexuality.

jQuery is not about design. It's about programming interaction, and interaction is a subset of design. Try The Design Of Everyday Things, for starters, and then look at your favorite sites and ask yourself what works about them and why. Use a grid system like 960.gs, and above all KISS.

The best way to test my designs is to sit someone down at a computer while I hover behind them. I Don't talk, I don't point things out, I don't even explain what the site is. Every time I see them hesitate I know I've got something to work on.

You could be correct in one thing. Perhaps it's TOO much thought that went into the site, because you can analyze it to infinity, and come with longer lists of logical reasons why it should be good, but you can't deny the simple observable fact that it isn't. It's trying to say someone should find art beautiful because they are the experts and the highest quality material is used. It doesn't mean a thing.

You should read this book, a must read for everyone into design.

Read "The Design of Everyday Things." It kind of explains why, although for the life of me I can't remember what he says.

http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/dp/0385267746

This is a good book, Design of Everyday Things
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/dp/0385267746

Essential: The Design of Everyday Things

Just leaving this here for those interested in this thesis:

https://www.amazon.com/Rational-Optimist-Prosperity-Evolves-P-S/dp/0061452068

And this:

https://www.amazon.com/Skeptical-Environmentalist-Measuring-State-World/dp/0521010683

At least in Europe you've got Björn Lomborg. The only sensible 'solutions' I've heard have come from him.

A lot of the 'solutions' outlined in the Kyoto protocol are stupid expensive and wouldn't help all that much over the course of this century. Lomborg proposes a lot of cheaper and more effective solutions in Cool It.

Here's a 17 minute TED talk by him on the topic.

He also wrote an excellent book titled [The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World.] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Skeptical-Environmentalist-Measuring-State/dp/0521010683)

...I'd really like an updated version of that book. Most of his stats stop at 1999/2000.

So many ways to go with this.....

Saying "we need to plan based on metrics" is not "fuck people." There's a book I would advocate you reading if you haven't already, The Skepical Environmentalist. One of the key take-aways is that we don't spend enough time figuring out how to spend resources WISELY and with the greatest benefit.

Of course, "greatest benefit" is a matter of opinion and subject to hijack, but your response shows that you clearly have your mind made up to the point of not taking the time to evaluate or understand an opposing viewpoint.

I am happy to talk about scientific and technical sources. My apologies for the wall of text; I hope it's readable.

First of all, my answer reflects my own personal opinions and preferences. I'm a techie, a capitalist, and I once worked for an energy transmission company. Many will disagree with me, and that's fine... but you can (and should!) judge the veracity of scientific sources for yourself. That's a quality I look for in sources - they didn't fall back upon "settled" opinions, but saw for themselves what does or does not make any danged sense.

In this case, I originally learned about the Helms project many years ago, from listening to Dr. Bill Wattenburg's radio show. He's from California, and so talks about these issues frequently. Dr. Bill is a nuclear scientist, and an accomplished engineer. He has an unapologetically pro-nuclear power viewpoint, but (in my opinion) he still takes care to weigh the pro's and con's of various other generation and transmission technologies. I've learned a great deal from Dr. Bill, not the least of which is to develop a healthy skepticism towards big claims.

Beyond that, a great way to learn about various sources of information on energy issues is Anthony Watts' website. Even if you don't agree with everything (or anything!) here, WUWT is a very useful gateway to a whole variety of science-based (and suitably contrarian) primary sources. Whatever your views, Watts and his correspondents are very close to the ongoing argument about the future of energy, and how people choose to live. It's raucous, informative, and occasionally news-making.

I've had many other influences, but one more for now: I was greatly informed by Bjorn Lomborg's influential book, The Skeptical Environmentalist. He has several other worthy titles, but I quite like this one as a starting-point. It isn't recent; but this is as much a critical-thinking exercise, as it is a scientific investigation. Again, many people will discount his ideas... but ask yourself why this is (and whether they have actually countered his arguments) before you draw your conclusions.

 

For my part, I am rather optimistic about the future of energy. Once people begin reading a genuine diversity of viewpoints, they are likely to observe there is very much to be hopeful about. If you didn't hear more about some of the intriguing developments before now, one reason is because these particular advances may not not suit the dominant viewpoint, and are often filtered out by the gatekeepers of news networks and accepted-science journalism. Thank Goodness we now have many sources to choose from... if only more people pursued them.

Another reason is that (when compared to the news cycle) scientific progress is frustratingly slow - Mother Nature gives up her secrets with the utmost reluctance. It takes a long time to improve upon an existing (really good) technology, to the point where it makes more economic sense to do it the new way. This is a critical factor - in order to be widely accepted by the public, the new method must be able to make money. Subsidies only get you so far. People change their routines in order to get more for their money - it's simply human nature.

Everyone has their biases (myself included), but so many so-called scientists have successfully suspended reality, that the academic apparatus of 'accepted science' begins to look like something far different - in some extreme cases, it resembles a return to Lysenkoism. More than anything else, this statist impulse to bend science to the government's will is what I rally against. Once you strip the compulsion away, the science is far more objective, and the technology is much easier to discuss.

I'll consider any energy solution, if I decide that I can afford it. Beyond that: May the best technology win.

>Of commodities? Of Oil? For the most part, they CAN'T.

Yes they can.

>That's why those things are rising in price while the price of manufactured goods remains flat- because there's a finit supply of them, but more people that want to buy them.

Production of virtually every commodity has been increasing, not decreasing. You have zero evidence for your position.

>And that is why commodities are rising in price while core inflation remains flat.

Firstly, core inflation leaves out food and energy. Secondly, CPI has been manipulated numerous times in the past few decades. It will be manipulated again very soon so that the government does not need to make COLA payments.

>But I'm done talking with you and people like you. r/economics is depressing.

Read this.

I'm leaving a day later than expected -- so when I said you could have the last word, I lied. :-)

>The case for collapse is quite clear.

Apparently so clear there is no need to present any.

Collapse is a verfy serious thing. Having the best demographics of any major country in the world is not evidence of comming "collapse", just because one would prefer them to be better. The need for the richest nation in the world to increase taxes and reduce promised spending in the future is not evidence of coming "collapse". Etc.

>It would be nice to see something that would challenge that evidence.

You mean that evidence? :-)

> (The best response to the question was the link to The Rational Optimist.)

Oh, Ridley only follows in the footsteps of the late Julian Simon and his classic Ultimate Resource 2 of which there is now a free if poorly formated version online.

>>How much of a shorter life expectancy would you prefer? Admittedly your shorter life might feel a lot longer as you listen to your 8-track tape...

> I'm trying to decide if that is more strawman or half truth. Hell, I can't decide. I'll just call it both.

Half? I can fill out the rest ... You'd be listening to your 8-track in your car with Big Fins but no seat belts getting 12 miles to the gallon, spewing pollution, as you race to get home in time for the Hillbillies... shall I go on?

You think I'm kidding? There's no straw man about it. Life expectancy was 10 years shorter. What's a year of life worth? What's "straw man" about life being shortened by 15%???.

> If you want to compare life a few decades ago to today, please tell the full story. Yes, consumer goods are cheaper. So is food. So are clothes.

Food, clothing, consumer goods, not merely less expensive but better. You couldn't get today's common consumer goods at any price back in time. How much would a computer and internet connection cost to have this conversation in 1965?

>Unfortunately, housing is much more expensive.

Is it?? Why do you think so? Perhaps you are impressed by how much new bigger, better homes cost relative to older, smaller homes. But that's entirely subjective, and cherry-picking selective.

Let's look instead at BLS data. From 1967 to 2011 the housing component of the CPI has risen more than the total CPI by all of 6.1% ... that's after 44 years. Not so much, eh?

Now compare the 6% real increase in the cost of housing to the 120% real increase in per capita income over the same period, and we get this. Wow, things get tougher and tougher all the time, eh?

> So is heath insurance.

Now there's both a simple point and a sophisticated point you are missing here.

1. People pay more health costs to get more health benefits. (Like they pay more for modern bigger, better houses.) Life expectancy was 10-years shorter in 1960. What's a year of life worth? Of course an easy way to cut your health care costs is by dying earlier. Good bargain, that? Would you make that deal? If not, you should reconsider your objection.
   
   
2. As national income increases health care is supposed to cost more. Health care is a "superior good". People spend only so much on normal basic goods like food, clothing, housing, so as their income rises they spend an increasing portion of it on other "superior goods" such as health care. This is universal.
   
   Now before you become absolutely wedded to the idea that health care costs have risen a lot since 1935(!) ponder this chart and commentary which takes into account rising income since 1935 and the "superior good" effect. Hmmm.
   
   > So are many other things.
   
   Like what? Well ... there is entertainment. We spend a lot more on entertainment. That's a superior good too. But is this a sign of coming collapse?
   
   >>Do these indicators include, for instance, the recent "unprecedented increase in magnitude of U.S. natural gas resource base"...
   
   >Yes.
   
   >>...and the resulting drop in energy prices that has already occurred from it?.
   
   >What price drop?
   
   Did you read the links? Big price drop in natural gas, combined with big increase in production.
   
   >Are you seriously suggesting that what people pay overall for energy has decreased? Yes, natural gas is cheaper. Is electricity? Is gasoline?
   
   Total energy costs? Percentage of national income, 1970: 8%; 2007: 8%. Sign of imminent economic collapse?
   
   > efficiency improvements are logarithmic. The lowest hanging efficiency fruit has already been picked.
   
   And what evidence for this is there in the history of the last 200 years??
   
   In the late 1800s there was a very serious Peak Coal scare in Britain. The logic was irrefutable: The Industrial Revolution ran on coal. The supply of coal was finite. The least expensive, highest-quality coal was being consumed first, and fast. Yet demand for coal was rising at an accelerating rate. As the supply and quality of coal declined, its price had to go higher and higher and higher -- bringing the Industrial Revolution to a grinding halt!
   
   Could you disagree?
   
   Yet today there is more coal in the ground in Britain, literally worthless, than they imagined even existed then. What was the systematic mistake they made? Read Julian Simon.
   
   >If the price of energy rises, additional efficiency gains won't be able to prevent the cost per unit of economic activity from reversing.
   
   The Peak Coal argument lives! No number of stakes driven into its heart by factual reality, hard data, and economic analysis can kill it! :-)
   
   Every generation says "the low hanging fruit has finally now been picked". Then the next says it too, and the next, and the next. What systematic error do they all make?
   
   >>Japan's real GDP has increased 13%. Are we now defining down "economic collapse" to equal slower growth?
   
   > 1) Take the first derivative of that.
   
   Weak, dude. You go troll up a squigley line that can't possibly tell you the net GDP+/- number for 1990-2010 (it doesn't even go to 2010) then you talk about how you respect data??
   
   If you want data, go to IMF GDP data and find "Japan, 1990-2010, +20.7%". (Ooops, not 13%, I made a mistake! Using primary data sources keeps one honest.) Which is what that squigley line totals up to, if you add 2010.
   
   > 2) How about GDP per capita?
   
   

• 16.9%. Now less than 1% growth per year is nothing to brag about, but it's sure not "collapse".
  
  >> Tax increase = "economic collapse"? Defining collapse downward in every direction you can think up? Gee, what were the 17 years after 1929 compared to ... a tax increase!
  
  >If real income net of taxes go down, how does that affect standard of living? C'mon now, I know you are bright enough to figure this out.
  
  "If", I love that. What a data-based argument!
  
  Now I pretty much loathe the current course of US fiscal policy, but the worst case for the USA is it will end up with a tax burden equal to Western Europe's for the last generation. Has Western Europe's real income been declining for a generation? That's a relevant data point.
  
  On what factual grounds can you predict your "If" will come true? (Western Europe's worst case going from today on is a lot worse -- but that's another reason to expect the US will remain a solid #1.)
  
  >>The USA has the best demographics of any major economy in the world, by far. Over the next 40 years the US working age population will grow 24% while every other one (except India's) will shrink. China's working age population is peaking right now and will fall 21% by 2050.
  
  >This is a fair point. The question, though, is will we be able to provide jobs for this growing working age population?
  
  Another "If"! Yeah, if the economy collapses, it will collapse!
  
  But really, dude: "Demographics will collapse the US economy". "The USA has the best demographics in the world." "Yes, but what if we can't take advantage of it? Then we'll have an economic collapse in spite of our best demographics".
  
  That's an argument???? That's an expression of creed -- whatever fact comes up, it's spun to: ... so collapse can be coming! To conform with a creed that can't be challenged by fact.
  
  >>OK, yup, you are hearing from me. You are right! That is exactly what the media does, to drum up revenue for itself. How much money does it make from saying "Oswald acted alone ... UFOs aren't from other planets ...The economy by historical standards is OK, pretty good even as people are much better off than ever before." Not so much.
  
  >I don't give two shits what the media says. I do care about data and what I can deduce from it.
  
  What data??? Do you care where you get it?
  
  You don't get your living/housing cost data from the BLS, don't get your energy data from the EIA, don't get your international GDP data from the IMF -- but from squigley lines you Google up that you think support your claim.
  
  If not from the media, do you get it from politically partisan Youtube clips full of strong feelings and moving if dubious claims you don't verify (and which wouldn't do well if you did)? Well, Youtube is media too.
  
  As to Elizabeth Warren as a recommended "data source" in that clip ... oh, my ...wow... I'm going to write a separate comment just about that.
  
  

>His claim is my claim. Your assertion is that once man recognizes the problem it will be too late, I don't agree. Personally, I would like to see both nuclear and hydrogen power pursued in the future. Why isn't hydrogen power on the front lines? Would love to hear your take on that topic.

I think all forms of clean energy are great but my argument is that it doesn't matter if we solve the energy problem because that doesn't solve the greater ecological problems of species and habitat loss which are caused by economic and population growth and exacerbated by fossil energy use. You have yet to dissent with evidence on species and habitat loss. Your only pertinent comment was to plant some trees. If you like the technology position you should read The Ultimate Resource and its sequel. As I mentioned, Simon only addresses scarcity in response to the Cobbs, Trainers, and Kassiolas and not the ecological problems described by Coyne and Hoesktra.

>I and others like me don't like throwing money after good intentions.

No one is asking you to pay more for anything, you probably already are. Wherever you pay taxes probably contributes to some centralized space program or national research. But no one ever said the solution was to contribute money to something. I'm not convinced that money will be a thing by the time we develop the capability of interstellar travel. All of the authors I cite all over the place are pretty convinced of the end of industrial society.

>Is CO2 rising? Yes. What effect will it have on the planet, we will find out.

We already know. Statistically significant levels of ocean acidification, average temperatures that exceed all of the data ever collected by the human species, and sea level rise due to warmer temperatures melting the ice caps. No one disagrees that these things are happening in the status quo, not even Mr. Kimoto. The only argument they are having now is if it is the fault of fossil fuels or not. I don't care whose fault it is, I care about addressing the problem.

>Allow people to take money before their is a measurable negative consequences or solutions, not going to happen.

Take a look at the Maldives, they seem convinced enough to center their national infrastructure strategy around sea level rise. The effects of these problems are already apparent to many people globally. The consequences here are measurable and detrimental. I agree, it will take more immiseration before many will begin to realize the gravity of the ecological problems we face.

> In response, people try to point at events, like your flood, as some kind of proof, or they make wild overstatements.

The hallmark of rising CO2 levels is drastic climatic fluctuations. The reason I mentioned the flood was because it exceeds the crests of any flood in this area in human recorded history. We seem to be collecting a lot data of unprecedented weather patterns in the last decade.

If you are interested in books that read as generic non-fiction books and not as textbooks, these two were interesting to me and assigned by professors (one of my majors was economics).

The Choice by Russell Roberts is a very accessible text about international trade (so this book will definitely drive home how free trade is best for society as a whole) but its themes are relevant to general economic theory as well. It is written in the form of Platonic conversation where the entire story is just two people talking back and forth in a question:answer format. My macro professor made all of his classes read it, even his honors students.

The Ultimate Resource 2 by Julian Lincoln Simon explores issues of resource scarcity, population dynamics, and technology diffusion; each of these is important to economic theory and the themes and anecdotes explored here are common to economics. Some of the ideas expressed might fall more into the Austrian/Libertarian camp, but certainly not all (it isn't always black-and-white).

For the rest of the century The Long Emergency:

The Long Emergency - James Howard Kunstler

Empire Of Illusion - Chris Hedges

The Collapse of Complex Societies - Joseph Tainter

The End Of Growth - Richard Heinberg

The Long Emergency by James Kunstler

The Long Emergency

link1

link2

link3

1. The Long Emergency - by James Howard Kunstler. I'm not really a peak oil alarmist, but I'm interested to hear that point of view.
   
   
2. Moral Man and Immoral Society - by Reinhold Niebuhr. Turns out some Christians are pretty brilliant.
   
   
3. When You are Engulfed in Flames - by David Sedaris. For the lulz.

>"Haven't bought land yet. Texas, most likely. Still undecided though."


There is another book (albeit very repetitive and boring) called The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century by the blogger James Howard Kunstler that puts the emphasis on the oil shortage rather than violence who breaks the country down into regions and discusses the pros and cons of each. One of his contentions is that the best type of place to live would be a small town surrounded by agricultural farmland with an ample water supply (or at least enough rainfall to grow crops without irrigation) and with a comfortably long growing season. Kunstler claims that the New England or Appalachia area would be the best, but of course he is an Easterner. I would have thought you would have picked Northern Idaho where you would have a much greater percentage of allies than most other places, although according to Kunstler the growing season in Northern Idaho is too short to sustain life in the long term. There is also Vermont and New Hampshire where the Free State Project is centered, but it's verrrrrrry cold in the winter I'm told. Speaking of cold, I think my pick by a country mile would be Alaska if it weren't for the harsh winters. If global warming would hurry up and arrive I would head for Alaska (despite Palin!).



P.S.

Are you aware that Texas is one of only six states that have banned open carry? I was astounded when I learned of this yesterday morning on Michael Badnarick's radio program Lighting the Fires of Liberty. It was pointed out by one of his guest hosts who was knowledgeable in this area. Apparently the popular perception of the Second Amendment in Texas is far different than the reality.

A great book on situational awareness called Left of Bang

Good book on Mitigation, coming from a community-centric perspective. A little unconventional but I think brilliant. Same goes for The Long Emergency by a guy named James Kunstler. He's got a great blog too- talks about Peak Oil a lot.

As far as training goes, you should be looking into FEMA online courses, especially the Professional Development Series (PDS)- which is all online.

Go read any ethnography and some books about ethnographic methods.

Some classic ethnographies/etc are

• The Forest People (I've seen this one free online before)
  
  
• The Dobe Ju/'Hoansi
  
• Facing Mt. Kenya
  
  
• Participant Observation
  
• Paradigm Wars
  
  
• Yanomamo
  
  
• Changes in the Land
  
  I could probably think of some more decent ones but it's not a bad list to start with.

> By promoting CEOs of companies to lead his military... This is logical if you eat paint.

What are the former jobs of pretty much every single person employed as the head of a government department under like every president?

>Uhhh the businesses became the government. Do you not have access to books?

​Once again, who is in charge of things like the FCC? Who has literally always been in charge of the FCC?

>yes, bombing everything is good for the environment.

Do you not know about the nazis pro environment policies?

https://www.amazon.com/How-Green-Were-Nazis-Environment/dp/0821416472

>And so was Reagan, your republican hero.

When did I say Reagan was my hero? I specifically called him a piece of shit in another post to you.

>Reality disagrees with you.

Jews were the 1% of the Weimar republic.

>So to surmise your argument, you watch a fuck ton of Prager-U videos and think they are remotely accurate.

You have no idea what you are talking about and think insults and swearing are an argument.

>Everything you posted was objectively wrong.

You have done nothing to dispute any of my arguments

>Hitler killed gay people and unionists and communists first. So how is he left-leaning?

BIG GOVERNMENT CONTROLLING THE ECONOMY. And also mass killing is like the most leftist thing you could ever do.

>Did your mom struggle to afford formula and substituted lead paint?

Once again, you fail to be able to actually articulate an argument and instead resort to insults. This is why no one takes you communists seriously.

Don't forget about Hilter's version of the EPA.

well not that common, but "this book is not a tree" and it is a great read!

Yeah, Interface Carpets have done incredible things. Ray Anderson the owner of Interface did a great TED talk where he explains their journey. You can find other cases along this vein in the book Cradle to Cradle. They give me faith that business and manufacturing can positively contribute to sustainability if they choose to.

see: cradle to cradle by bill mcdonough and michael braungart.
TL;DR - eliminate destruction of our environment by 1) making waste as valuable a commodity as the item itself and 2) designing out all sources of harmful chemicals from extraction to manufacturing to use and re-use

nike's already made a similar shoe recently, but found a hard time marketing it to the masses; they couldn't find their "air jordan". hippies are bad at sports.

Cradle to Cradle

Design for the Real World

Upcycling is fascinating in that it redefines how we relate to our waste (not quite the same as recycling). The first book that turned me onto the concept was Cradle to Cradle. The same authors more recently published The Upcycle. I'd recommend the first.

Also, shameless plug for /r/circular_economy, which deals with much of the same philosophy on waste and mimicking nature.

I read a book titled Cradle to Cradle. The problem right now is we externalize costs of the things we consume.

This may be a bit of a stretch but i loved
Cradle to Cradle, a book on re-imagining sustainable design and engineering, the book itself is even made out of recycled plastics with soy based reusable inks and is waterproof. I found it to be really enlightening and is definitely worth a read.

Well I'm sure you've read it, but I've heard cradle to cradle is pretty good

You could look into biomimicry too, there's absolutely loads of interesting projects that deal with biomimicry

Here are some other books that could help:
one,
two

Hope that helps!

EDIT: Forgot this one

I would highly recommend using the Earthship design principles for your house. I'm an architecture and environmental science student and have been researching sustainable building for a few years now, as well as having lived in two houses which applied efficient solar passive design and helped to build a number of houses as a labourer for my father's design and construction company. If you want to be building truly sustainably then you need to look much further than standards such as LEED; which are designed to fit within conventional architectural frameworks and thinking and in doing so fail to truly tackle the challenges of designing something that can be constructed and lived in without diminishing the ability of future generations to do the same. Earthships are a good step in the right direction, but they still do not go all the way sadly.

I would recommend reading the book Cradle To Cradle as a good place to start in understanding what it means for something to be truly environmentally, socially and economically sustainable. For if a house can be designed to use net zero electricity and waste yet it is at the expense of Chinese children dying from poison's released when a technology in the house needs to be disposed of and replaced (as a ridiculously extreme fictitious example), then how could it be called sustainable? In order to design our built environment to be sustainable in the core sense of the term all aspects of that design must be attended to with the utmost care, from resource extraction and processing to transportation and distribution of materials to assembly process (how sustainable is it exactly to build an earthship with 50 volunteers over 5 weeks if they're being fed steak every other day and half of them flew long distances to get to the build site? not very, i'd wager).

Achieving as I would call it true sustainability is a very difficult task right now unless you're happy to give up many of the modern comforts and conveniences that we enjoy in Western society, in fact it's nearly impossible. However, I do believe that if we (people like you and I) set out to lay down the groundwork for distributed systems of sustainable resilient development now, using the best technologies and processes available, then we could achieve a truly sustainable society within one generation that has access to all of the same conveniences (this is assuming several technologies are invented that are only now on the horizon of science). Sustainable development is, I believe, core to restoring much of what is perceived to have been eroded within society over the past few centuries, such as equality, strong communities, health (which as Ghandi said, is wealth), relevant education and satisfaction with individuals path through life.

I'm sorry, this is a bit of a rambling post. I get really excited seeing people preparing to move to a way of life which I see as essential if we are to lift humanity from the current gloom and doom that seems to pervade so much of our world right now.

Cradle to cradle: remaking the way we make things

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0865475873/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&sr=&qid=

Here is one of the authors ted talk.
http://www.ted.com/talks/william_mcdonough_on_cradle_to_cradle_design

Well the best answer is definitely what Tigrinus posted. To add my two cents here are a couple of books I've read that are super interesting, without being textbooks:

The essential engineer

Why things break

Machinery's handbook

Machinery's handbook is pretty much the bible for Mechanical Engineers. It covers everything from materials sciences to types of measurements to machining and component sizing.

Actually, before getting a textbook, you might wanna read Why Things Break first.

A plant based diet is much less expensive!

Legumes, fruits, and vegetables are the cheapest foods to buy at a store, and that's without the billions of dollars in government subsidization animal flesh (meat) and secretion (dairy) industries receive. Imagine if the government gave those same subsidizes to fruit and veg industries; there wouldn't be anyone in the country who couldn't afford to feed their family healthily! Keep it in mind when comparing the prices of animal flesh and plant based meats that the flesh is artificially priced low.

There are certainly more expensive options at the grocery store like faux meats and ice cream, but these can easily be made yourself for much cheaper. There are millions of vegan recipes on Google for literally every possible food.

If you'd like to learn about the reasons why many governments subsidize meat and dairy, I recommend the book Meatonomics by David Robinson Simon. "It explores the unseen economic forces that drive our animal food system, and the strange ways these forces affect our spending, eating, health, prosperity, and longevity. Among other things, consumers have largely lost the ability to decide for ourselves what – and how much – to eat. Instead, those decisions are made for us by meat and dairy producers who control our buying choices with artificially low prices, misleading messaging, and heavy control over legislation and regulation."

read Christopher Bryson's The Fluoride Deception.

From Publisher's Weekly:
"Concerns over fluoridated drinking water have long been derided as the obsession of McCarthyite cranks. But this muckraking j’accuse asserts that fluoride is indeed a dire threat to public health, one foisted upon the nation by a vast conspiracy—not of Communist agents, but of our very own military-industrial complex. Investigative reporter Bryson revisits the decades-long controversy, drawing on mountains of scientific studies, some unearthed from secret archives of government and corporate laboratories, to question the effects of fluoride and the motives of its leading advocates. The efficacy of fluoridated drinking water in preventing tooth decay, he contends, is dubious. Fluoride in its many forms may be one of the most toxic of industrial pollutants, and Bryson cites scientific analyses linking fluoridated drinking water to bone deformities, hyperactivity and a host of other complaints. The post-war campaign to fluoridate drinking water, he claims, was less a public health innovation than a public relations ploy sponsored by industrial users of fluoride—including the government’s nuclear weapons program. Legendary spin doctors like Edward Bernays exploited the tenuous link between dental hygiene and fluoridation to create markets to stimulate fluoride production and to prove the innocuousness of fluoride compounds, thereby heading off lawsuits by factory workers and others poisoned by industrial fluoride pollution. Bryson marshals an impressive amount of research to demonstrate fluoride’s harmfulness, the ties between leading fluoride researchers and the corporations who funded and benefited from their research, and what he says is the duplicity with which fluoridation was sold to the people. The result is a compelling challenge to the reigning dental orthodoxy, which should provoke renewed scientific scrutiny and public debate."

The Fluoride Deception relatively cheap book and tons of great info but mostly on the history of fluoride in America.



From http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=14949:

>The story begins in 1924, when Interessen Gemeinschaft Farben (I.G. Farben), a German chemical manufacturing company, began receiving loans from American bankers, gradually leading to the creation of the huge I.G. Farben cartel. In 1928 Henry Ford and American Standard Oil Company (The Rockefellers) merged their assets with I.G. Farben, and by the early thirties, there were more than a hundred American corporations which had subsidiaries and co-operative understandings in Germany. The I.G. Farben assets in America were controlled by a holding Company, American I.G. Farben, which listed on it’s board of directors: Edsel Ford, President of the Ford Motor Company, Chas. E. Mitchell, President of Rockerfeller’s National City Bank of New York, Walter Teagle, President of Standard Oil New York, Paul Warburg, Chairman of the federal reserve and brother of Max Warburg, financier of Germany’s War effort, Herman Metz, a director of the Bank of Manhattan, controlled by the Warburgs, and a number of other members, three of which were tried and convicted as German war criminals for their crimes against humanity. In 1939 under the Alted agreement, the American Aluminum Company (ALCOA), then the worlds largest producer of sodium fluoride, and the Dow Chemical Company transferred its technology to Germany. Colgate, Kellogg, Dupont and many other companies eventually signed cartel agreements with I.G. Farben, creating a powerful lobby group accurately dubbed "the fluoride mafia"(Stephen 1995).

Read the book, The Fluoride Deception (https://www.amazon.com/Fluoride-Deception-Christopher-Bryson/dp/1583227008). It's extremely well researched and written. I can't recommend it enough if you really want to know the history of why fluoride is in your water supply.

Fluoride is a crock of shit and the movement to reveal that is slowly gaining traction. All the documentation is in that book.

> But it's $22, which is a pretty fucking capitalistic price.

And the garment industry is a crooked, unsustainable, neoliberal shitshow. There's a lot of unspoken high cost that goes into cheap fashion.

I did the same after reading Overdressed

If I google "slow fashion" I got more results than "ethical clothing," especially since the word "ethical" is used pretty loosely.

It was a great book, way more interesting than the movie. I'd highly recommend it.

YOU DID IT ALEX EPSTEIN!

Have you read this new book? If so, what did you think?

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1591847443/ref=cm_sw_su_dp

Proof / plugging my Twitter account

While I'd love it if you bought my book, I promise I will be answering questions on all sorts of topics. Not going to pull a Woody Harrelson. :-)

First, understand that if you're worried about things they talk about in the media, you're being emotionally manipulated. You're being ginned up to feel scared and angry to increase their ratings.

Here's the cure that I guarantee you won't take: read the other side. For example, read this:

https://www.amazon.ca/Moral-Case-Fossil-Fuels/dp/1591847443

(you won't).

I'm sure you'll read it with an open mind

https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Case-Fossil-Fuels/dp/1591847443/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1496104872&sr=8-1&keywords=the+moral+case+for+fossil+fuels

Yeah, no. Besides, fossil fuels are good for the environment.

I just purchased the updated and revised 4th edition earlier this year at my local Tractor Supply Co. but I never read any of the earlier versions to give a comparison.
Edit: Correction, I have the 3rd edition which is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Back-Basics-Complete-Traditional-Skills/dp/1602392331

http://www.amazon.com/Back-Basics-Complete-Traditional-Edition/dp/1602392331/

&

http://www.amazon.com/Backyard-Homestead-Produce-food-quarter/dp/1603421386

Between "Back to Basics" and a trusty copy of Fannie Farmer for cooking, you can cover a LOT of good ground. There are lots of great books, but those are two I can't live without. To be clear, both are about techniques and methods, not so much the theory behind it. They're fantastic reference books though.

It kinda sounds like he has a lot of stuff and that you don't necessarily know every tiny thing he has / uses / lurves, which is understandable, because people who really think on their EDC-type stuff often buy and trade a lot of crap. I'd almost suggest trying to get out of the EDC-items box and getting him The Axe Book or Back to Basics, both of which cover skills around outdoorsy things. AB will cover how to cut down all kinds of trees with an axe; BTB covers all kinds of homesteading, food growing, basic skills required for such. Both have lots of neat illustrations and seem to come from pretty competent writers. The Axe Book has made me want to get a decent axe, which obviously isn't an EDC item, but it's a nice to have one. If you get something like that, just keep in mind, axes aren't made out of stainless steel, so he'll want some mineral oil / gun-lube type oil to keep rust away.

Otherwise there's always Celox and an Israeli combat bandage for the 'super bad emergency contingency' part of one's EDC. I like to have something like that in my day bag or in my car, just in case.

Can vouch for root cellaring, I love that book. My biggest recommendation for OP would be back to basics http://www.amazon.com/Back-Basics-Complete-Traditional-Edition/dp/1602392331 all inclusive intro to everything.

Are we talking story type books or 'how to' books?

If 'how to', here's a couple to get you started:

The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants - Full colored pictures of edible plants found in the wild

Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills - I haven't picked up this book yet but it's been quoted in a few SHTF books I've read as a point of reference.

Bom livro sobre estas tretas. . Alarmismos baseados em má ciência.

this one?

The Vegetarian Myth

> Where? Link?
https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/sources/agriculture.html

They are not doing the most damage.

> Ok? You will be more healthy and live longer if you don't eat animals. Source: the china study.

Did the control group partake it in a high fat, no carb diet? You cannot make a blanket statement because one study, in strict conditions, proved your argument.

> It's not. Immoral, unethical, destructive behaviors are deserving of attack.

Matters on your philosophy which I believe to be totally flawed. Why don't you start a campaign to stop all the animal predators in the world from eating their pray? Can't they just survive with a veggie diet?

Also, I personally eat meat because of the animal proteins, and especially high quality fats, are essential to my diet.

If you want to inform yourself, try reading http://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myth-Food-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804.

Basically it argues that you cannot have 100% vegetarians in the world, from a sustainability point of view.

>Did the control group partake it in a high fat, no carb diet? You cannot make a blanket statement because one study, in strict conditions, proved your argument.

Please google "the china study" aka "The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted And the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, And Long-term Health"

lol at "because one study, in strict conditions".

>animal proteins

What so special about those? 10th essential amino acid only found in meat? Comes with a side of cholesterol?

>high fat, no carb diet

This isn't really relevant? We talking animals and plants here... not macros

>Why don't you start a campaign to stop all the animal predators in the world from eating their pray? Can't they just survive with a veggie diet?

Your second fallacy of the day. What are you trying to argue here? Because cats can't produce taurine I, a conscious taurine producing human, get to do whatever damned the consequences?

>If you want to inform yourself, try reading http://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myth-Food-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804.

After reading the comments looks like it works well with your "everything is harmful to a degree so let's not try" reasoning from before.

>Basically it argues that you cannot have 100% vegetarians in the world, from a sustainability point of view.

Even if we pretend that's true, it's basic logic that a 100% vegetarian world would more sustainable then one not. The animals need to consume the plants otherwise being consumed. Again with the not 100%, screw it?

Lierre Keith

• lierrekeith.com
  
• YouTube - The Vegetarian Myth
  
• Wikipedia
  
• The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability - Amazon Link
  
• By Lierre Keith
  
• Published May 2009

>It is 2019 & high dietary cholesterol is linked to heart disease. And heart disease is the leading cause of death, it is caused by cholesterol and saturated fats.

This is completely bogus. This is like claiming that firemen are the leading cause of fires. Your body can regulate its production of cholesterol to respond to your dietary intake without any significant difficulty. Your whole premise is flawed: the assumption that cholesterol is a problem the body needs to solve.

You should read this book that covers the flaws in the studies regarding dietary fat, cholesterol and heart disease and how they are corrupted by agricultural lobbying in the US Congress. If you are broke I'll be happy to buy the e-book for you. Keith covers quite a bit more than just that, I'd skip ahead to the relevant section on heart disease studies and the issues with the reported "increases" of the rate of death by heart diseases, although the entire book is interesting.

The book The Vegetarian Myth is a good source if you are interested. It is very strongly on the other side of the argument, but seeing as 90% of the mainstream media pushes the "vegetarian/vegan is healthy and ethical" line it's refreshing to read some of the opposing arguments.

The diet can impact bone density as well as causing or exasperating hypothyroidism to the point where your thyroid all but stops functioning. The amount of them with vitamin and mineral deficiencies is insane as well. Almost all of them are lacking in many vitamins and minerals due to a severe lack of fat intake which allows for mineral absorption. Your teeth get seriously fucked up and your joints get eroded as well.

Heres a good read on it - The Vegetarian Myth

Heres an interview with the author - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFm2QLLuh6I

A pig is more intelligent than a dog... they can feel pain, affection, mourn the loss of loved ones, and can be trained to perform specialized tasks.

Corn, not so much.

In terms of a healthy diet though, veganism and vegetarianism are total crap. For more on morality, I would suggest this, although some of the sources are very weak for the nutritional components, so refer to this.

There is an author by the name of Lierre Keith who makes a good argument about how veganism isn't environmentally sustainable nor the healthiest diet around.

However, I would be willing to bet you that being vegan is a lot healthier than the soda and fast-food diet of most Americans. If you do it right, it can be pretty fucking good for you.

Her main point is to eat local food and not do factory farming which is cruel to animals and bad for the environment.

That said, its a very controversial book. Check out this review.

Today's factory farming depends on artificial fertilizers which need fossil fuels to be produced. The author also points out the person (Fritz Haber) who invented the Haber process to produce Ammonia, was involved in chemical warfare in WWI. She also mentions this as a connection between agriculture and war. You need to read the book, Amazon's preview can be useful to get an idea too.

Also, she refers to Limberlost Swamp, a 13,000 acres swamp, which was destroyed.

>European Americans drained the Limberlost for agricultural development early in the 20th century, destroying the rich habitat.

There's lots of proof.

Also a great book.

But if you really want to learn about food, you have to go to the source in my opinion.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Vegetarian-Myth-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804

Sure, thanks for asking :) you were the first who provided a valid point on the vegan side for the whole B12 deal. I've read this as well, that we live "too clean" nowadays, reducing the chance to get B12 on many levels. However if animal products, amongst other nutrients, contain decent amounts of B12 in it's natural form (meaning no pill needed to be manufactured, packaged, and delivered to your local supplement store), there are only more questions raised.

My statement is based on experience (I've been trying out different diets / lifestyles for 16+ years now), and on the following:

Here's an interesting link first: https://www.nps.gov/rowi/learn/news/the-tree-root-that-ate-roger-williams.htm

The apple tree, after a long time, consumed - "ate" - Mr. Williams' body. Basically, used his nutrients. That's what all in our world does, regardless of life type; Bacteria, insects, animals, plants, all eat, for nutrition, and try to reproduce as much and as fast as they can. All life forms are set up to consume a certain amount of nutrients, from certain sources. That's a fact, regardless of how we feel about it.

Throughout history our bodies got used to animal consumption 100% - fats, proteins, all of it, nothing is left out, compared to vegetables' cellulose. There's nothing our body leaves out undigested.

It also got used to eating nuts, and random amounts of fruits, and vegetables (being season-dependent of course). This whole concept changed about 10-15.000 years ago with agriculture. To this day, archeologists can show differences of bone density, and general health differences between old societies that stayed hunter-gatherers, and those that switched to grains / rice / maize crops. Here's what I found: https://proteinpower.com/drmike/2009/04/22/nutrition-and-health-in-agriculturalists-and-hunter-gatherers/

So as per this link, as soon as agriculture became more and more popular, our health got involved, in many aspects.

Now, I'm not convinced of course that regular activity cannot better the state of bone density for instance. Vegan crossfitters are great example of extra healthy, vegetable-based diets with great outcomes.

Getting back to the subject - connection between B12 and veganism being unhealthy, my base thought was inspired by this book: https://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myth-Food-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804

I'm not judging anybody, on the contrary, I think it's very noble to decide you don't want to partake in the living hell we call the meat industry today. I'm questioning the natural aspect of it. My goal, in my life, is to be as natural, and as close to my general requirements as possible. I eat local, and mostly bio products. But that's me.

There are various, other great effects of becoming vegan. But is it really healthy? Is it sustainable? Is it really a "natural form of living", when even on the basic nutrients, like iron, and vitamin B12 one would need to get supplements? Iron of course is easier to come by - spinach, broccoli, and other greenies are full if them. Beans too! But my basic argument is that all living beings should find their natural equilibrium in our world's system. We also are consumed by mother nature, we also should follow the course on which we are set. Let me know what you think.

What is the B12 supplement made of btw? Is it from the bacteria found in dirt? Isn't that also a type of living being then? So how is that different from eating a mackerel that you cought 20km from your city's shore? (Cought, not farmed) = I think it can be ethical to eat seafood.

Gotcha.

https://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myth-Food-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804

http://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myth-Food-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804

It's a free audiobook if you sign up for a trial subscription to Audible.

I'm not your mate, mate.

I don't waste my time with diet losers who live in food mythology. If weight/health advice means you have to live differently than people have for 100s of 1000s of years, they are probably full of it. With this said I offer you 3 books that changed my girlfriends life.

http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Food-Eaters-Manifesto-ebook/dp/B000VMFDR2/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2

http://www.amazon.com/Nourishing-Traditions-Challenges-Politically-Dictocrats/dp/0967089735/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1289835775&sr=1-4

http://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myth-Food-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1289835884&sr=1-1

edit:sp

herezeez:
http://www.thegreatcholesterolcon.com/The_China_Study.html

http://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myth-Food-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255048634&sr=8-1

I also agree veggies are the shizz, but not soy and all the imitation products vegans sub in for the food they used to eat. Fermented and sprouted foods generally have a better nutrition profile. Phytic acid and lectins are also things to watch out for.

>Bill Walton ended his all-star career NBA by insisting on being vegan. He has since acknowledged it as something that ruined his health.

"Walton injured himself again the following season, but returned for the 1987 playoffs. He spent the 1987-88 season on the injured list. He attempted a comeback in February 1990, but injury intervened and he retired from the game. His ankle problems became so severe years later that he had both his ankles surgically fused. His saga of injury and failed rehabs was connected to the use of pain killers by the doctor who was assigned to his case.[citation needed] Walton has said repeatedly in his broadcasts that he is just as much to blame for taking the medication as the doctor was for giving it to him. Yet his experience with injuries and the circumstances surrounding them have come to serve as a warning for professional athletes who undergo major injury, as well as being an interesting case study for medical ethics." >

Veganism causes ankle injuries?

>Carl Lewis was juicing according to a few sources. He was the USOC's golden child.

Aren't we cynical.

>Brazier has won more marketing awards than triathlons.

http://www.brendanbrazier.com/raceresults/index.html

>Lierre Keith also just wrote a book about her turn from Veganism. http://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myth-Food-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804

This is an anti-civilization screed that is also based on straw-man arguments.
http://vegansofcolor.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/vegetarian-myth-lierre-keith/

The meat industry drives the bulk of crop production and deforestation. What Keith wants would sentence billions to starvation, since we can't feed 6 billion people on subsistence hunting & gathering.

http://www.bonappetit.com/story/oldest-person-in-world-food

It looks like all the people on the list eat meat.

Check out Lierre Keith The Vegetarian Myth. She talks about the issues of being a vegetarian longterm and the issues/medical problems that it can create due to imbalances created by a diet deficient in different nutrients and fats.

You misunderstand what peak demand means. Peak demand is simply the time of greatest electricity usage. So it is when the usage reaches a maximum. For a source I will simply reference logic. If demand is not always constant then there will be times of lesser and greater usage. The time of greatest usage is the peak. If you want to learn more about what peak demand is and why it is important go read this book -> https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Fraying-Between-Americans-Energy/dp/1608196100

Urban Homesteading!

• http://www.amazon.com/Urban-Homestead-Expanded-Revised-Edition/dp/1934170100/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=undefined&sr=8-1&keywords=your+urban+homestead
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-Place-Affordable-Sustainable/dp/0978866568/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410454876&sr=8-1&keywords=make+your+place
  
  Keep some chickens, grow a kitchen garden!
  
  This all would be my dream.

For comparable quality produce from the local farmer's market (or Whole-Paycheck Foods), yes, IF you eat it all. For regular old produce, probably not. It's pretty cheap for a HOBBY and it's a wonderfully practical skill to develop that you can't really but a price on - but if you don't love doing it, it's probably not worth the work...

I really liked the book The Urban Homestead for sustainable (aka, cheap) ways to grow food.

Here's what I'm doing (Caveat: I'm only just now finishing my first 'serious' garden season, but I've read a lot about this subject.):

• I get free mulch from my city (lucked out on this)
  
  
• Built my garden from salvaged materials (pulled out an old deck ramp, and re-did my front retaining wall)
  
  
• Buy all my soil and compost at the end of the season for $1.50/bag instead of $3 (I cannot deal with a truckload, and anyway it's not all that much cheaper from what I can find...).
  
  
• Started growing heirloom plants so I can save their seeds (pre-started plants get pretty expensive)
  
  
• Started homemade compost tumblers in round, locking top black cans (don't buy a commercial tumbler, they suck and break)
  
  
• Started a worm bin for fertilizer (fertilizer tea is the shit!) but I have yet to see if that one's panning out...looks good though!
  
  
• Next year I'm replanting my front with edible perennials/self seeders, that should hopefully manage themselves and keep me in noms with minimal effort for years.

The Urban Homestead is great. Check out their blog as well. http://urbanhomestead.org/

Jiggery-pokery

Great thanks! Is this it? - http://www.amazon.com/Urban-Homestead-Expanded-Revised-Edition/dp/1934170100/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373064286&sr=8-1&keywords=urban+homestead

Adam savage had a podcast episode recently (Still Untitled) called "cool tools".

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RxII4cHg9pc

It was really interesting and this is the book they were talking about.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1940689007/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/191-8067955-8608660

After reading The singularity is near I went to another usual suspect

What Technology Wants By Kevin Kelly. The most profound thing I got out of Kurzweil's was this graph, it's signification and significance. Kelly's book expand on this idea, that technology, life and physics are one.

The next one on my list is Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think By Peter H. Diamandis I can't comment on the book but If you like his talk I think his book is a no-brainer.

VERY well written! Here's a view of an abundant future:

http://www.amazon.com/Abundance-ebook/dp/B005FLOGMM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1333120316&sr=1-1

years ago when I was involved in the futures market I had a cartoon/comic (might have been Wizard of Id) - "I just invested in futures"..."what did you buy"..." a carload of crystal balls"

I said this not because I agree with your point, but to propose an argument in accordance with your point

As far as I'm concerned, dying is wrong, ever, human intelligence must control its own destiny without being a victim of fate. It could take 1000, 10000, or 100,000 years, but humanity will beat death. If I'll die, it's only because I was born too soon. Bad luck.

There are no scientific sources that can predict this kind of future, at the very most there are respectable opinions with good arguments, but you can find them for every position

https://www.amazon.it/dp/B005FLOGMM/

We cannot tell if we are in a golden age today, these assessments can only be made from a retrospective point of view.

We cannot tell if in 50 years we will have unlimited energy, cure for every disease and food for 10 billion people. The only thing I know is that if this is going to happen, it's because we're going there, by the only way.

I'm reading Happy Cities right now and it gets to the core of the issue. Highly recommend

https://www.amazon.com/Happy-City-Transforming-Through-Design-ebook/dp/B009LRWHPY

Here's the Amazon link to read more It's a great read. It's all about the "psychology" of planning and how much of an impact a cities design can have on our mental/physical health. I'm not sure if it directly relates to your new job, but since you said you liked Walkable City I think you might like this.

Maybe the book 'The Vegetarian Myth' by Lierre Kieth could help ease your conscience. She was also a vegan for something like 15 or 20 years and had to stop because of health problems (and changing beliefs) just like you.

I've only read the introduction and the first of three parts but I really enjoyed what I read. The book is about why veganism might not be as good as people might think from a ethical, environmental and health-perspective. The title may sound a bit harsh but the book itself isn't. She also makes it clear in the introduction that it shouldn't be seen as an excuse for factory farming or cruelty towards animals.

Isn't it true that if everyone went vegan, more of the environment would have to be converted to agriculture?

I haven't read it yet, but I believe that's a big part of this book: The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability https://www.amazon.com/dp/1604860804/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_6y2JDbNDRNWAA

Discussion with the author I heard: [Tangentially Speaking with Christopher Ryan] 391 - Lierre Kieth (The Vegetarian Myth) #tangentiallySpeakingWithChristopherRyan
http://podplayer.net/?id=79760768 via @PodcastAddict

Ia si citeste si relaxeaza-te

Atata dracnea, drumpf, ciuma rosie, ciuma neagra, pixelu albastru, ISIS, pseudo-incalzirea globala, mai ceva ca babele de pe palier va agitati sa mor io

Because they are designed by an engineer that has never studied user interface design. I see the same stuff from all the controls engineers and programmers that I work with.

It is my opinoin that every engineer should be required to read "The Design of Everyday Things"

http://www.amazon.com/How-Green-Were-Nazis-Environment/dp/0821416472

https://www.amazon.com/How-Green-Were-Nazis-Environment/dp/0821416472

Preservation of the Environment really starts with the Nazis.

Here's a good read:

How Green Were the Nazis?: Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich (Ecology & History) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0821416472/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_2JnSDbP07G49K

Materials can either be Strong, Hard, or Tough, but not usually all three.

When materials are hard they are not very tough. (Glass can cut leather but is easy to break. Ceramic knives also hold a very hard edge but are brittle).

If bullets were hard, they would shatter when fired, so they have to be tough. (We used to use lead for bullets because you can hit lead with a hammer and not shatter it- it only deforms. Not true for high strength steel.)

So to defeat a very tough bullet coming at you very fast, they can't use something tough. (A lead armor plate getting hit by a lead bullet would just deform like getting hit with a hammer, doing damage to you anyway.)

To defeat something tough, they use something hard. The ceramic plate doesn't deform much (hard) but does deform the relatively soft bullet, and aborb the energy into shattering itself, not into your body, thus protecting you.

Source: a chapter from a great book on materials science: "Why Things Break": https://www.amazon.com/Why-Things-Break-Understanding-World/dp/1400048834

A couple definitions of propaganda: "ideas or statements that are often false or exaggerated and that are spread in order to help a cause, a political leader, a government, etc." and "information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view."

Earthlings is not false, exaggerated, biased, nor is it misleading. It literally just documents standard practices on factory farms. We both know that you just made up that "0.01%" homie.

Factory farms raise 99.9 percent of chickens for meat, 97 percent of laying hens, 99 percent of turkeys, 95 percent of pigs, and 78 percent of cattle currently sold in the United States.x.

In order to meet the high global demand for meat, we slaughter approximately 70 billion land animals for food each year. This can only be done through industrialized factory farming.

Here's some examples for you:

A California meat company forced to recall 143 million pounds of meat after undercover footage showed extreme cruelty taking place

this discusses a New Mexico dairy farm that was shut down after undercover footage exposed regular acts of animal cruelty. It also talks about states with gag laws that criminalize such footage.

video footage of abuse at an Oklahoma pig farm

article with video showing abuse of chickens at Tyson Foods facilities in Virgina. Tyson has a long history of animal abuse in their farms that has been documented in dozens of videos at different farms in the US

cruelty footage at Smithfield foods

Animal Cruelty at New York's largest dairy farm.

this video shows various industry practices of dealing with animals that are standard in the US.

This touches on environmental effects, traumatic effects on workers, sustainability, and the conditions of farmed animals.

This is not propaganda. To slaughter literally billions of animals in a year, you have to objectify and commodity them. They're called live"stock" for a reason. I assure you their rights are not remotely respected. And before you talk about "good farms," know that that the land needed for livestock, mainly for cows, covers 45% of the world's total land and is the leading cause of deforestation and habitat loss.. Meaning being fully "free ranged" (a term with no actual legal enforced meaning) would take up much, much more land than industrialized farms already do.

Wiki article with many sources about ag-gag laws and how they are put in place to censor systematic animal abuse in a way that infringes not just on the rights of the animals, but on our free speech and right to know where our food comes from as well.

New bills are introduced all the time to silence and censor any footage inside factory farms. That in itself is corruption. When a corporation can change laws to suit itself and silence citizens, that is, by definition, corruption. And the publicity from these videos and this information is the only thing threatening them. That's why they want these laws in place.

Here's more though:

The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) is a United States federal law (Pub.L. 109–374; 18 U.S.C. § 43) that prohibits any person from engaging in certain conduct "for the purpose of damaging or interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise.

In the United States, taxpayers support upwards of $38.4 billion a year in subsidies to animal food production and assume over $400 billion of externalized costs associated with animal food production including subsidies, healthcare costs, environmental costs, animal cruelty, and fish production.
Eliminating subsidies would rid our food system of market distortions and allow the market principles of free trade—the principles that govern our economy—to readjust our consumption patterns towards healthier and environmentally aligned products.

Corporate agriculture has massive lobbying power in the government and in return, receives massive subsidies from your and my tax dollars.

Every five years legislators update "The Farm Bill", pouring millions into subsidies and slashing the largest costs of industrial livestock production, specifically feed and waste management. Livestock production in the United States is one of the most heavily funded sectors of agriculture, in addition to tobacco and cotton. A 2007 Tufts University study found that factory farms saved $34.8 billion between 1997 and 2005, as they were able to purchase feed at low prices with the aid of federal subsidies.

Kylev's comment (below) is itself a scare tactic, trying to discredit and belittle opposition to fluoride.

By 2nd April 2009, 2213 professionals have signed a statement opposing fluoridation, and (if you are from the US) the Fluoride Action Network has a petition webpage where you can add your voice to the protests being sent to members of Congress.


Professionals supporting the statement [include]():

• 329 PhD's - includes DSc (Doctors of Science) & EdD (Doctors of Education)

• 296 Nurses (RN, BSN, ARNP, APRN, LNC)

• 267 MD's (includes MBBS)

• 267 DC's (Doctor of Chiropractic)

• 240 Dentists (DDS, DMD, BDS)

• 109 ND's (Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine)

• 56 Lawyers (JD, LLB, Avvocato)

• 42 RDHs (Registered Dental Hygienist; also RDHAP and RDN [Registered Dental Nurse])

• 36 Acupuncturists (LAc - Licensed Acupuncturist, and, MAc -Master Acupuncturist)

• 39 Pharmacists (Pharm.D, B. Pharm, DPh, RPH)

• 22 DO's (Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine)

• 14 Veterinarians (DMV, VMD, BVMS)

Just some of the notable signers include: Arvid Carlsson, Nobel Laureate for Physiology or Medicine, 2000; Raul Montenegro, PhD, Right Livelihood Award 2004 (known as the Alternative Nobel Prize), President of FUNAM, Professor of Evolutionary Biology, National University of Cordoba, Argentina; The current President and six past Presidents of the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology; Three scientists from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Headquarters Union in Washington D.C.; Three members of the National Research Council committee who wrote the landmark 2006 report: Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA's Standards (Hardy Limeback, PhD, DDS; Robert L. Isaacson, PhD; Kathleen M. Thiessen, PhD); The Board of Directors, American Academy of Environmental Medicine.

A couple of books you can read on the subject are:

• The Fluoride Deception (2004), by Christopher Bryson. A video of Bryson talking about his book can be found on a page of the Fluoride Action Network's website, here.
  
  
• Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA's Standards (2006), by Hardy Limeback, PhD, DDS; Robert L. Isaacson, PhD; Kathleen M. Thiessen, PhD of the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology and the Division on Earth & Life Studies - divisions of the National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC. You can buy this book and/or a PDF file, but it's also free to read online.
  
  At the end of the day, compulsory fluoridation means a nice stream of money for somebody: this item from official poison lists doesn't get added to everyone's water for free, of course.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Vegetarian-Myth-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNON5iNf07o

Factory farming is bad for the environment, but clearing out millions of acres of biological diversity and ecosystems to grow corn, wheat, and soy covered in Ammonium Nitrate is FAR worse.

From what I've read, the idea of meat-eating being bad for the environment comes from the mass factory farming of animals, and the mass agriculture in terms of corn and other foods types required to support that industry. The predominance of mono-crops in modern agriculture (that is, using a piece of land to grow one thing and one thing only) results both in a reduction of biodiversity in the land, and ultimately to that land no longer being able to sustain agriculture. This is being seen across the world. That reduction in biodiversity is, in real terms, the removal of multiple types of life from our planet - bacteria, small animals, and plants.

Most animals reared for food can grow very happily on grassland, eating what nature provides. They are then part of the local ecosystem, eating the grass, pooping it out, and not impacting on the wider world.

Also from figures I've seen, in terms of food production, the density of quality calories produced per acre from rearing animals in this way, far surpasses anything agriculture can offer.

Now whether this kind of farming could be replicated across the planet to feed the whole world, I'm not so sure. In fact I'm doubtful. But as it's available to me in my wealthy western country, I'm happy to keep supporting it, in the belief that it's actually impacting less on the world, and is magnitudes less cruel to the animals and other impacted creatures.

In terms of references, I'd have to take the easy route and point you at a book - The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith. She is a radical feminist who saw meat-eating as part of the masculine raping of our planet, but changed her view after trying to start a small-holding herself.

It sucks that you have to be on the receiving end, but the guy is right. He shouldn't have to read a book to be able to use his remote. Good design is obvious and intuitive. If you have to read anything before using a product, it's been poorly designed.

Obviously that's not your fault, which is why I'm always nice to support people. Guy's a douche.

Edit: At least two redditors have never read this book.

Best answer I can give is a chapter from this. I can't find my copy now though: http://www.amazon.com/Why-Things-Break-Understanding-World/dp/1400048834

https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Case-Fossil-Fuels/dp/1591847443/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=moral+case+for+fossil+fuels&qid=1567049925&s=gateway&sprefix=moral+case&sr=8-1

The vegetarian myth appears to have been written by someone who was foo-foo-veggie & believed that she didn't need b12. So after rotting her spine out decided to be equally foo-foo-retarded in the opposite direction and say vegetarianism is deadly because she is retarded. Tell your sister if she really cares about the animals she better stop being retarded because she's going to do some dumbass thing like that author and then demand people murder animals to atone for her idiocy.


I think that book was actually one of the early lead-ins to paleo getting popular, so the threat level is real. Retard = animal murderer emperess.

EDIT:

Who/why downvote???? It should be clear this was humor, I don't mean literally tell her she's retarded, but that 'murica loves nothing more than to find a sickly dying vegan to prove that we must torture animal and feed on their juices, and being radiantly powerfully healthy is the best argument you/she will ever have to give, so be careful in making good decisions. Asses

> What, if anything, can I do to bridge the disconnect between thought and action?

Answer: Get your facts straight.

Introductory reading:

• In Defense of Meat Eaters, Part 1: The Evolutionary Angle
  
• In Defense of Meat, Part 2: Animal and Human Well-Being
  
• Are we meat eaters or vegetarians? Part I
  
• Are we meat eaters or vegetarians? Part II
  
• The Vegetarian Myth (book review)
  
• The Vegetarian Myth (book)
  
  tl;dr Meat is good for you and the environment.

http://www.amazon.com/Happy-City-Transforming-Through-Design-ebook/dp/B009LRWHPY

The best advice here: read The Vegetarian Myth

The Vegetarian Myth

Relatively.

They're trying to contaminate our precious bodily fluids!

The main one is that, sure we can stop as our country or western countries. But that doesn't stop China or whatever huge polluters. So we will basically be inhibiting our economies for no reason while they excel.

Also, even if we stop trying to pollute. It's already too late, whatever we can try and do, won't be enough with current technology, so it's better to just keep on how we are going until we figure out a real method of not just stopping pollution of the air, but reversing it in a real way.

Here's a decent podcast about the topic of 'green' stuff in general

http://drdrew.com/2014/155/


http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Case-Fossil-Fuels/dp/1591847443/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419837732&sr=8-1&keywords=moral+case+for+fossil+fuels

https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Case-Fossil-Fuels/dp/1591847443

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6b7K1hjZk4

Fossil fuels are great. Clean energy has it's place, but if you want reliable, peak power that you can raise and lower as demand changes there is nothing better. That means cheaper energy, and cheaper energy means more economic opportunity.

Read The Vegetarian Myth by Leirre Keith

Any vegetarians here, this should shut those hypocrites up for good.
NOT BETTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT, NOT MORALLY SUPERIOR, and NOT HEALTHIER
http://www.amazon.com/The-Vegetarian-Myth-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804

Sustainable agriculture student here, it's the system not the product that's the problem. And it's no wonder you get sick since you're eating sick cows. Check out Allan Savory's work, it might open your eyes. Also, soy is actually poison.

Edit: better yet, read this book!

Should have saved him the damage to his body and gotten him this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Vegetarian-Myth-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335714256&sr=8-1

Vegan diet = poor health.