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What Dreams May Come

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Re: What Dreams May Come

#341

Post by robogrowth »

quasque wrote: post #246
robogrowth wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youre 100% right and im not a food scientist, but i strongly feel the increase on cancer in humans can be attributed to the largely corn based diet humans are fed.. and the other terrible food items were fed by the powers that be. Everything is made with corn or corn byproducts and its not healthy at all.. not only that were feeding it to all our animals.. its a bad bad situation how our food supply is treated, and t…

The rise in cancer incidence is mostly due to people living longer; advancing age is the biggest risk factor for most cancers. Anyway there are many other risk factors, and evidence for corn itself being one is scant. Alcohol intake, smoking, red meat consumption, lack of dietary fibre, high salt levels in one's diet and obesity are much more concerning, given the correlative evidence.

either way, humans weren't made to eat a largely corn based diet nor were animals. Most of the food in grocery stores is just corn remade. It's extremely unhealthy food.

You can taste the difference in a cow that's been fed a corn diet and a cow thats been grass fed. Problem is if you see those cattle lots they have so many head of beef(far to many for the acreage) it's just dirt. Then it's dipped in a bath of ecoli killing shit, and squished up with a bajillion other cows.. it's disgusting. I'll stick to raising my own food.

If you want to invest in anything, buy land.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#342

Post by aaron695 »

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #30

So the house you purchased and the van you upgraded to are not yours, disposing of your body costs more than a car, visiting family means you have to stay in a hotel, the basic survival needs of your wife and four children are not guaranteed and you want to visit Disneyland and meet celebrities before you die? Capitalism is beautiful.

> Capitalism is beautiful

No, I think it's more we are so selfish. Which has always been the case in history. But now we are better educated and more informed so should be pushing for a more compassionate, logical and less racist society over the current owning stuff society.

It is a philosophy that might be possible for at least part of the population.

Bill Gates is doing it. He's helping the worlds real poor. We need part of the population to start to realise people in the 3rd world are as human as the people down the road even if they seem different.

And for a lot less cost than a fancy funeral one could actually save lives. A family could get to keep their father or mother or child.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#343

Post by jiggbenice »

genwin wrote: post #289
jiggbenice wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good grief...the comments on Hacker News never cease to amaze... ...just to give a representative example, last September my Dad died. 1) We had his remains cremated. 2) We got said remains without anything fancier than the cardboard box they came in. 3) We scattered his ashes ourselves as a family without any visitation, funeral ceremony, or anything. No gravestone, no casket, no wake, no ceremony, no officiant. Tot…

It was $6K just for cremation? Or you had other costs?

Well, from our perspective that's all that was done -- his body was cremated and given to us in ash-form. But I'm sure from the funeral home's perspective they did whatever preparations they had to do, processing, helped us put his obituary together and submitted it to publications, administration costs, etc.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#344

Post by prawn »

robogrowth wrote: post #199
fasteo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right for the wrong reason. The problem with cancer research is that we are trying to solve an unsolvable problem, wasting disproportionate amounts of money. In some sense, cancer is a symptom of a body gone havoc. Research should be targeted upstream, to really tackle the root cause. It is like trying to fix a hardware issue by patching software. Yes, you can get some results by implementing better error cor…

Youre 100% right and im not a food scientist, but i strongly feel the increase on cancer in humans can be attributed to the largely corn based diet humans are fed.. and the other terrible food items were fed by the powers that be. Everything is made with corn or corn byproducts and its not healthy at all.. not only that were feeding it to all our animals.. its a bad bad situation how our food supply is treated, and t…

I suspect the "increase in cancer" is noticeable because we're generally not being knocked over by something else first. I believe there is an interesting relationship between prevalence of heart disease and cancer over time (one rises as the other falls).

Re: What Dreams May Come

#345

Post by quasque »

robogrowth wrote: post #341
quasque wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rise in cancer incidence is mostly due to people living longer; advancing age is the biggest risk factor for most cancers. Anyway there are many other risk factors, and evidence for corn itself being one is scant. Alcohol intake, smoking, red meat consumption, lack of dietary fibre, high salt levels in one's diet and obesity are much more concerning, given the correlative evidence.

either way, humans weren't made to eat a largely corn based diet nor were animals. Most of the food in grocery stores is just corn remade. It's extremely unhealthy food. You can taste the difference in a cow that's been fed a corn diet and a cow thats been grass fed. Problem is if you see those cattle lots they have so many head of beef(far to many for the acreage) it's just dirt. Then it's dipped in a bath of ecoli…

Is this overindulgence in corn a USA thing? I'm not overly familiar with your foodstuffs.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#346

Post by brownbat »

aestra wrote: post #141
brownbat wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Malthus was wrong. Hans Rosling, "What Stops Population Growth?" http://www.gapminder.org/videos/what-stops-population-growth... In Malthus's model, new people only consume food and breed. But we do this other cool thing, too, we also think about human problems and how to solve them. We all add resources to the computer of humanity. Some really cool, like Norman Borlaug, go around the world and teach people how to gr…

Norman Borlaug is the father of the Green Revolution. Green revolution agriculture techniques require a massive amount of oil and gas as inputs. Eventually we're going to run out of those. When oil prices start to spike, people will starve. Also it has decreased diversity to only a few high yielding varies of crops making our food supply more susceptible to pathogens because of lack of biodiversity. As well as a whol…

I'm familiar with the criticism, but remain unconvinced that:

1. oil and gas are strictly "required" as an energy source

2. energy consumption of these methods is higher per yield than traditional farming

3. oil/gas will run out in any meaningful time frame

4. peak oil/gas will be sudden or catastrophic

5. adaptation to new conditions is impossible

6. exporting profitable crops is a net social loss for a local population (or even the stronger corollary, that locovorism is ever beneficial)

Some of those are contentious areas, matters of continuing study. Some are probably hyperbole, and we'd likely agree on more moderate formulations. Some I'm pretty firmly convinced are incorrect. Even if they were all just mildly suspect, though, it's a lot of shaky steps for me to take all at once. So I remain cautiously optimistic, skeptical that food insecurity due to Borlaug's methods and oil shocks will have any meaningful impact for the next fiftyish years. I guess there's some chance, just seems exceedingly unlikely to me.

That said, I think you laid out your criticism of his methods in a clear and concise way, and while I disagree with some of the premises, they're not radically unreasonable or anything, I can see how one would stand by that conclusion. Have an upvote for a well formulated dissenting view, something we should all encourage whenever possible.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#347

Post by baby »

syntheticnature wrote: post #285
baby wrote: post #255

> Prepare for / pay for my final arrangments : $20,000 I'm not here to bash, but with so much money problem why do people want to spend so much money on their death? If I die I just want people to get rid of my body in the cheapest way possible. Just burn me or give me to science.

"Just burn me" isn't cheap -- heck, this example from else-thread is worse than what I found with some research: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7393011 Also, your family and friends might want to see you before science does whatever with you, and that will cost more than any of us would like to think it will. Funerals aren't cheap, and I was told when buying life insurance to expect all funeral expenses (viewin…

Wait, if my familly wants to bring me to some woods and burn me in a fire, can't they just do it?

Re: What Dreams May Come

#348

Post by vellum »

terragold wrote: post #215

I have sympathy for this guy as a human being with cancer, especially with a family and all. But I have no sympathy for this guy as a person and for the financial choices he has made. Having 4 kids, big house and car, expensive grave, need to travel, meet celebrities screams greed, irresponsibility and entitlement. You could have not had 4 kids and had 2. You could have rented a place and bought a used car. The probl…

The problem isn't wanting something better, the problem is that you decided to buy those things without earning it and with money you did not have.

What? Most people don't pay cash for a house or save up the full 18-year cost before having a kid. He made these choices before he was diagnosed and they weren't unreasonable given their salaries at the time.

Re: What Dreams May Come

#350

Post by thro1237 »

dllthomas wrote: post #324
gnaritas wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that matter at all; it's no longer legal to discriminate based on pre-existing conditions. He can simply sign up with any insurance company, they cannot turn him down because he has cancer. Obamacare solved this problem.

I have no idea if the parent is accurate, but I understand them to be talking about life insurance, not health insurance.

yes, I meant Life Insurance.
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