The PhD student is someone who forgoes current income in order to forgo future income.
(I don't believe this entirely, but it's amusing)
Thoughts, interesting facts, hopes, observations, quotes, etc. May you find something here that stimulates you and resonates with you. Email me at roshan.bharwaney@gmail.com
11.27.2010
11.22.2010
11.21.2010
Why be Vegetarian?
VEGETARIANS ARE HEALTHY
Vegetarians have the lowest rate of atherosclerotic heart disease of anygroup in the United States. The process of atherosclerosis doesn't just cause heart attacks; it also causes impotence. Meat eaters have a ten times greater risk of breast and colon cancer than do pure vegetarians.
On a low fat vegetarian diet 90% of adult-onset diabetics can reduce or entirely eliminate their insulin injections. Tens of millions of Americans suffer from osteoporosis and kidney failure due to excess animal protein consumption. Meat-eating women have levels of chemical pollution in their breast milk 35 times higher than in the breast milk of pure vegetarians.
VEGETARIANS ARE ECOLOGICAL
75% of our food-growing topsoil in the United States has eroded, almost all of it off farmland and grazing land used for animal agriculture. One acre of land growing broccoli will supply ten times as much protein as an acre of land producing beef. If acreage now being used for grazing cattle and raising feed grains were growing trees or fiber plants to burn for energy, we would have no need to import foreign oil. More than half of the water used for all purposes in the United States is used for livestock production. Water pollution from feedlots and feed grain field runoff (manure, topsoil, pesticides, fertilizer, etc.) contaminates more streams and rivers than do all the wastes from all U.S. cities and industries combined.
VEGETARIANS ARE COMPASSIONATE
In the United States ten billion animals are killed for food every year. Veal calves are chained in crates to prevent movement and fed iron-deficient food to make them anemic in order to keep their flesh pale. Egg-laying hens are painfully de-beaked, then raised in cages so small that they are unable to stretch their wings. Fishing depletes fish populations, disrupting vital food chains and forcing marine mammals and sea birds to extinction through starvation. Vegans do not eat animal products and therefore do not contribute to the suffering and needless death of animals raised for food.
- From the homepage of the Vegetarian Society of Hawaii
VEGETARIANS ARE HEALTHY
Vegetarians have the lowest rate of atherosclerotic heart disease of anygroup in the United States. The process of atherosclerosis doesn't just cause heart attacks; it also causes impotence. Meat eaters have a ten times greater risk of breast and colon cancer than do pure vegetarians.
On a low fat vegetarian diet 90% of adult-onset diabetics can reduce or entirely eliminate their insulin injections. Tens of millions of Americans suffer from osteoporosis and kidney failure due to excess animal protein consumption. Meat-eating women have levels of chemical pollution in their breast milk 35 times higher than in the breast milk of pure vegetarians.
VEGETARIANS ARE ECOLOGICAL
75% of our food-growing topsoil in the United States has eroded, almost all of it off farmland and grazing land used for animal agriculture. One acre of land growing broccoli will supply ten times as much protein as an acre of land producing beef. If acreage now being used for grazing cattle and raising feed grains were growing trees or fiber plants to burn for energy, we would have no need to import foreign oil. More than half of the water used for all purposes in the United States is used for livestock production. Water pollution from feedlots and feed grain field runoff (manure, topsoil, pesticides, fertilizer, etc.) contaminates more streams and rivers than do all the wastes from all U.S. cities and industries combined.
VEGETARIANS ARE COMPASSIONATE
In the United States ten billion animals are killed for food every year. Veal calves are chained in crates to prevent movement and fed iron-deficient food to make them anemic in order to keep their flesh pale. Egg-laying hens are painfully de-beaked, then raised in cages so small that they are unable to stretch their wings. Fishing depletes fish populations, disrupting vital food chains and forcing marine mammals and sea birds to extinction through starvation. Vegans do not eat animal products and therefore do not contribute to the suffering and needless death of animals raised for food.
- From the homepage of the Vegetarian Society of Hawaii
11.16.2010
11.12.2010
The packaged-goods and fast-food industries spend billions each year on marketing to children, so all our children, rich and poor and everybody in between, need to learn what constitutes a healthy diet and to develop a taste for fresh, healthy foods, especially fruits and vegetables.
- Janet Poppendieck, sociologist and author of "Free for All"
- Janet Poppendieck, sociologist and author of "Free for All"
11.07.2010
Dan Ariely, a professor of psychology and behavioural economics at Duke University, is convinced that the approach to matchmaking embodied by many dating sites represents a market failure. In a recent book, “The Upside of Irrationality”, he argues that the sites treat human beings as if they are goods that can be fully defined according to a set of standard attributes, in much the same way that, say, a digital camera can be described by the number of megapixels that it has and other characteristics. But this cold, drearily functional approach to assessing compatibility fails to capture the indefinable spark that triggers romance.
- The Economist
- The Economist