you know, i didn't know that the building in odessa was a labour building.

that was not reported. anywhere.

deathtokoalas
it's not a happy reality, but we don't live in the kind of judeo-christian fantasy reality projected by the garden of eden or in disney cartoons. cougars are not our friends. they want to eat us. that puts us in a mortal struggle with them, one that must end with either their demise or ours.

with cougars - and lions and tigers and crocodiles - the only interaction that we can have with them is "kill or be killed". there is no possibility of peaceful co-existence. we will consequently drive them to extinction. this is natural and unavoidable.

Terri
I don't get this "pop culture" thing with the "mortal struggle"? What?  Judeo-Christianity "fantasy"?  From what I have gleaned: that puts us at the top of the food chain where we have "dominion" over everything, which seems to be what you are saying.  Ends with our demise or theirs? What? No possibility of peaceful co-existence?  Natural and unavoidable? Uuuuuh: No.  Of course nature does right itself -- always -- and it seems to me there is in fact, a possibility: humans have a frontal lobe and should be using it to coexist with nature.

deathtokoalas
no. the struggle does not put as at the top of any chain, it puts us in competition with other creatures aspiring to be at the top of the food chain. systems have predators that compete with each other for dominance, and that competition ends when one creature drives the other to extinction. this is the history of evolution - dominant species eliminate less dominant species.

we can maintain this fantasy that we ought to be holding on to reserves to protect things that eat us for a small amount of time, but it's ultimately impossible to be anything more than an illusion. that's the dominion you think of - this idea that we are their protectors. but, we are not their protectors. we are their competitors.

eventually the reality asserts itself: humans and species that eat humans cannot co-exist. we must eliminate them, and we will.

there's no use in being slave to a system of morals about it. it's evolution.

(deleted response)

deathtokoalas
well, i stated that it's not a happy reality. i don't enjoy the idea of eliminating species. but large cats, specifically, interpret us as prey - forcing us to kill them or become their next meal. excluding the large cats, the only other species that treats us specifically as prey would be crocodiles.

cougars are shy animals, and are not as threatening to us as tigers or lions. but you have to get a grip on the amount of people that tigers and lions consume in an average year. there are large areas of india and bangladesh where humans are actually a primary prey source. it's not because we're invading their habitat, or because we're killing their natural prey - we are their natural prey, and they have evolved to eat us. it's common in some regions of africa for lions to literally walk into a village, knock the door on the hut down, grab the person inside and drag them out. deaths due to lion and tiger predation regularly run into the thousands.

it's easy to come up with other ideas, but they're rooted in a level of naivete. the governments in the areas have tried to create reserves for tigers and lions, but it doesn't have the effect of keeping them away from humans, it just gives them a safe haven in which they can prey on us. there's a real political discussion in some areas of africa right now about how the reserves are causing increases in predation, and this is only going to continue as the protection increases - if it does increase, which i must suggest it cannot.

nor can we speak of drawing these lines in the sand, a la "i love lucy" and telling the lions to stay on the other side. they will expand. they will colonize. and they will eat us...

humans are going to populate the earth. we're not going to check our population in order to allow the cats to thrive, and as we do so we are going to have no choice but to eliminate them from areas that we are inhabiting - because they will eat us if we do not.

we should not shed tears for the crocodiles, as they will only respond by eating us.

deathtokoalas
ugh. what happened to the separation of church and state?

this is absolutely terrifying.

the first amendment in the united states constitution was intended to build a "wall" between church and state. it's written the way that it is because the concern at the time was that one religion would use the state to oppress another. that is, the intent was to prevent one sect of christianity from forcing itself on another. that might seem a little alien today, but that's because it was relatively successful. the underlying idea was that the state should reflect the values of no single religious institution. as mentioned, what that meant at the time was largely in relation to different sects of christianity, but it's meaning has been correctly interpreted since then to apply equally as well to different religions. if you're writing a constitutional amendment to separate church from state for the purposes of preventing anglicans from oppressing catholics, it follows that you don't want the state to act as a vehicle for christians to oppress jews or atheists, either. there are various morons that have tried to interpret the amendment differently, but they are just that - morons - and should not be listened to. there's absolutely no ambiguity in the historical record if you read the words of the people that wrote the constitution (most of whom were deists or atheists) that the first amendment was meant to separate church and state and honest, educated christians will agree with you on that point. there's no value in entertaining arguments to the contrary, as they are necessarily disingenuous.

now, the reason this is concerning is because it is attaching a religious component to what should be a religiously neutral institution. i'm not commenting on this in a vacuum, either. the state has been carefully nurturing religious sentiment in the military since at least the second bush administration, for the purposes of creating an us v them mentality.

the end result is a lot of self-righteous people with guns, who think they're acting out god's will of manifest destiny in "american exceptionalism". it's dark age, byzantine nonsense.

toantanya
I'm sure this was done on their own time and not forced. 

deathtokoalas
the military is fostering it. "forced" is not the right word to use. "coerced" is more like it.

Newb55
what are you afraid of? Marines are atheist, agnostic, etc.....if they did not want to participate, believe me they wouldn't.

deathtokoalas
religion is a very powerful tool of control that states have historically used for horrific military purposes.

(deleted reply)

deathtokoalas
again, i don't see a use in this discussion. people want to talk about jefferson's writings as though they were just some isolated, irrelevant musings. well, he's the guy that wrote the damned thing. if you want to know what he meant, you need to look at what he said. i know that religious people want to look at things in strict, literal interpretations and when you're dealing with ancient texts that come down to us with little if any commentary there may be some justification for that - i mean, what else are you going to do besides discard it as archaic? but, we have a wealth of literature from the founders, and it's not ambiguous on the topic.

if you want to get into it, you should look into the writings of some british preachers like richard price, who argued for the separation on the grounds that it would keep the church pure from statist corruption. they weren't as far removed from the reformation at the time, and understood the papal lesson of integrating the state too closely with the religion. they would have also been working on roughly lockean principles in their understanding of power as a corrupting force. all that stuff about the separation of powers is kind of meaningless if you're going to fuse the church and the executive, or the church and the military, right afterwards.

there's just absolutely no meaningful argument for this, and i'm not interested in giving space to demagogues that want to push it. so, you'd might as well just drop it.

(deleted reply)

deathtokoalas
i'm more worried about them destroying everybody else. these are people that want to see the apocalypse, you have to continually remember.

"yay! it's the end of world! i'll be judged and separated from the wicked and spend eternity with god! yay!"

there's one thing i'll agree with them on: it's really hard to get them out of public life. i'm not particularly threatened by somebody hanging out in a church and talking to an imaginary friend, but that's not really what religion is.

Edward 
dumb bitch. I remember when we had one of those in Bootcamp and we all participated just to get the fuck away from the Drill Instructors and im an atheist that gives no shit about god. So stop spreading your stupid bs about the government trying to fuck all of us.

deathtokoalas
no, but this is what i'm talking about - it's not a spontaneous display of religious fervour (from people that kill for a living), but something that's very organized with specific brainwashing purposes. they didn't send you there to get away from the drill sergeant, they sent you there to steal your mind.

Michael
Fear not, Jesus loves you too!

deathtokoalas
yeah, well, if jesus loves me, maybe he can do something about his followers for me, 'cause they have a habit of freaking me the fuck out.

Terry
Zen Training at Fort Benning, Buddhist Chaplain Part:2 here you go. Enjoy your freedom. -Merica'

deathtokoalas
yeah. that's meant to eliminate empathy. equally terrifying.

(deleted reply)

yeah. so, as i've stated repeatedly, the first amendment was built on lockean principles (as articulated by jefferson) with the purpose of separating the institutions from each other. somehow, you idiots seem to think that the purpose of the american revolution was to create a monolithic british state. no. that's what was being avoided. the singular, driving purpose of the american constitution is the separation of powers into executive, judicial and legislative branches. in addition to this separation is the separation of the military, the church, banks, etc. that is the foundation your country is built upon.

you can deny that if you want, but if you want to live in a country where the military is interconnected with the religion, your best bet is israel - and second best bet is saudi arabia. in the united states, it's not constitutional for the military to conduct prayer services. what you're seeing in this video should not be happening and will hopefully be stopped shortly. hopefully, somebody gets the information and launches the proper court battles.

thread closed. replies to new threads will be blocked.

(deleted reply)

again - as i've stated repeatedly - the issue here is not voluntary exercise of religion or accommodation of services but hierarchical enforcement of engaging in religion as a mandated experience.

this is a good start to learn about some of the recent issues surrounding the military forcing religious services on it's officers.

http://www.pewforum.org/2008/07/03/accommodating-faith-in-the-military/

another thing worth reading: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5dyrGlQ-uoQJ:www.truth-out.org/article/military-evangelism-deeper-wider-than-first-thought+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca

you know, it really seems clear that our religious narratives are largely confused stories of contacts with extra-terrestrial beings. and, when you see something like this, it makes it easier to understand how we may have become confused.

deathtokoalas
b12 is in fact really the only thing that you need to seriously worry about...

...other than that she looks twice her age. 25? i thought she was an expressive, girlishly immature 45 year-old hippie. she sounds like 25. she doesn't look like 25...

the lack of animal fat and abundance of indigestible cellulose has got her skin sagging. going vegan is healthy for your internal organs, but it will physically age you at twice or thrice the rate. she's going to be full of wrinkles and look like an old lady by the time she's thirty-five.

there's some research indicating that vegans have some difficulty with absorption, which isn't going to come out in these results. all the stuff is in the blood. can it all get out of the blood? there's a lot of suggestions that some of it can't - particularly the iron. that's not quite anemia, but it's something like it. it's thought that it may have some effect on calcium and vitamin absorption as well.

the flip side is that a high fat diet is demonstrably shown to be exceedingly unhealthy. no meat at all is incomparably better than large amounts of meat. but there's a bit of a caveat to this, in terms of bulk consumption.

i've spent a lot of time as a pseudo-vegetarian (i've never considered giving up cheese or eggs or fish) for broader health reasons related to keeping the stuff away from me in it's raw form. i won't handle raw meat of any type under any circumstance. the path it takes from the farm through the factory and the store to my kitchen is not a path that i would argue creates something that is safe to handle without taking biohazard precautions. bacteria. viruses. i'm not touching the stuff. but, i'll eat the odd burger or chicken breast at a restaurant, and pick up a bit of salami or sliced chicken from time to time. what that means is that my meat consumption occurs, but infrequently. despite having other issues with unhealthy substances, i've always been tested as being in perfect health...

the reality is that what you eat is less important than how much of it that you eat. your body breaks all the things you eat down the same way - it doesn't really care what it was before you ate it. it then stores what it doesn't need. if you sit around and eat enough tomatoes that your body is storing it as fat, you will develop heart problems. the thing is that tomatoes are much less dense than cow when it comes to this, so you're much more likely to "eat too much" if you have a lot of cow in your diet. in the end, though, it's simply a per gram issue, worked into the form of stored fat = energy consumed - energy burnt. the more "sophisticated" arguments are generally without much real scientific basis, and built on industry propaganda - getting your head around the healthy diet is really as simple as adjusting your calorie intake to your calorie expenditure, and the best way to do that is to let your stomach guide you. where veganism can come off as more healthy is in the lightness of the foods. if you eat really dense foods, you need to eat a lot less; if you eat really light foods, you can more or less eat all day without it catching up to you. so, that makes vegans seem to have less issues with their heart and liver, but it's not the proper conclusion to make - moderate meat consumption relative to energy expenditure (enough that minimal amounts are being stored) is equally as healthy, and the theoretical idea of gorging on vegetables to the point of massive cholesterol storage is no better than eating too many burgers.

moleman was probably a vegan.

---

FullyRawKristina
For those who are asking, my triglycerides are OK. They show high but that's because eating any carbs (especially fruits after you have gone some hours without eating) makes triglycerides go up. Given my perfect cholesterol levels it is nothing to worry about. Any food that had carbs will mobilize fat. Vegans often will test high in TG but have far less risk of heart disease.

deathtokoalas
yeah. cholesterol = stored energy. it doesn't matter where the energy came from. the idea that eating animals increases your cholesterol is completely wrong. it was based on the idea that the cholesterol enters directly from your stomach, which is not a scientific idea - the cholesterol is broken down through your liver and stored the same way that plant sugars are.

if you have high tricglycerides, it doesn't mean you're not eating enough animals. it means you're eating too many plants. it's not a reason to change the contents of your diet, but it is perhaps a reason to reduce the amount being consumed.

(deleted)

deathtokoalas
that's incorrect. triglycerides are made inside your liver and broken down in the process of digestion. insofar as they contribute to clogged arteries, it's to do with the way they are reconstructed by your body. this is a consequence of consuming more energy than is being burned, not a consequence of eating any specific thing.

(deleted)

deathtokoalas
there's no scientific distinction between "good" and "bad" fats.

the solution is not to change diet, and is certainly not to increase nuts, but to change the factors relating to excess storage. excess fat means you're consuming more than your metabolism requires to function. there's two solutions to this: reduce the amount of energy being consumed, or increase the amount of energy being burned (ie exercise more).

i would suspect that christina, like most foodies, tends to eat when she's not hungry. that's probably the real crux of the issue.

but perhaps she could also spend a bit more time walking. i don't know her habits...

(deleted)

deathtokoalas
see, it's a funny sort of thing. the american literature takes an obese population as a starting assumption. it just discards the possibility of reducing total energy intake - and there may be some big agriculture money underlying this, who knows.

but the presumed context in all that stuff about different types of fat is that you're dealing with people that are eating way more than they need to to begin with. so, if you're going to have all kinds of fat floating around in the blood anyways you're better off with the stuff that's cleaning the bloodstream out.

arguing that you should eat more nuts to reduce the triglycerides is like arguing that you should open the windows if you're going to smoke. there's a certain logic to it, but it's pretty warped, and it will produce it's own problems. the solution to high fat is never to eat more of something and always to eat less of something.

it's mostly the carbs, yes. you eat less carbs, you do a bit more exercise, you cut the fats down...

(deleted)

deathtokoalas
the idea that eating nuts will "reduce your hunger for carbs" is utter nonsense, and i wouldn't take metaphysical advice from somebody that can't spell physiospatial. i wouldn't take metaphysical advice from anybody at all, except maybe artistotle...

and i want to be clear about this: nor will increasing your hdl lower your triglyceride counts. if you have high triglyceride, it might suggest you also have low hdl, but the reverse causal relationship does not hold. triglycerides are not removed with hdl.

replacing the carb source with a protein source may reduce the total energy consumption, but it's not the actual solution to the actual problem. the actual problem is that too much energy is being consumed for this individual's lifestyle, and the actual solution is to decrease consumption.

(deleted)

deathtokoalas
ugh. fucking hippies...

she had a blood test done that told her her energy intake is higher than her lifestyle requires. therefore, she needs to consume less or expend more. it seems like i'm oversimplifying, but i'm not - the misconceptions in populist literature tend to overcomplicate it, and get away with it by taking advantage of people's ignorance.

i'll state it one more time:

stored fat = consumed energy - expended energy

therefore, excess stored fat ====> consumed energy >> expended energy.

we need to have consumed > expended. what we want is to minimize stored fat, which means minimizing (consumed - expended).

this can be done by decreasing consumed, increasing expended or both. there's nothing else to add.

(deleted)

deathtokoalas
he seems to be a quack that can't pass peer review.

listen, i'm not interested in continuing this.

(deleted)

deathtokoalas
the triglycerides in the blood are a much smaller risk factor. what she's going to be more concerned about is what happens when her metabolism shifts and all the triglycerides in her blood get parked in her thighs.

triglycerides cannot be absorbed through the stomach or the intestine without being broken down first. in canada, that was taught in grade 11 biology class.

(deleted)

deathtokoalas
i want to clarify, because it's clear you're confused and/or not very well learned on the topic, and i feel my statements may be further confusing you.

so, you eat some fatty foods. your body will break the fat down so it can absorb it, then put it back together again in a slightly modified form and send it through your blood, where it will either be metabolized or stored. but the fat doesn't exist in your blood in the form of a "triglyceride", it exists in the form of a molecule that carries the triglyceride. generally, your body prefers not to burn fat but to store it..

now, you eat some carbs. your body will break the carbs down into sugar and store them in your liver. at some point, your body will shoot off some hormones that will trigger your liver into releasing the sugar in the form of triglycerides. this is the primary source of the triglycerides in your bloodstream, because your body converts the triglycerides you get from fat into storage material before it enters your bloodstream, with the intent of putting it away for later.

now, depending on your diet, your body might not put the fat away for later, but burn it right away. but a metabolism that relies on fat for energy is going to show low triglyceride levels in the bloodstream. a very thin person like myself (who, again, is an omnivore) is likely to use fat for fuel rather than store it. this is the health ideal, but is not what she's seeing in her results.

having excess triglycerides like she does basically means her liver isn't able to store the amount of energy she's consuming in the form of sugar and is dumping it all into the bloodstream. that's a vast oversimplification, but it's basically what's happening...

(deleted)

Al Pal
The point she's trying to make is that it ISN'T working for her because her HDL and trigs are crap.

deathtokoalas
the doctor was right about hdl, though. if you have low ldl, you don't need high hdl. in fact, you're better off with low counts of both. the thinking around having high hdl is "if americans are going to be grotesque pigs and eat themselves to obesity, they're better off eating absurd amounts of foods with high hdl to counteract it a little.". but this is a compromise. ideally, you want low counts of both; you're better off reducing your ldl through healthy eating and exercise than band-aiding over it with hdl. so, her low hdl is not a negative, considering she doesn't need it to band-aid her low ldl. that's a sign of being healthy...

Gracie Decker
lol well since she was pre diabetic for her early life and this lifestyle brought her back from that, I'd say its working just fine.

deathtokoalas
the results don't suggest she has reversed her risk of diabetes, which doesn't have anything to do with eating animals - it's about sugar.

Big_Tex
Come to think of it, Kristina already meets at least 2 of the 5 criteria for metabolic syndrome (namely, HDL below 50 for a woman, and trigs above 150). If a person meets 3 of those criteria, they are considered to suffer from metabolic syndrome (roughly speaking, "pre-diabetes".)  Would  be interesting to know if she has it, if she were to get properly tested. The other three criteria are large waist size, high fasting glucose, and high blood pressure. Kristina obviously doesn't have a fat waist -- but there are skinny people who have metabolic syndrome and who get diabetes. We don't know from this video what's her fasting glucose and BP, unless I missed it.

And that's what this William Petersen wannabe should be talking to her about. Instead of rationalizing to her why her shitty numbers are OK, this doctor should be saying Uh-oh, you might have metabolic syndrome and pre-diabetes, come back tomorrow and we'll do a proper fasting blood draw and check your BP, and oh btw leave the camera at home.

Sarah R
If the results she posted were fasting lipid levels, then I don't think a high carb diet would cause a high triglyceride level.  I don't remember any of the vegan doctors (Dr McDougall, Dr Barnard, Dr Fuhrman) mentioning that high carb vegans tend to have high triglyceride levels either.  I have heard that they tend to have low cholesterol levels (LDL, HDL, total).  In fact, I think I remember hearing Dr McDougall say that people with high triglycerides should focus on getting their carbs from starches because eating too much fruit can cause triglycerides to go up.  I don't remember the exact reason why, but I think he said it was because of the fructose or just simple sugars in general.

deathtokoalas
the triglyceride levels in her blood should not be affected by whether she's consuming simple or complex sugars because it's regulated by the hormones releasing sugar from her liver and not by her diet.

(deleted)

deathtokoalas
it doesn't make a difference relative to the triglyceride content of your blood, which is hormonally regulated. there will be some simple sugar that will enter your bloodstream directly, but it's not in the form of triglycerides.

she's probably diabetic. i've provided the option of eating less or exercising more, and those are the better options, but there is a third option of better sugar regulation with hormone injections.

Sarah R
Hmmm . . . I'm pretty sure that what Cynthia Bai said is correct: - fructose is metabolized by the liver and can affect triglyceride levels - glucose that comes from the digestion of starch is not processed by the liver and does not affect triglyceride levels

deathtokoalas
no. if there's anything approaching something that's almost right, it's completely backwards.

as far as your stomach is concerned, there's two kinds of sugar: monosaccharides (including glucose and fructose, wich would be treated the same) and all the rest. some of the monosaccharides (including straight glucose) will go direct to the bloodstream (and might give you a bit of a boost of energy). the rest is broken down and stored in the liver for future use.

most of the food you eat is not going to be in the form of a monosaccharide - and starch is one of the larger chains you can digest. your stomach will break the starch down to individual glucose molecules and store them in the liver for future retrieval. your stomach (your liver, actually, but i said stomach for a reason) will convert almost all the fructose you get into glucose and store it in precisely the same way.

if there's a difference it could come in terms of how you digest it. if you're eating some candy or sugar-water, then digesting a monosaccharide (fructose or glucose or any other) will bypass the whole thing and directly boost your blood-sugar levels - until your hormones kick in to shut it down. if there's any "bypassing", it's that. this has absolutely nothing to do with triglycerides, as it goes into the blood as actual sugar. carbs are always stored first, and retrieved later.

but it ultimately matters very little if we're talking about fruit or bread because neither are going to be digested as monos - they're both going to go through the liver.

Jackeyla Carty
hi fullyraw do you take probiotic to

deathtokoalas
considering that stomach acids are going to kill the bacteria and digest them, probiotics would not be consistent with a vegan diet.

(deleted)

deathtokoalas
well, i don't know her diet, but i'm not sure why she'd be so adamant about it.....

(deleted)

deathtokoalas
vegans are the zero animal product under any circumstances type. it's generally rooted in ethical concerns, or very misguided medical advice.

vegetarians come in different flavours and may or may not eat some of the following: nuts, fish, eggs, dairy depending on various perspectives. 

a raw vegan would only eat uncooked fruits and vegetables.

(deleted)

deathtokoalas
that depends on if you're a pythagorean or not.

(deleted)

deathtokoalas
if you were a pythagorean, you'd know you're a pythagorean.

the pythagoreans were a group of mystical mathematicians in the classical age that were very strict vegetarians under metempsychosis arguments. they had a bit of a quirk that extended their belief of transmigration to beans. so, they refused to eat beans because they could prove that beans had a soul. yes, they had a mathematical proof for this.

they didn't merely believe that beans have souls, they insisted they could prove it. seriously.

so, when somebody would question them on it - guys, this beans having souls thing, i dunno about that... - they would launch into a vigorous number theoretic defense that would end in the rigorous demonstration of the existence of beans' souls, clear enough that all with sound minds can agree.

math is a funny thing. especially if you pick unusual axioms.

but, yeah, that's why beans are listed separately. we have to account for the pythagoreans, too...

Rae Rael ラエ・ラエル
The triglycerides are high because of nuts overeating.

deathtokoalas
that's gotta be that bloodstream idea again, right.

hey, look a spider. i'm going to go follow it over there....

.....now.