281–290 of 329 posts
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Both dogs and cats do kill each other. It is not uncommon at all.
Yep, cats fight brutally all the time. My wife's old cat was a fighter and had the scars to prove it. No doubt he had killed many cats, and then he eventually succumbed to an infection from a nasty neck wound acquired in a fight.
This is scientifically very interesting but pretty much orthogonal to solving problems with plastic pollution. The worms can't live in landfills. If you could separate the plastic before landfilling to feed it to worms, then you could just burn whatever separated plastic can't be recycled. (Yes, that releases CO2, but so does having worms and bacteria eat the plastic.) The problem with plastic as waste isn't that it…
So it isn't necessary for the worms to live in the landfills. I imagine the idea is to start dropping the pools of the enzyme on the landfill, or something like that.
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To be fair, that's a cheap strike to go straight for hypocrisy as a means to win this argument. Whether or not the person posting the argument "animal testing is bad" eats meat doesn't change the question - "should we fatally test on animals." I'm a bit disappointed that nobody is really engaging this non-sarcastically. A couple are talking about "drawing a line" somewhere but nobody is being allowed to say "all life…
Well, if "all life should fall on the safe side of the line", what would you eat? Perhaps only organisms that have died without human intervention. Scavenging, I mean. But that wouldn't support very large populations.
Well I don't agree at all! Apart from the fact that large populations can live without meat, I can easily envision a "scavenging farm" where animals are liked after until they die, and only then processed. It wouldn't be as efficient as our farms, but completely possible.
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Do we really need the /s tag on something so obvious?
Unfortunately, yes. Keep in mind that in text any vocal tone and visual clues are lost, and a lot of sarcasm is signaled those ways, so some additional indication in text is useful. Also, Poe's law is alive and well here. You assumed it was sarcasm, but I'm not so sure. It's not too far fetched for me to imagine someone thinks mashing up bugs to spread on a plastic bag is horrible. See my first paragraph for the solu…
Regarding Poe's law, if it looks like sarcasm assume it is and move on, but I understand that commenting on the internet is of utmost importance and a task that shouldn't be taken lightly.
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Maybe the antithesis to the discovery of antibiotics is the mostly accidental discovery of Tabun: "In January 1937, Schrader observed the effects of nerve agents on human beings first-hand when a drop of tabun spilled onto a lab bench." (Wikipedia) I think that one might stand out somewhat since I'd expect most accidental advances to be helpful to humanity. Or maybe I'm just an optimist. :)
Scientists that voluntarily work to bring such stuff in the world are amongst the people I least respect. It's one thing to be dumb, quite another to be extraordinarily gifted and to use that gift to do something which has no upside at all and plenty of downside. Exposing them to their own creations would be poetic justice.
One could extend this argument to engineers who work for nefarious, privacy-violating ad companies, invasive surveillance...
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Unfortunately, yes. Keep in mind that in text any vocal tone and visual clues are lost, and a lot of sarcasm is signaled those ways, so some additional indication in text is useful. Also, Poe's law is alive and well here. You assumed it was sarcasm, but I'm not so sure. It's not too far fetched for me to imagine someone thinks mashing up bugs to spread on a plastic bag is horrible. See my first paragraph for the solu…
Oh sure because satire wasn't commonplace in books long before the internet. How would those poor souls have figured it out it wasn't serious?! IMPOSSIBLE. Regarding Poe's law, if it looks like sarcasm assume it is and move on, but I understand that commenting on the internet is of utmost importance and a task that shouldn't be taken lightly.
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Tangentially related and I expect a 50% chance to be punished for this but it is really interesting and I think it deserves some thought: It always surprises me how a number of HNers worries about killing insects, even for science - all while supporting the killing of unborn children.
>unborn children The Orwellianness of this turn-of-phrase never ceases to amaze.
How is that not an unborn child?
Would be good to have plastic waste broken down, but be careful not to take down our whole civilization with it. Almost everything today is made out of plastic...
In many post-apocalyptic works of fiction it's a disease that wipes out much of humanity; what if instead it was a bacteria or pest that rapidly consumes all our plastic that causes civilization to collapse?