Post by thread:[OT:] Caloric expenditures

source= http://www.piclist.com/piclist/2004/10/21/090820a.txt? Eric Bohlman says: > Parental anxiety may contribute to this. One of the effects > of the mass media has been to make the world *scary* out of > all proportion to the actual level of *danger*. That is so true that I just wanted to quote it so it would have been said twice on the list. It applies to SO many things. Parenting, government, targets for defence, choice of conveyance, diet, and on and on. There is another side to it as well: The REAL dangers tend to be ignored. Automotive accidents, depression/suicide and fear of persicution due to sexual preference issues among teens, loss of freedoms in the name of national security, disease caused by the unbelievable methods used to lower the cost of food production, and on and on. The saddist thing about the human species is the disconnection between the emotional / re-active sections of the brain and the tiny part that handles raw statistics, math and reason. RAH once said that humans who can't do at least calculas are at best animals. I've always like the quote about the lottery being a tax on people who are bad at math. --- James Newton: PICList.com webmaster, former Admin #3 spam_OUTjamesnewtonTakeThisOuTpiclist.com 1-619-652-0593 phone http://www.piclist.com/member/JMN-EFP-786 PIC/PICList FAQ: http://www.piclist.com ____________________________________________

>RAH Who I presume is someone famous who i am aware of but whose name doesn't spring to mind. > once said that humans who can't do at least calculas are at best animals. He/she may have, but if so was/is an idiot. The point is taken but you don't have to be capable of using a trick that Newton dredged up over a weekend* to solve a problem ** to be very much human. Such quotes are, from the quoter, lazy conveniences and/or elitist rubbish. Now if Nietzsche has said it ... ;-) *** ). Ah. Click. Bzzzt. Heinlein. Yep. He was capable of elitist rubbish when he wanted to be :-). May sound a bit rough calling RAH an idiot, but praise where praise is due. A slightly better observation (IMHO as always) is Socrates' "The unexamined life is not worth living". In fact, I think that gives you a far far better (although necessarily imperfect) picture of the man/animal divide than does calculus. The overwhelming majority of humanity are capable of self examination, regardless of whether they make use of the ability. The overwhelming majority of animals are not. > I've always like the > quote about the lottery being a tax on people who are bad at math. Indeed. But some few of the those bad mathematicians are extremely happy with their choice. RM * Newton allegedly developed calculus over a weekend to solve an apparently intractable problem that had been proposed by a colleague. The answer was published anonymously. Nobody was fooled. The "trick" turned out to be an extremely useful one ;-) ** "The tiger is known by its claws" or similar was the comment re the authorship of the paper. Google refuses to yield a proper quote. (Stripes?). *** Everything that Nietzsche said is necessarily rubbish, as he himself would have agreed. (Regardless of the truth or not of his foundational proposition) ____________________________________________

On Fri, 22 Oct 2004, Bill & Pookie wrote: > I'll just stick with "Never eat or drink anything blue." No Curacao for you, then ? Hate Danish cheese ? "Never eat or drink anything that is moving and not trying to run away from you" would be a better rule imho ;-) > And the lottery is a tax on the poor, as can be proven by looking at the > people who win. The lottery is a scam in general, regardless who wins, because the real winners are the organisers. And that counts twice over for state run lotteries. (hint: prize money is between 1 and 10% of earnings usually, and they don't even have to put it up from start, they can work on short term credit. Worst thing can happen they pay it back as is). Peter ____________________________________________