"The cow was lying in a large pool of blood": the horrifying animal abuses the feds ignore. Not a lot of people know this, but in most cases it's actually illegal for cows and pigs to feel pain when they're slaughtered. In 1958, Congress passed the Humane Methods of Livestock Slaughter Act, which set slaughter requirements for all meat producers supplying the federal government. The similarly named Humane Methods of Slaughter Act 1978 (HMSA or Humane Slaughter Act) expanded the requirements to all federally inspected slaughter establishments; since slaughterhouses have to pass federal inspection to sell meat across state lines, that subjected almost all US meat production to humane slaughter regulation. The Humane Slaughter Act specifically requires that cows and pigs be "rendered insensible to pain by a single blow or gunshot or an electrical, chemical or other means that is rapid and effective, before being shackled, hoisted, thrown, cast, or cut.
" The problem? The US government has never really enforced these humane slaughter standards. What is to be done? Shutterstock. Memetics. This article is related to the study of self-replicating units of culture, not to be confused with Mimesis. Memetics is a theory of mental content based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution, originating from the popularization of Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene.[1] Proponents describe memetics as an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer. The meme, analogous to a gene, was conceived as a "unit of culture" (an idea, belief, pattern of behaviour, etc.) which is "hosted" in the minds of one or more individuals, and which can reproduce itself, thereby jumping from mind to mind. Thus what would otherwise be regarded as one individual influencing another to adopt a belief is seen as an idea-replicator reproducing itself in a new host.
As with genetics, particularly under a Dawkinsian interpretation, a meme's success may be due to its contribution to the effectiveness of its host. History[edit] The modern memetics movement dates from the mid-1980s. Ervin Laszlo: Akasha Think. "You can't solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that gave rise to the problem" -- Albert Einstein There is something new on the horizon -- a new kind of thinking. One that could solve the problem -- the entire complex conglomeration of challenges that makes our world unsustainable, intolerant, and prone to violence.
This is not thinking out of the blue: It is thinking that has been around for thousands of years. What is new is that it's rediscovered -- of all things, at the cutting edge of the sciences. It is "Akasha think. " In this column with my Akashic "A-team" I will review for you the principal dimensions of Akasha think -- the rediscovered revolutionary concept of life and universe, and freedom, wholeness, and wellbeing. New answers to questions we have all been asking since the beginnings of time. Try Akasha think.
Are you ready? What Is Akasha Consciousness -- For You? What is Akasha consciousness for you, a dream -- or a nightmare? I am part of the world. 7 cultural concepts we don't have in the U.S. From the end of October through the New Year and onto Valentine's Day, it's easy to forget that the holidays we celebrate are simply cultural constructs that we can choose to engage in — or not. The concepts and ideas we celebrate — like our spiritual beliefs and daily habits — are a choice, though sometimes it feels like we "have" to celebrate them, even if we don't feel like it. Culture is ours to do with as we choose, and that means that we can add, subtract, or edit celebrations or holidays as we see fit — because you and me and everyone reading this makes up our culture, and it is defined by us, for us, after all. If you want to add a new and different perspective to your life, there are plenty of other ways to recognize joy and beauty outside American traditions.
Friluftsliv A hiker sits atop Trolltunga, or 'troll's tongue,' a famous rock formation in southwestern Norway. (Photo: Shutterstock) Shinrin-yoku Spending time in the forest can lower stress. Hygge Wabi-sabi Kaizen Gemütlichkeit. Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Value. 1. What Has Intrinsic Value? The question “What is intrinsic value?” Is more fundamental than the question “What has intrinsic value? ,” but historically these have been treated in reverse order. For a long time, philosophers appear to have thought that the notion of intrinsic value is itself sufficiently clear to allow them to go straight to the question of what should be said to have intrinsic value. In his dialogue Protagoras, Plato [428–347 B.C.E.] maintains (through the character of Socrates, modeled after the real Socrates [470–399 B.C.E.], who was Plato's teacher) that, when people condemn pleasure, they do so, not because they take pleasure to be bad as such, but because of the bad consequences they find pleasure often to have.
Many philosophers have followed Plato's lead in declaring pleasure intrinsically good and pain intrinsically bad. Suppose that you were confronted with some proposed list of intrinsic goods. 2. One final cautionary note. 3. 4. 5. Two final points. 6. Happiness. 1. The meanings of ‘happiness’ 1.1 Two senses of ‘happiness’ What is happiness? This question has no straightforward answer, because the meaning of the question itself is unclear. What exactly is being asked?
Philosophers who write about “happiness” typically take their subject matter to be either of two things, each corresponding to a different sense of the term: A state of mind A life that goes well for the person leading it In the first case our concern is simply a psychological matter. Having answered that question, a further question arises: how valuable is this mental state? In the second case, our subject matter is a kind of value, namely what philosophers nowadays tend to call prudential value—or, more commonly, well-being, welfare, utility or flourishing.
Theories of well-being—and hence of “happiness” in the well-being sense—come in three basic flavors, according to the best-known taxonomy (Parfit 1984): hedonism, desire theories, and objective list theories. 2. 3. 4. 5. Atul Gawande: How Do Good Ideas Spread? Why do some innovations spread so swiftly and others so slowly? Consider the very different trajectories of surgical anesthesia and antiseptics, both of which were discovered in the nineteenth century. The first public demonstration of anesthesia was in 1846. The Boston surgeon Henry Jacob Bigelow was approached by a local dentist named William Morton, who insisted that he had found a gas that could render patients insensible to the pain of surgery. That was a dramatic claim. In those days, even a minor tooth extraction was excruciating. Without effective pain control, surgeons learned to work with slashing speed. Attendants pinned patients down as they screamed and thrashed, until they fainted from the agony.
On October 16, 1846, at Massachusetts General Hospital, Morton administered his gas through an inhaler in the mouth of a young man undergoing the excision of a tumor in his jaw. There were forces of resistance, to be sure. Sepsis—infection—was the other great scourge of surgery. Why Socrates hated explicit knowledge, and what to do about it. Socrates, as reported by Plato in The Phaedrus, was not a fan of explicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge, in those days, meant Writing, and Socrates never wrote anything down - he had a scribe (Plato) to do that for him. He mistrusted writing - he felt it made people stupid and lazy by giving them the impression that they were recording (and reading) real knowledge. Here's Socrates "He would be a very simple person...who should leave in writing or receive in writing any art under the idea that the written word would be intelligible or certain; or who deemed that writing was at all better than knowledge and recollection of the same matters.....
Writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence.... In the form of a fable, he says this about writing as a means of transmitting knowledge Socrates (as befits one of the world's leading philosophers) had a good point.
The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge. By Maria Popova “The real enemy is the man who tries to mold the human spirit so that it will not dare to spread its wings.” In an age obsessed with practicality, productivity, and efficiency, I frequently worry that we are leaving little room for abstract knowledge and for the kind of curiosity that invites just enough serendipity to allow for the discovery of ideas we didn’t know we were interested in until we are, ideas that we may later transform into new combinations with applications both practical and metaphysical. This concern, it turns out, is hardly new. We hear it said with tiresome iteration that ours is a materialistic age, the main concern of which should be the wider distribution of material goods and worldly opportunities.
Mr. Eastman, Marconi was inevitable. Flexner goes on to contend that the work of Hertz and Maxwell is exemplary of the motives underpinning all instances of monumental scientific discovery, bringing to mind Richard Feynman’s timeless wisdom. Further: When Simplicity Is the Solution. Cynefin for Devs. Every now and then, someone comes up with a new way of looking at the world that becomes the next fashionable thing to do. Every time I’ve seen this, there’s usually a space of time in which a lot of people say, “Meh, it’s irrelevant”, or “Meh, consultants”, or “Meh, they’re only in it for the money.” After a while, things settle down and everyone is used to that new model or concept, and it’s no longer seen as edgy or strange.
I’ve seen it with Agile, and Lean Software Development, and BDD, and now it’s the turn of Cynefin and Complexity Thinking. I’d like to shortcut some of that with Cynefin, because I think it’s kind of cool, I’ve found it useful, and it’s not actually that hard to get your head around once you make the small mindshift. I’m going to share a bit about what I know of it, then talk about how it might actually be a useful concept for a dev to have in their head. So here’s Dave’s Cynefin model. Dave Snowden, released under CC BY 3.0 – thank you! Simple Complicated Complex. Social Network Systems.