So basically when you eat an organic apple and an inorganic apple you will get virtually the same nutrients. But what you won't get with the organic apple is chemicals, plain and simple.

We have to consider where we "hear" these things from. I hear bullshit all the time. It's important to do your research.

maybe its the people selling "organic" food that are crooked, didn't you say they purposely raise the price?

i admire vegetarians, though i won't be one, i think its best to eat less meat at least. i also think there is nothing wrong with hunting or eating meat out of necessity, some people that live in 3rd world countries have to eat the animals they farm to survive. Besides what about other animals that eat other animals, i wouldn't tell a lion in the wild not to eat a zebra lol.

You see organic food originally started out on small farms so they couldn't produce much through organic methods so that explains the high price. But when the corporations slide in and buy out the small companies, the corporations try to maintain the same image of "organic" production. Although the food is still authentic organic, the corporations have more money to grow on a wider scale, so they can produce more, and they do, but they keep the price high because, through time, that has been the norm. They can sell the organic food at a lower price, but of course they choose not to for profit. So the people to blame are the same corporations that are poisoning the food in the first place. There are a few independent companies out there who haven't been bought out, but they are decreasing.

I mentioned some hunters sell the meat they hunt. Most people think, "so what, they're trying to make a living and make money, big deal." It is important to address this. If you really think about it, what gives us the right to destroy another animal and then profit off of them. What makes us think we can own animals? Or take them off of the earth so that we can cash in on their meat? It's fucking slavery. People need to realize that during the African slave trade, most slave owners viewed their slaves as animals, or at least primitive inferior beings. And in actuality they were primitive inferior beings, intellectually speaking. But that's no excuse now is it? My basic point is, life cannot be property. We have no right to "OWN" what the Earth has provided us. The Earth owns us, we do not own the Earth or its creatures. How the fuck can we own that which we are from? And that which we are among? Yet we do. It is clearly unjustified.

You are a college student as well. I know you had to have taken Economics. I'm not defending them but let's be completely fair and get the terms right. It's not a monopoly, it is a monopolistic competition. The end result is not much different but we need to be accurate here.

1. As an athlete, especially one who plays football at the NCAA division 2 level, I cannot afford not to eat meat. I would lose a tremendous amount of weight. I'm already small for my position (I weigh 225 lbs. I should be more like 245+). I will NEVER get there eating vegetables only. I need animal protein. And 2. though vegetarianism is somewhat healthier, veganism, due to it's strict plant product only policy, is very unhealthy. We've adapted as humans to eating meat over thousands of years and so we now will be healthier eating certain meats like fish and chicken. Yes, beef is bad for our bodies as we cannot process the meat in our system, and pork/ham are simply terrible, but there are healthy meats out there such as the aforementioned, buffalo meat, etc.

Compared to Michael Moore's mentally retarded self the NRA seems like a bunch of geniuses though and they support gun legalization. Meanwhile our country is finding more and more reasons to make guns of all sorts illegal, only forcing them on to the black market. Now I agree that certain types of ammunition and weapons need not be legalized (does your neighbor really need a rocket launcher?), but if a democrat (term used incorrectly, only describing their name for themselves which is misleading) had his/her say, they would find a way to interpret the second constitutional amendment as "THE MILITARY (and the military only) have a right to bear arms". The NRA actually supported the supreme court case that recently won that assured this interpretation of the second amendment did not occur and many laws in the US subsequently changed. Are these people republicans/neo-cons? For the most part, yes, and as a general rule of thumb you really can't trust a neo-con with political policy but that doesn't change the fact that regardless of whatever gun fetish Americans have, we have a right to own them and that is probably part of the reason we have a gun fetish. So many other countries have banned guns altogether and people subsequently cannot rise up in arms for revolution against their corrupt governments who have big ass guns to keep the people in their place.

My best friend is an avid hunter (goes every 2 or 3 weeks) and he eats everything he kills except the coyotes but think about this: coyotes reproduce at an absurd rate and in result we now have millions living among us in our communities. Do you know what those coyotes live off of? Pets and even on occasion small children. He hunts them solely because we have very minimal programs and/or laws controlling the birth rate among coyotes.

You are right. You have no need to stop eating McDonald's, etc. The bottom line is that many Americans, such as you and I, though we do not live in poverty we are close, so for us, what is the easiest way to eat on a daily basis money and convenience-wise? The answer is fast food. Anyone blaming you for that needs to shut the fuck up. However, if you can, I would say try to avoid feeding the machine, but in this society there is really nothing you can do. You need to eat.

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0

We all think there is nothing we can do. There's plenty we can do. We're dooped, just as the profiteers of corporations intend.

This kind of shit is like segregationists back in the day trying to justify why segregation is okay, because they don't want to face the unpreferred reality.

how necessary is film-making, the internet, computers, television, cars, hell, technology and entertainment in general? it all costs us in the long run. but imagine a world without leisure activity. a world without entertainment. sure, we can go outside and play "beat each other with the branch on the lawn" or "let's throw the poop the dog left in the dirt" but there are many benefits to organized sports. for example, exercise is one half of being healthy. if we ate vegetables it may be easier to maintain health with less exercise, but we still need more than our casual walk or jog. sports provides a fun and easy way to maintain health that no other activity does. it also helps teach discipline, attention to detail, among many other lessons that you cannot achieve as easily otherwise. we have been playing sports for thousands of years, organized sports for hundreds. if we got rid of sports, people like myself would have slipped through the cracks (the only reason i started caring about my grades was because i knew i needed a 2.0 to play football. now i'm a 3.5 student working on a Bachelor's in accounting and entrepreneurship, soon to be a Master's), many people who have little to no other skills or discipline to gain any would have become bums, etc.

yes, you are right, but it will take a united effort to do something. one individual cannot stop eating at convenient places until everyone rises up and joins the fight. the farmers need to say no to allowing their food to go to places like McDonald's, the workers need to stop going to work there, and then the people can stop eating there.

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0

Now I understand your point. It is here where sports has become a tool for you to develop your intellectual growth. It has helped you go to college. So it becomes necessary for you. Sure their may have been other ways, but this is how it has ended up. Unfortunately our society isn't properly arranged to promote maximum intellectual growth, otherwise it might not be possible for people to fall through the cracks. But as we know their are several factors that keep our society the way it is. People shouldn't have to rely on sports to get them to college, but nevertheless it is the case that sometimes they do. Is this the only solution? It shouldn't be. It is actually in itself an unnecessary solution, so I'm sure you see the problem here and how it effects the necessity of eating animals all the way down the line. Getting to college through sports shouldn't be necessary, so eating meat for sports wouldn't be necessary, therefore one of the justifications for eating animals is defeated.

It really comes down to people making the effective vital choices, such as simply deciding you want to learn (or seeing why putting in effort to learn is important by itself), and in result you get scholarships or whatever. Sports are really sort of a way out for some. The fact that they have to resort to sports shouldn't be considered a legitimate alternative (due to the reasons I am arguing for, the eventual distant effect on animals and the environment, etc.) They should work hard in the first place (I see an argument of "interests" and "mental capabilities" coming). Now I know it can be unrealistic to request everyone to understand the big picture and work hard. But if they don't work hard, who is to blame? them or the system? Is it so wrong to expect excellence? Anyway it is important for everyone to acknowledge this whole picture and all of our mistakes, so that maybe we will think twice about our actions and decisions when it comes to doing what is necessary, and also so that we feel shitty about ourselves instead of putting human beings on an undeserved and oversized pedestal all the time. It would simply make us more humble.

1. Sports has an absolute and direct effect on "intellectual growth" in many ways. Let me provide some examples: In football you must learn hundreds of elaborate and distinctly (and even some not so distinctly) different plays. Most coaches teach you to break away from memorization and learn each play by it's concept so that you do not go out on the field and have to scan your memory bank for 5 seconds trying to remember the play. As you graduate to a new level of football (from JV to Varsity, Varsity to college, college to pro) you will be expected to learn even more, and more elaborate plays. This is an example of intellectual growth in several ways -- you are learning to break away from memorizational learning and moving on to conceptual learning which I cannot stress enough how practical that is, and you are learning how to think more quickly which, again, is VERY practical (just think of political debates). And that is just one miniscule aspect of one sport. 2. Yes, intellectual growth is very important, but since when is it the only goal to strive for in human well being and making this an ideal world. Let's think wellness for example. There are 6 identified aspects of wellness -- physical, spiritual (this doesn't mean religious), emotional, mental, intellectual and occupational. All of these are equally as important. The intellectual aspect is no more important than others and they are all intertwined in many ways.

No, because that is a poor analogy. Certain individuals in society the way it is now, whether we like it or not, play more important roles than others and so if a consumer of food products stops eating, all that is going to happen is he is going to get sick due to malnutrition and when he ends up in the hospital he is going to incur a bill more than he can pay. For some people, if they do not eat at fast food restaurants they do not eat. Maybe this means they need to check some of the decisions they made in the past, but as for the present, there is nothing else they can do and they should not be expected to change their eating habits for any purposes because they will not survive otherwise. And yes, as someone with several learning disabilities myself, of course I'm going to bring that argument up, but since you already know the arguments I will not elaborate.

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0

Don't even let me get into the joke sports out there. Also, I have met plenty of dumb jocks to know that the more a person puts their face in a book the better off they'll be.

To explore another problem, there is too much "fun" involved with sports (speaking primarily about the people who spend time to watch sports on TV or go to games). Fun is the monster that takes this world off course and into the oblivion of wasted time. Can we as human beings in our current state really afford to waste time?

Keep in mind that I acknowledge the other distracters out there such as music, cinema, video games, etc. But they are only distracters if they are used unwisely.

We have a duty to the Earth and that is to take care of it, because if we don't we're gone. But we'd rather make excuses, as if they are truly justified.

As for the second half of your argument, I was speaking of people who cannot afford being on a vegetarian diet. In our current society, as you know, because of capitalist greed accompanied by the expense of keeping organic foods fresh due to being more quickly perishable than inorganic foods, many people find it far more quick, convenient, and most of all, inexpensive, to purchase at restaurants such as McDonald's, BK, etc. This is strictly going off of my original comment which was directed towards Taylor.

my new theme song



erikboyd60@hotmail.com

"True poetry can communicate before it is understood"

-T.S. Eliot

battle record:

7-0-0