or cows that want us to eat them!

i'm not arguing present realities but future possibilities.
yes, now it's expensive and impactful but to say that over the next few decades we may not improve/streamline or increase the effeciency of the process.
in all honesty i don't believe we'll ever have mass produced vat grown meat, but i know that i can't really know the future.

it's still fun to imagine though.

#49
"Sadly, No."

Sadly, to your point, no.
Scientists made something from other things, which is not at all the same as making something from nothing, which is what was meant by "playing God."

Also, as a fellow who's spent a good amount of time interacting with cattle, I have to say I'm almost absolutely sure that they aren't concious, but that I am absolutely sure that they're delicious, so I eat them.

ALSO!
One of the primary benifits of vat grown meat would be that you don't require acres upon acres of grazing land, or cattle ranchers or any of the work force that supports the meat industry - the time/money/energy saved by putting untold thousands out of work would more then cover the increased energy costs or whatever else would make vat grown meat expensive.

Personally, I'd love to live in a world where everyone eats healthy, locally produced food, and where cattle are treated well not because they have any sort of right but because as wardens of the earth it's our responsibility to treat animals humanely.

my dog doesn't love me because it can't because he's a dog, but i love him because i can because i'm a human and that's what's important.

i'm sure lots of animals would be kep, but ducks and goats and those type of animals aren't really domesticated as much as a cow or a pig - i've never in my life seen a feral herd of cows, but i've seen countless wild ducks.

but that's not my point - i'm curious as to the ramifications of vat grown meat in that peta and animal rights activists protest meat eating because they view the slaughter of animals as needlessly cruel, or environmentally destructive, and in some cases they're right, but is it ethical for people to treat animals in such a way that they become useless and as a result certain types of animals dissapear forever.

again, this is mostly just a thought experiment.

Canadian, comfirming that it's true. The street I crossed a few times every day back and forth on my way to and from classes during the school year wouldn't change unless the button was pushed, or unless cars were also waiting to cross.

We actually started playing a game to see who could pump the button the most before we could cross, and if memory serves I am the reigning champion with about 86 pushes.

okay now a follow up question for peta knowladgeable people - if, in the future, we have vat grown meat and vat grown milk and vat grown leather, who will take care of the domesticated animals that only exist to produce things for humans?
all the grazing land would no longer be needed for grazing, and there's no way that farmers or business men would let the land lie bare.
cows, pigs and chickens would only be found on whatever farms still produced geniune meat, or in countries that couldn't afford tasty test tube steaks.

anyways i guess my question is wouldn't cheap and efficient vat grown meat push farm animals into a state of psuedo extinction?

clearly this is far off, if even possible, but i mean, the internet is a place for imagining and in a future where we didn't have to raise and care for animals untill we could slaughter them then we wouldn't actually need these animals anymore, and no one would just eat the cost to care for them.
could we make cows obsolete?

http://www.hrgiger.com/chairs.htm

These are the chairs desinged for the Dune movie that wasn't actually in the Dune movie because of all the bullshit that surrounded it's production and editing and whatnot that destined the film to not be very good.

I think that maybe a third of any comment I make on boingboing relates to dune. I am a nerd.

i'd love to see a blind taste test using round ice versus square ice and some whiskey experts.

here's what i want to know.
vegans, vegitarians and peta - if mindless meat was grown just like this jacket... "thing" and we cooked it and ate it would that be unpleasent to their sensibilities?

will the majority of boingboing readers react with such vitrol at something that should have been pretty obvious exageration and satire.

plus i live in canada so when it comes to the nanny state or whatever i'm likely less frustrated then you unlucky yanks.

first off, i'm not saying that we should ignore small problems but just that as a society we tend to look at shiney or sordid things, instead of things that aren't sensational but are important.
real, hard, difficult situations get overlooked because they're hard and difficult and real.

also, burman isn't my bag. i do things to support causes i feel moved for whilst supporting those causes indirectly that i can't directly support, and when i can directly make a positive difference i try my best to do it.

ALSO!
my hyperbole wasn't directed at any one posters hatred of conservatives but rather the overwhelming attitude held by readers of this blog - not that it isn't occasionally warrented but that means that it's occasionally unwarrented.
sorry you thought i was taking a dig at you, but that wasn't the case at all.

In a few days I'm taking a train to Gods country to tree plant for about two months.
This'll be my second year, and I was pretty suprised at the amount of technology in the camps.
Ipods were an obvious thing, as working 10 hours days is boring, but made better if you've swapped music with weird hippies and can listen to Allan Watts recordigns about mantras whilst traipsing through the woods.
Laptops were uncommon, but occasional.

It's fascinating how in what is one of the most human industries with very little room for mechanization or comfortable lodgings is still a place where the human lust for shiney electronic devices still grips the psyche - even if a pair of headphones can literally be melted by the strength of the bug repellent we were using.

"If it doesn't hurt someone else, what a sane person wishes to do with their own body is their own business, and ought to be legal."

sure, but prostitution hurts. it hurts families torn apart or women drawn into a world that they never wanted to be a part of and mothers who have to find their daughters hanging dead who now have to alter the natural order of things and bury her child, not the other way around.

in an ideal world, i can see prostitution being legal and clean and friendly and totally rad, but for that to happen we'd need to fix a lot of much bigger problems first - which isn't to say that the plight of prostitutes and sex workers isn't important, but call girls killing themselves is less important then 20,000 dead in burma.

wooooooo priorities!

the kitchener/waterloo area is full of nice folks, and i'm pleased that this works.
it is disheartening that when a story that is essentially "bakery is nice to customers, employees - trusts them." people assume there must be some sneaky sneaks lying to them and the boss is stealing tips and whatever.

next time i'm in the area i'll make a point to pay 5$ for a croissant.

it means that it's more likely, but i'm tappa tappa-ing away secretly at work and it's possible i made some mistake that i've not pciked up on.
it's even pretty likely that i've made mistakes as i already make a point of ignoring capitilization conventions and i'm using a work computer that doesn't have a spellcheck or grammer whatever installed in its browser.
please elaborate?

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

I guess I found the next book I'm going to read.

"Palfrey had vowed that she would not go to prison, even telling a Washington writer that she would commit suicide first. "

maybe she killed herself then eh?

or maybe we should accept occams razor and figure that a woman who lived a lifestyle wherein suicide or other self harm is likely common, (prostituting in and of itself could be considered self harm), when swamped in misery and with the knowladge that she'd very likely be convicted decided that jail wasn't the way out.

or we can pretend that all those drat darn conservative jerks must have been trying to cover their sneaky selves so that they could continue to push drm and censorship and keep causing all the problems in the world because it must be their fault.

not saying they didn't do it, or she wasn't murdered, but it's just as lame to assume that the people you hate did it automatically no matter who those people are.

like any real world problem it's incredibly easy to decide what is the right choice for ones self.
the trouble occurs when we have to make the choices for everyone, which is something i make a point of refusing.

as far as i'm concerned, prostitution shouldn't occur, and ideally, shouldn't even have to occur.
men shouldn't need sex badly enough to pay for it and women shouldn't need money badly enough to have sex for it.

however, the reality of the situation is far from this ideal, and that's why we have problems.
should we legislate morality?
think about it.
here on boingboing the answer from most would be a resounding no, and i would mostly agree.
however, if morality is not legislated then the world would be much much worse then it is.
censorship sucks, but i like that pornography is hidden from children, or that now in ontario all cigarette products are no longer allowed to be visibly displayed.

with issues like this there isn't a right answer only a series of answers that have degrees of rightness and wrongness, (which in this case isn't morality but how well it solves the problem).

it's just as bad to decry prostitutes as immoral, sinful terrible women as it is to claim that they're they bear the torch of the oldest profefssion and that they are classy and it's somehow the christian rights fault that people feel bad about their choices because neither sides are the truth.

when two groups disagree the solution isn't for both sides to present arguments and points of view that are almost parodies of what they believe in their intensity, feeling taht this is something they have to do to match the intensity of the opposition.

the solution to all problems isn't squabbling over the right way to do it but working together to find solutions that are realistic and please as many people as possible.

if i ever was to literally pay money for sex i would feel worthless because i am incpable of controlling myself. i'm not an animal, i don't for rape gangs, i've only engaged in intercourse that is both consensual and based not in animal instict but instead in love and romance and blah blah blah.

i guess the real problem for me is that i believe people are different and better then animals because we can control our base and animal desires, and to let yourself be controlled by sexual desire is pathetic and that paying for sex is embarrasing and shameful but that is what i think.
clearly sex is important, but we're not mindless pigs, consuming and fucking and grunting and dying pointlessly.

i guess i just think we're better then that.

first off, prostitution isn't the oldest or first profession. it's old but age doesn't validate anything.

i dissagree with prostitution because it turns human beings into cattle - when a man or a woman trades money for sex they devalue both themselves and the person accepting the money.
prostitution isn't sex positive because prostitution is sex with everything positive removed.

and to believe that legalized prostitution would lead to a decrease in sexual assault makes no logical sense. people who commit sexual assault aren't just dudes with raging boners frustrated by their innability to score tail, they're people who want to sexually dominate and humiliate someone - the type of men who very likely visit prostitutes already.

cool.
now we need to make crysknives and stillsuits so we'll beready for global warming to turn our little green planet into a desert world.

As a university student, the idea of paying 7$ for a pint glass that doesn't even have a pint of beer in it is pretty crazy, especially considering that taking pint glasses from pubs that treat me poorly as a form of reverse tipping keeps my cupboards full of randomly branded glasses.

i give a shit about the death of the album, but not as much as i would if us two internet strangers were the only ones who cared.
real artists will always produce "real" albums that are intended to be listened to as a whole album.

music i don't care about is destroying itself with drm and countless other bad moves, but the music that i do care about is always getting better and better.
mike patton will always write rediculous concept albums, the mars volta will still write albums that are stupidly high minded but where the total awesomeness of the album is more then the sum of its tracks. coheed and cambria will keep making albums and comic books to tell their space opera story. mastodon wrote a whole concept album about moby dick, and each of their albums to date thematically links with the classical elements, (blood mountain is earth, leviathan is water, etc, etc), and thrice is doing the same thing with the alchemy index - two double disc releases with about 6 tracks on each and each disc themeatically and lyrically deals with one of four elements.

plus, the fact that there are more amazing albums then i'll ever be able to listen to in a lifetime keeps me from being too sad at the sorry state of popular music in our world today.

The whole story made sense before, but only in the context of its sequels and whatnot, but, as a long time fan of Dune, and a dude who honestly feels that Herbert's writings are among the most influential as to my personal beliefs, and who has recently for the first time ingested psylocybin mushrooms...
well...
This all makes a lot of sense.
I've seen the tachyon net, and understood the past lives idea. Weird.
I am now the Kwisatch Haderach, the shortening of the path - the base of the pillar, the kangaroo mouse.

Man I'm a nerd.

If they think baby Pyramid head is scary, wait till they see his papa...

i want a bong from this guy....

this is totally a venture bros. background shot....
amazing.

am i the only one here reminded of noglobes from dune?

i think a better god faq would just have maybe for every answer ever.
but that's me, and i'm not pretentious enough to claim i have any absolute answers.

where does the term zazz come from? the first time i heard it was on metalocalypse, (awesome cartoon on adult swim about a metal band), but since then i've heard it a bunch.

this reminds me a lot of the mega64 tetris video, (http://www.mega64.com/tetris.htm), only maybe just a little bit less funny.
still fantastic though.