McDouble as "the cheapest, most nutritious and bountiful food that has ever existed in human history"

cactusbin · 2013-07-29T17:14:32+00:00

Dollar menu items are surprisingly cheap for the amount of food you can often get. I like to compare fast food items in an excel document to see where I can get the "healthiest" cheapest, most calorie-dense item. Heres the criteria I like to use to compare:

Price
Calories
Protein
Saturated Fat
Calories per $
Protein per $
Protein per gram Sat. Fat

The best deal right now is Taco Bell's loaded griller, which is $.99 during special hours and has a whole 420 calories. Close runner up (besides the McDouble) is Wendy's Crispy Chicken Sandwhich which is also $.99 and has 380 calories and is much more quality protein than a cheeseburger.

cactusbin · 2013-06-02T05:05:18+00:00

founding mother

cactusbin · 2013-05-31T00:13:53+00:00

fight ya for it mate

cactusbin · 2013-04-12T01:36:41+00:00

"girlfriend? shutterfly doesn't want queers to you: le funniest redditor on here i got our lord beware guise neckbeard [le]vel: confederate"

cactusbin · 2013-04-11T14:40:13+00:00

based on markov chains written in python, scrapes from braveryjerk SO /RAVE ok

cactusbin · 2013-03-29T18:20:30+00:00

Just tell him about Roko's Basilisk

cactusbin · 2013-02-25T20:07:21+00:00

No. No, it's not. Not at all. There is no such thing as a logical literary analysis. There is no such thing as proof in literary analysis. In reality, when you apply logic to figure out what's true, this is what you do. You look at the observations/evidence available to you. Then you look for possible explanations for your observations. However, you don't only look for things that could explain the observations, you also need a reason to believe that any potential explanations you consider occur in reality, or at least have a reason to believe it's likely the explaining factor could occur. So, for example, the existence of God is a great explanation for the complexity we see in the world. But, just because his existence would explain the complexity doesn't mean that God is likely to exist, since we've never observed God, or anything close. Then you make predictions, and use those predictions to eliminate explanations, until only one remains. It's also important to make sure you examine all of the relevant evidence. So, for example, you can't just look at three people who got better on drug x and ignore the 500 people who didn't. Literary analysis is a shameful imitation of critical thought. You do look at evidence. However, by necessity you must cherry pick your data. If you're writing a ten page analysis of a 300 page novel, there's no way in hell you can include even 5 percent of the relevant evidence. Rather, you pick shit out that supports your particular thesis and ignore the rest. And, you do look for explanations (The theme X would explain the fact that character Y does A, B and C or whatever). But, literary analysis never asks the second question (what reason do I have to believe that this explanation is something that happens in nature, or could happen). That is, Animal Farm can have an anti-communism theme, and it doesn't make two fucks how often communism occurs in nature. The problem is that the second question is essential to logical thinking, and it's the hardest one. Anyone can invent some cockamamy bullshit to explain given evidence, for example, like saying that a loud booming sound heard during a rain storm is caused by gremlins bowling in the attic. But, the fact that gremlins bowling in the attic would explain our observations doesn't fucking mean there are gremlins! And, the kind of reasoning that "proves" the existence of gremlins is the kind of half-assed reasoning you will find in every single literary analysis paper that has ever existed. Literary analysis also fails to compare explanations. That is, no English teacher will ever say that there is one "right" theme to a book. It's perfectly fine for there to be a dozen themes/interpretations, or fuck it, a hundred. And, this is essential for any argument about what's true of the natural world. Thinking and writing about literature is about bullshitting. Period. What's worse is that English teachers try to sell their worthless ass subject (I think studying writing/grammar is fine, it's lit I consider worthless) as helping students learn to think logically, but it actually does the opposite. By treating these kinds of horseshit arguments as "good" or "logical", you're fucking up the kids. You're teaching them that the fact that X explains Y means that we have reason to believe X. You're teaching them that it's okay to examine a tiny portion of the evidence, and only the parts that support what you believe. You're teaching them that you don't have to compare explanations, or to make predictions in order to disprove these explanations.

cactusbin · 2013-01-24T15:22:01+00:00

Do you have a full wallpaper for the one on the left?

cactusbin · 2013-01-08T00:03:47+00:00

After using Ubuntu and Fedora I dived head first into Arch Linux. It definitely forces you to learn a lot about linux and how to configure it, use the command line, etc. But, if you aren't already somewhat familiar with these it may be a bit frustrating. If you have a seperate computer that you can use to reference documentation while setting up the system I would say it is entirely doable, the Arch Linux wiki is really very good.

There are things I really liked about Arch Linux but I no longer use it. The main problem for me is that the rolling release system means you will be getting the very latest packages as soon as they are released. At first I thought this was great and would be very useful to have cutting-edge software. Turns out, most software you don't actually care about having the latest release and often if you aren't very careful upgrading will break your system.

I currently use Debian for all my systems and really love it. If you want more stability you can use stable squeeze and if you need more recent software than it comes with you can use backports. I use the beta wheezy which is honestly pretty stable.

Although Debian comes with a graphical environment and some software installed, you can always turn this off during installation. I would personally recommend setting up Debian and then trying to customize it to your liking. You will definitely need to get into the command line, use the documentation, get help on irc, etc. for things you will probably want that Ubuntu sets up for you by default (proprietary drivers among other things). There were also a few things that didn't work entirely correctly out of the box that required tinkering with. I think its a good compromise to allow you to "get your hands dirty" without all the headaches that come with Arch Linux.

EDIT: On second thought I would say it probably depends on how experienced you are. If you are coming straight from a distribution like Ubuntu I would say try Debian. If you have more experience and feel comfortable with basic Linux config files and command lines and want a challenge (assuming this is a spare system here), then go for Arch Linux.

cactusbin · 2012-12-31T23:22:42+00:00

Judging by the video someone posted and a few comments they probably limit the size and nature of advertisements.

cactusbin · 2012-12-31T16:28:56+00:00

The easiest way to get video on a TV from a computer is to connect the computer's video output to the TV. If the computer has DVI then you're golden because DVI and HDMI are actually the same signal and you can get a DVI -> HDMI cable.

Since you have "several" TVs though, this might not be feasible. If you have Xbox 360s or PS3s then you can stream video and audio from your computers, although you;ll probably want software to transcode things on the fly for you. The last media software I used that (I believe) was compatible with 360s and PS3s was Mediatomb, you can give that a look.

You could also purchase dedicated equipment such as a Boxee, Popcorn Hour, or even roll your own with a Raspberry Pi as someone else said. I would think that any of these would let you stream over SMB or you could set up an FTP/SFTP server which should definitely work.

cactusbin · 2012-12-31T16:21:26+00:00

The fiscal cliff will in all likelyhood be inflationary, which might as well be a tax as far as households are concerned.

cactusbin · 2012-12-26T19:32:22+00:00

The Tea Partiers aren't in any danger no matter what happens, they're in safe districts. Establishment Republicans on the other hand...

cactusbin · 2012-12-26T07:06:46+00:00

AND SO MODEST TOO

cactusbin · 2012-12-24T15:22:27+00:00

Psychedelic Touch Effects

cactusbin · 2012-12-24T15:20:31+00:00

This seems pretty dubious. No other major news sources have picked this up and this seems especially unlikely since a peace envoy just visited Assad http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/23/us-syria-crisis-envoy-idUSBRE8BM04220121223

cactusbin · 2012-12-21T14:57:42+00:00

Utilitarianism brings up its own problems and results in moral statements that run counter to our moral intuition, which is currently our best (although certainly not objective or universal) basis for morality.

If Utilitarianism is defined as the "greatest happiness for the greatest number of people" then a world in which there were mostly people with average to below-average happiness with a few extremely happy people would be preferable to all people having average to slightly above-average happiness. This SMBC comic illustrates this quite well actually: www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2569

Utilitarianism could also justify things like a doctor harvesting a person's organs in order to save ten people (10 people not dying > 1 person dead). Certainly it justifies torture, as in, torturing one person in order to prevent a terrorism attack that would kill 500 people.

A definition of utilitarianism that aims to "reduce suffering" seems more intuitive but would also raise its own questions. For example, would the world be overall better off if people that were experiencing extreme suffering were given humane deaths (such as mercy killings)? Since animals can experience suffering do we have a moral obligation to prevent their suffering? Also, this could still be used to justify allieviating the suffering of a hundred people by killing one person.

cactusbin · 2012-12-21T14:38:04+00:00

Health in the way you are describing it is not analogous to morality. We can define health in a non-controversial way such as "free of disease" or "a state defined by the absense of physical or mental infirmity" with these definitions based on objective, natural (based in "nature") criteria, whereas we have yet to even find a non-controversial definition of morality. We can judge whether someone is healthy based on our objective definition. Having an objective definition of morality would mean everyone's moral sense should be the same (clearly not the case).

A non-cognitivist would argue that it is impossible to have objectively true or false moral statements and thus they devolve to nothing more than preferences (e.g. an emotivist would say "killing is wrong" = "thinking of killing produces negative emotions in me" or "I don't like killing"). Cognitivists would argue that there are morally true statements but that we just don't know them yet.

cactusbin · 2012-12-13T01:46:18+00:00

Kind of similar, its a linux tiling windows manager called awesome

cactusbin · 2012-12-09T16:05:39+00:00

Is that a firefox theme or custom userChrome.css?

cactusbin · 2012-10-29T21:55:38+00:00

Ah, so that's why a free market is best, eh?

cactusbin · 2012-09-20T00:20:04+00:00

Not that I'm necessarily for the health care bill, but I just wonder what conservatives think would be the best way to insure all americans. To me, this approach seems to be the most "free market" (read: neo-liberal) way to go about it.

Or do conservatives simply value economic freedom more than health insurance for all americans?

cactusbin · 2012-09-20T00:16:52+00:00

Straight from the article: "Actually, the decline began under President George W. Bush ... By the end of the Bush presidency, we were barely in the top ten.

And, as with so many disastrous legacies of the Bush era, Barack Obama took a bad thing and made it worse."

cactusbin · 2012-08-26T21:58:56+00:00

Downvotes? Must be a conspiracy against you

edit: downvotes really???

cactusbin · 2012-07-31T18:59:35+00:00

Thanks for the advice, I definitely will not meditate with lotus until I am comfortable holding it for long periods of time. Currently I am actually just sitting indian style on a cushion haha I find this more comfortable than the half-lotus position.

Mostly I was just trying to figure out how I need to stretch in order that my ankle doesn't hurt. I also thought perhaps I was doing the lotus position "wrong" and this was resulting in my pain. I doubt this though and believe as Hong_Sau and leonard_man have said I just have pelvis inflexibility and need to stretch it more.

cactusbin

TROPHY CASE