StillNoScript

He did, indeed. And he certainly didn't apologize the way the Catholic suits wanted him to. They wanted a real editorial style apology, where Maher cuts away from the show and turns toward the camera. There was no sincerity, and he even went on to mock the religion and the pope. I say, yay for Bill! Fuck those assholes.

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"I'm not being insubordinate, mother fucker!" - Afroman

brian_wilbanks

they didnt have to slaughter 100K cattle a day. Because they didnt have 6 billion people to feed.

They were hunter gatherers....modern humans are consumers. They didnt buy their meat....they killed it.

But I'm sure you know all of this. So if you have any ideas how to work backwards from that, lay em on me.

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"I'm as strong as a thousand armies, I'm as soft as a petal on a long stemed rose"

BillCosby

I will be doing a couple new yorks on the BBQ in a couple hours. I eat a lot less beef/meat now days for health rather then other reasons but there is a dilemma here........

Taking food to make fuel (very, very inefficiently) may have some moral drawbacks..............

As well as taking food enough to feed two hundred ppl to make one cow to feed twenty....... There are now food shortages/panics but for most of us living in the land of plenty that won't be a problem....

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Preventive war is not war!!!!Counter-terror is not terror

The_Heretic

You're still missing my point. I'll try this once more, and if you don't get it after that I'll just assume the problem is your comprehension:

It's the practices not the quantity. We feed the wrong foods to livestock, including corn. In fact in the Americas we're raising the wrong livestock. Cattle originating from the middle east and Africa aren't able to digest many of the tougher- and now more predominate grasses of the American plains.

And it doesn't stop with livestock raised for food. We're stupid enough to think our cats and dogs need wheat, corn, peas and carrots in their food. Now with pigs it's feasible to take whatever crops normally for human consumption and feed them to pigs if they've gone bad. This minizes waste, which again goes back to indigenous traditions and habits of using everything possible.

Crops themselves need to be raised in a more eco-friendly way. Rather than pesticides, we need to retool our approach to natural controls on pest populations. In Kenya Siafu ants are welcomed when they sweep through and kill every insect or other pests in the field. We'd be well advised to find a naturally occurring North American predator to control pests we encounter here, and likewise with other major land masses using the species there.

Remerging nature with human habitation should be the eventual goal with consideration to what's best for both [no bears in Central Park, etc.].

But for those who still think eating meat is the problem consider this. The reason the middle east is now a desert, where once it was the ancient bread basket for the known world, is because of agriculture, not pastoralization of lifestock. The practice of irrigation led to completely destabilizing the water table for thousands of miles and as water was replenished it built up salts from the bedrock to the upper layors. Normally the water table never dimishes so low that this happens. That is before people bumbled along in their methods of raisng wheat and vegtables in a manner unsustainable with the ecology over the coruse of centuries.

Even today our knowledge of soil renewal isn't completely understood and likely won't be. However, some ancient methods did go right. In South America the Aztecs and Mayans used methods that encouraged an explosion of soil bacteria that may well have led to the Amazon tropics in what was normally the poorest soil on Earth.

We should examine those methods proven to work over millennia and duplicate those on the assumption that, by sheer accident and chance, they produced results lasting the ages.

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"Enough!!" -so rang Barack Obama's voice off the walls of Mile High Stadium

julia

Cattle are now prone to e.coli because they are grain fed which has changed the ph in their intestinal system. (quirky kindly posted an article on that for me.)
Any e.coli outbreak can be traced back to cattle including that in produce.

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The candidate does not speak for the campaign.

brian_wilbanks

1) I don't know why you find the need to be an ass about it

2) I do get it. But all of those points lead back to our population.Or Quantity.... We use pesticides to grow our crops because we are mass producing them. I know all about no-till gardening and using natural ways of controling pests.But when you're trying to keep food on the table for 6 billion people, you can't rely on a swarm of praying mantis' to keep the aphids off your crops. Yeah, natural ways of farming are much better and produce much better tasting food. But this is 2008 and we aren't aztecs. We're consumers...plain and simple.

3) The fact is, we have become too bog for our own good. We've partied like rock stars over the last century and it's catching up with us. We're like crackheads sifting thru the carpet looking for slivers of crack so we can prolong our party a little longer.

.I think you're oversimplifying that a wee bit. Humans didnt turn it into a desert. The middle east has been a desert for thousands of years.

examples ????


BTW, that figure of 100K cattle per day came from a slaughterhouse in Salina Kansas that I worked near once. I have no idea what the number is for the entire globe.

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"I'm as strong as a thousand armies, I'm as soft as a petal on a long stemed rose"

The_Heretic

No, we did it. Human beings. It took a few centuries and it was thousands of years ago, but that's the work of the apeman.

More trees in neighborhoods, more structures to serve as habitate for wildlife within populated areas [these all being native to the neighborhood's location] and overall city planning that's both pedestrian/bicycle friendly [thus reducing the fuel usage and risk to said wildlife. Hell, I picture skyscrapers side by side with redwoods in California and just as much forestry amid other major cities, so much so that without being a hundred feet up you'd not know the difference.

Oh, I'm sure the number's reasonably accurate, but that's not my point at all. It's the means of raising animals for food and which animals we used based on our geography. Sure bison don't take shit the way domestic cattle do, but if people five hundred years ago could work around that without the use of steel what the fuck's stopping us?

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"Enough!!" -so rang Barack Obama's voice off the walls of Mile High Stadium

brian_wilbanks

I've never heard that myself. I have a hard time believing it really. Do you have something I could read on that?


Except for the skyskrapers,those are all great ideas. But what do those things have to do with raising cattle without feeding them grain?



Oh, I'm sure the number's reasonably accurate, but that's not my point at all. It's the means of raising animals for food and which animals we used based on our geography. Sure bison don't take shit the way domestic cattle do, but if people five hundred years ago could work around that without the use of steel what the fuck's stopping us?[/quote] Bison shit ? I dont get what you're trying to say with that one.

But anyway, like I keep saying, people 500 years ago were hunter gatherers....people today are consumers.MASS consumers at that. People 500 years ago raised and hunted animals for survival. Our society is completely different. Barring some sort of disaster, I dont see how we can go back to that......

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"I'm as strong as a thousand armies, I'm as soft as a petal on a long stemed rose"

The_Heretic

Guns, Germs & Steel as well as Collapse both by Jared Diamond.


Directly, nothing. Indirectly it means a reformation in food production and land use. One that I'm betting would be more beneficial economically than the existing model, especially so over the long term.

And, yes skyscrapers aren't going anywhere, so they might as well double as windbreaks for the return of limited forestation where now only the skyscraper reigns.

I believe I mentioned this above, but there are numerous grasses in the Americas that domestic cattle just won't touch and can't digest otherwise. Bison can. This gives us the oportunity to both restore an endangered species to much more of its former range and simultaineously improving the quality of "beef" production. Elk and Caribou likewise would prove useful, which in turn- if done properly, would ensure their survival as a species.

I never suggested throwing away all modern civilization, simply learning from ancient societies. Most of modern reforms in agriculture and raising of livestock come from examining indigenous and ancient cultures. Obviously, there's a need to include modern methods, but rather than erase old practices they should merge back into modern ones to yield more efficient future processes.

This is as clear as I can make it.

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"Enough!!" -so rang Barack Obama's voice off the walls of Mile High Stadium

kaycee

Okay, this has nothing to do about cattle, but it is about RT on Friday.

One of my favorite comments was in Bill's monologue, I think. About Bush and global warming. "The good news, he believes that it's real. The bad...he wants to invade the sun."

Silly, absolutely, but I got a chuckle out of it.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was great. If you haven't read Infidel, do so. Well worth the read, even if parts make you cringe.