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If cotton clothes get wet, they will leach heat out of your body as they dry. You are better off removing them and hanging around naked.
Yes, I've tried this.  Everyone EXCEPT the ones trained in surviving cold / wet conditions thought I was crazy.

And the ones who have basic knowledge of thermodynamics... or just plain everyday cooling systems - what happens when liquids evaporate.

I have another nice line. It's called 'The Harvard Law'.

The Harvard Law: Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will do as it damn well pleases.

Even if we only grow a fourth the food we do now, its still more than we need.  The big risk is that food transportation is interrupted  (IE, the dollar collapses even further, we can no longer afford to import oil, and the government refuses to stop the mass exporting that will result with the value of at a minimum), in which case it matters little what the farmers are growing, since it can't get to the cities.  In fact, meat becomes *more* efficient in this case, since its high calorie density means more people can feed off a narrow pipeline.  Meat, especially cattle, could be taken to a city on foot as well.

Oh, you're talking about the US only. To be honest, I don't particularly care more about the US than any other country.
It's true that the US produces too much and the wrong kind of food. (I'm a Belgian, we have high food standards, sorry. :P )
Hey, why don't we westerners produce less excess food & meat, and spend all that bleeding agricultural support money on transport & energy efficiency. Wouldn't that be great? :P

A little less meat consumption and switching to a more vegetable/fuit/funghi/fillinandbecreative-diet should quickly solve most of our food production problems

I defy you to back that statement up with anything even remotely resembling science.

Just think: How much feed (grain, water) does it take to raise a cow to adult age. Or try to imagine what weight of food you have consumed in your life to gain your current 80kg (or thereabouts) - I'm sure it's about the same ratio.

A little less meat consumption and switching to a more vegetable/fuit/funghi/fillinandbecreative-diet should quickly solve most of our food production problems... gives you less of an hormonal imbalance, too.

Oh yes, because a complete fucking breakdown in transporting the food to the cities could be solved by changing the type of the food the farmers are growing.  Not to mention all the fucking fruit trees that grow naturally in Wyoming.

Like I said. Food - production (!) - problems.

Could've been off-topic tho. :P

A little less meat consumption and switching to a more vegetable/fuit/funghi/fillinandbecreative-diet should quickly solve most of our food production problems... gives you less of an hormonal imbalance, too.

Among them, yes, although I've mostly kept busy with more conventional water purification: classic household/industrial wastewater treatments.


Something like this one:
http://www.durhamcountync.gov/departments/ceng/images/Utility_Division/Wastewater_Treatment_Plant-001.jpg

environmental technology. all sorts of it, really. I'm pretty fresh, but i'm rather decent with water purification. ^^

Dear boys and girls,

I take offence. 
You are talking about genetic engineering, not bio engineering. I'm a bio/environmental engineer and I certainly don't alter plant DNA for a living. 

Regards,

'Splain please.  Evolution and entropy are not at odds with each other.

Life not only offsets entropy by using solar energy, it also makes it work to its advantage. Organisms allow for a sort of 'controlled' or tempered randomness. One of the most important mechanisms that are assisted by such random disturbances is mutation, which ultimately leads to genetic diversification, which in turn is one of the basic drivers for evolution.

There is such a thing as bio-engineering, but genetic manipulation is just one small aspect of it.
(really, engineers who don't ever get dirt on their boots. Are they really engineers? )

Sounds similar to Alan Sokal, a physicist who wrote some gibberish and sent it in to Social Text.  Who then went on to make his own amusing error by concluding this proved all post-structuralism was bunk, and not just the editors of Social Text, who admittedly were idiots.

That must've been it. ^^ Ugh. Two years since 'Philosophy of Science', and I already forgot everything. That's one unhappy prof if he finds out. :P

Reminds me of a few old stories.. I don't remember any names (bad memory), but Kai might.


One philosopher wanted to prove the poor quality of the magazines of another philosophic stream and sent in a bullshit article under a false name, which got published.

Then the one about the computer-generated text which got selected for a scientific convention.


My personal favorite, showing how easily it is to scare people with things they don't understand: The dangerous chemical DHMO.

Evolution is such a beautiful feature of life, making use of the very forces that are trying to wring it's neck.

Giving ol' entropy the finger like that... pure awesomeness.

[wiseass intermezzo: Numbers don't lie to people. People lie with numbers.]

Are you sure that the difference between the two observed populations is not significant? What certainty level are we working with here?