On the Pettyness of a Big Irish Newspaper

On my way to work this morning I heard something like:
"In todays newspaper we will show you how much more money the 2016 budget means for your pocket!"

This struck me as being the least interesting and petty subject for a newspaper to waste space on.

Before I go on I'll make an assumption:
"The great majority of people are not going to feel any significant difference with the new budget"

In other words I don't think they'd know the cash wasn't there if they hadn't been told...

If the most important thing to think about after a new budget is out is how much difference it makes on your wallet, then frankly, you should go play on the motorway blindfolded (and please don't vote).
The budget is our chance to prioritise what we think is important in the country, by the nature of a national budget it is our money being put to use, and our interest is that it gets put to the best possible use!
Wanting more cash for yourself is fine with me, but if a change to the budget means 100€ extra in your wallet and 460,000,000€ less in the state's pocket (4.6m people in ROI), then I'd rather see what the state can do with that money.

• Teachers are paid 30,000-60,000€ (source), so we could hire 7,500-15,000 new teachers to lift the education. A good investment in the future...?
• Gardai are paind 25,000-45,000€ (source), equating 10,000-18,400 more gardai (not counting cars and kit, but you get the picture).
• Get 4600GWh ~ 850,000 households worth of solar electricity (based on 5,300kWh per year per household, source). this can only be achieved with centralised solar plants, as the price per kWh is higher for small installations (source).

The median Irish buying power in 2012 was 20,000€ (source). This figure is after tax, and is regulated for VAT. I'm using the median value here, as the mean value is likely to be skewed and not representative due to a few high earners.

So what I'm saying is that I think the least interesting thing about the budget is what it means to my wallet. I'll not go hungry, cold or wet because of those changes, but my kids might, if we don't budget wisely, and focus on petty cash

So dear major Irish newspaper, please print some meaningful news, about real issues...!

0 % Unemployment - The Danish Model

None of the knives in this blog post are owned by me (otherwise I could be jailed for writing this).

Denmark has just made its total population criminals. This effectively means that unemployment is over, as we should legally all turn ourselves in. Once we're all imprisoned (for refusing to pay the fine, or owning more than one folding knife), the few people left out can work keeping us in the (very full) prisons...

Suppose you own a knife like this one:

This is the knife "Pingu" from Ansø knives - a lovely knife that is made specifically to be legal to carry everywhere in Europe (according to the general guidelines for cabin luggage in planes, this knife is OK - link here). The blade is non-locking, almost impossible to open with one hand only and measures under 6 cm. from tip to the fulcrum.

But it is now illegal in Denmark - because I can do this:

That knife might be a bit of special knife, but maybe you own one of these (I don't ):

Yup, the wine-opener is a folding knife - and with practice it can be wielded one-handedly as well - making it illegal.

So despair not unemployed people - big mother Denmark will find a way!

To finish this short blog on how to avoid unemployment, I should add that as long as I don't bring it out clubbing, the following knife is perfectly legal (broken phone for scale - blade 35 cm):

Killer whales are not always whale killers...

I was in Iceland in the summer of 2014, and went on a whale cruise with Laki Tours, based out from Snæfellsnes peninsula. They'd had a couple of quiet days, so expectations weren't super high (this is off cause a lie from my side - expectations are always high!) So wrapped in lots of clothes we went out...

Filled with joy over being out, not really caring that we didn't see any whales we started pretending we were there for the birds (this was no act for my girlfriend). We did get to see two puffins and lots of fulmars, but other than that, it was pretty quiet for the first three hours.

Fulmar, a type of gull common to the harsher coasts of north west Europe.

And the best shot I got of a puffin.

Then came the whales

Our man in the sky (a ladder on the mast) shouted that a group of white-beaked dolphins were being hunted by orcas! The only problem was, sometimes the dolphins were following the orcas - not your typical escape strategy. A couple of still pictures to follow...

I could not get the action in pictures so I tried to film it. But only having my old camera with me, quality is wanting (better quality here >200Mb).

As can be seen in the video, the dolphins don't seem afraid of the orcas, They seem to be mingling. Our best guess was that the orcas were a resident pod, specialising in capturing fish, and not interested in marine mammals. I had never heard of orcas working with other whales before, and my excitement was reinforced when the crew on the ship was equally surprised - they'd never seen it before!

Turns out it's not that rare, see here, here and here(.pdf). 

But it's nevertheless very fascinating, mostly on the part of the smaller dolphins. They count on being able to tell the difference between fish- and mammal-eating orcas. So why do this? My guess would be that it increases catch rates for both species. Both pods were small, and could have trouble surrounding or "herding" a school of fish by themselves, but together it would be easier to manage the fish. Especially the nimbler white beaked dolphins could help the orcas with smaller fish. Maybe the tail fluke shock-wave, produced by some orcas, stunning fish, could be the "what's in it" for the dolphins.

One thing is for sure - every time you venture outside you see something new (and every time you venture inside you see what you expect).

Organic farming, why and why not!?

I recently overheard a professor in the Danish radio stating that nutrient load on the environment from organic and conventional farming is equivalent when one takes into account the lower productivity/area in organic farming. This statement provoked me to dig deeper, as I'm an avid pro ecologist. Could I be wrong...?

Nutrients

Plants form the basis for all food production. Some grow wild, and we use animals to convert them into meat/milk that we can consume. Other plants we keep, and eat either directly or feed to animals we then eat. As most of us don't shit where we eat, we encounter a problem with nutrients, especially minerals.

The plants take up minerals (I'll stick to nitrogen, phosphor and potassium here), and store them in their tissue. This bound N, P and K is transported far and wide to be consumed elsewhere, and thus deposited in a concentrated way, often at waste water treatment plants in cities, far from where they are needed by the new crops we need to eat. The Nitrogen we get rid of by de-gassing waste water (denitification), and can be absorbed by certain plants and bacteria on the fields later on. The phosphor is either accumulated in phosphate accumulating organisms, or by chemically treating the water to bind the phosphor in salts. None of these processes bind all the phosphor (5-40 % is removed according to a producer of removal equipment), and much phosphor is released into the waterways and ultimately the sea. The accumulated phosphor can either be used as fertiliser, or be dumped at landfills. 

The problem with especially phosphor is that it's applied to the fields, but doesn't end up there in the end again, it ends up polluting our water. To keep plants growing on the fields we have to get new phosphor in. This phosphor usually comes from mines (especially in USA and China), and is a finite resource. This is a problem for both types of farming.

The organic farmer is not allowed to use a non-biological phosphor source, and has to rely on manure to boost phosphor content of his soil. The manure production however has the same problem as all farmers, they have to get phosphor from somewhere too - suggestions have been made to use phosphor rich seaweed to help close the loop.

Also the organic farmer can leave non-edible parts of the plant (stem, roots) to rot on the field, only removing the phosphor bound in the grains from the field, making the phosphor deficit smaller.

Because of transfer of disease the use of human faeces is often not a good solution to this problem, even though it would close the loop...

What about the carbon?

Carbon, a bit like nitrogen, transfers from us back to the crops as CO2, and is not really a concern in the discussion between conventional and organic farming. Carbon is mostly relevant as a measure of how much energy is used in the production of a given amount of food. Organic farming usually scores better here (lower carbon/food unit), mostly due to the high energy cost of producing artificial fertilisers. Otherwise the tractor of the organic farmer runs the same way the any other tractor does, and can be run on fossil or renewable fuels accordingly.

Yield.

Gross yield is higher for conventional farming. This is true for all industrial scale farming. But what's really interesting is net yield, a kind of input-output balance for farming, and that's when it gets interesting (and relevant).
I've found two long term studies, one from USA and one from Switzerland. The one from the states has run over 25 years and still going. They have equal or better yields from organic fields, with organic plots outperforming conventional during stress, e.g. drought, plant disease. Taking into account the lower cost of production (less purchased fertiliser, less pesticides and less fuel), the organic production is 20 % more profitable (when priced at the same price as conventional produce!).
The Swiss study (21 years) found that their organic plots yielded an average of 84 % of the conventional plots. But the conventional plots received 66 % more fertiliser (NH4NO3 equivs.) and used 40 % more fuel than the organic plots. This mean that the net output from the organic plots were higher than conventional plots - I'll attempt a calculation of how much by converting production and energy use into joules/ha (all numbers from Swiss report).

Conventional plots

 Yield:
5.6 t/ha assuming 90 % carbohydrates, 10 % protein
2828 kJ/mole at 162.14g/mole for cellulose & 17 kJ/g for protein
5600 kg * 90 %                       = 5040 kg
5040 kg / 0.16214 kg/mole     = 31084 moles
31084 moles * 2828 kJ/mole  = 87,906 MJ (from carbohydrates, cellulose)
5600 kg * 10 %                       = 560 kg
5600 kg * 17000 kJ/kg           = 9,520 MJ (from protein)

Total gross yield: 87906 + 9520 = 97426 MJ/ha

Energy use:
360 kg fertiliser at 28 GJ/t (source) = 10,080 MJ
570 L diesel-equiv at 35.9 MJ/L      = 20,463 MJ
And some pesticide that I deem insignificant in the energy budget.

Total energy use: 10,080 + 20,463 = 30,543 MJ/ha

Net Yield:
97,426 MJ/ha - 30,543 MJ/ha  = 66,883 MJ/ha

Organic plots

Yield:
4.7 t/ha assuming 90 % carbohydrates, 10 % protein
2,828 kJ/mole at 162.14g/mole for cellulose & 17 kJ/g for protein
4,700 kg * 90 %                        = 4230 kg
4,230 kg / 0.16214 kg/mole      = 26089 moles
26,089 moles * 2,828 kJ/mole  = 73,778 MJ (from carbohydrates, cellulose)
4,700 kg * 10 %                        = 470 kg
470 kg * 17000 kJ/kg                = 7,990 MJ (from protein)

Total gross yield: 73,778 + 7,990 = 81,768 MJ/ha

Energy use:
122 kg fertiliser at 28 GJ/t (source) = 3,416 MJ -> 0 MJ  (comment on this below)
340 L diesel-equiv at 35.9 MJ/L      = 12,206 MJ
No pesticides, and all organic fertiliser (manure), meaning no costly ammonia-production.

Total energy use: 0 + 12,206 = 12,206 MJ/ha

Net Yield:
81,768 MJ/ha - 12,206 MJ/ha  = 69,562 MJ/ha

So with no pesticides, the net yield from the organic plots were 4 % better in the Swiss study.
I will admit that prior to me doing this calculation, I thought organic would win by more, but this just goes to show that one can easily be confused by percentages.

According to these two studies organic farming clearly comes out as the most profitable.
I know some people who would argue that I cannot simply use net joule output, as we cannot eat "diesel joules", and spending fossil fuel to create "food joules" is a net gain. This is true, but using less fuel means it'll last longer, and we don't have to replace our old tractors with new electric ones as soon, if we spend less fuel. The fossil fuels will run out.

Health

With regards to the health side of things there's a lot of mixed messages out there.
A few hard facts though are:

• Limits for residues are often based on what we can detect, and not on whether or not it's harmful to ingest.
• Even though most conventional produce is well within the above mentioned levels, sometimes this is not the case.
• Limits for residues are set per compound and often not as a total residues value, this means that if three pesticides are present in your food, and each one is under the limit, it is approved. But studies show that pesticides can show additive effect, meaning that 1mg of "A", "B" and "C", has the same adverse effect as 3mg of either "A", "B" or "C". (suppose a limit of 2mg).
• Organic produce does not contain pesticides (other than what the wind has carried).
• Residues of pesticides severely damage ecosystems and humans - read the wiki entry on this.
• Check out this video!

Sources:

• www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publikationer/2004/87-7614-284-1/html/helepubl.htm (Danish)
• http://www.inra.fr/en/Scientists-Students/Food-and-nutrition/All-reports/Cocktail-effects-of-toxic-substances/The-cocktail-effect-of-pesticides (Cocktail-effects)
• http://infohub.ifoam.bio/sites/default/files/page/files/misconceptions_compiled.pdf (General info)
• http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/29/french-children-farms-vineyards-exposed-dangerous-cocktail-pesticides (non-food contamination)

I might update this post as I learn more, or if I'm corrected.

As always, please leave a comment.

Racism

This might be dangerous territory - but so much more important because of it.
(Please comment on this post)

I'm from Denmark, and although I'm not proud of the way politics have turned in the past decade (very xenophobic), I'm still inclined to think that we are a kind and tolerant people.

The other day this was challenged by and Irishman, who in particular did not like our use of the word "indianer" (similar to the English "indian", but with a slightly different meaning).

The discussion lead to these two questions:

1. Is it racism if you use a common (non derogatory) word to talk to others about a non-present ethnic group who finds the word derogatory?
2. Or do you become a racist if you use words that are non-derogatory to you, used in a non-derogatory way, but perceived to be so by a third person?  

In both these cases I think the answer is no.

Some further thoughts on this:

In Danish the word "indianer" means: 

"Person belonging to an ethnic group that together with inuits and aleuts are the indigenous people of the North and South America". (picture)

In English, this is what an American-Indian is:

"A member of any of the aboriginal peoples of the western hemisphere except often the Eskimos; especially :  an American Indian of North America and especially the United States".

(Merriam-Webster)

So the definitions don't line up completely; the English definition does not include Eskimos, and is emphasising the native Americans of north America to a higher degree. An Indian is thus only a person from India.

The discussion was mainly about whether or not it was racist to use the (Danish) word "indianer" when talking about the indigenous people of South America.

My own opinion on the matter lies very close to the following (taken from the introduction to ethnic slur on wikipedia):

"For instance, many of the terms listed below (such as "Gringo", "Yank", etc.) are used by large numbers of human beings in many parts of the world as part of their ordinary speech or thinking without any intention of causing offence, and with little or no evidence that such usage does in fact cause much or indeed any offence, while the implicit or explicit labeling of such large numbers of people as racists (or similar terms such as prejudiced, bigoted, ethnophobic, xenophobic, etc.), simply because they use some words on the list below, can itself be deeply unfair and insensitive and can thus cause deep offence".

So among Danes there's no issue here, but when you mix it up a little and add a Swede and an Irish to the company things get more interesting. They will now perceive the Danes as being insensitive and racist - who's right here? Can all Danes be deemed racists just because the same word has a different meaning abroad? 

There are words of cause, where even I know not to use the Danish word outside conversation with ethnic Danes. E.g. it's safe to use the Danish equivalent of Negro in Denmark, it's spelled "neger" and just means that your ancestors lived within 20-30 degrees of the equator. This is backed by multiple court rulings, and not my just my opinion.

Racism by naming/labelling 

It was pointed out that maybe it has to do with who comes up with the name. If you don't yourself come up with the name given to you, it is racist to call you by it, if you have your own name for yourself. A little reading on etymology reveals that almost no ethnic group carries a name they chose for themselves. This makes sense as names for ethnic groups are usually needed to talk about the group, which is a thing most often done by people not in that group (if you're in the group "us" suffices). 

I certainly don't think of myself as a racist, and surely you're only a racist if your actions (or words) causes harm? - with or without intention.

Please leave comments

Your very own dagger

You know how you've always wanted a "Bowie knife", or just a big knife for general camping use? Well I do, and having worked in an outdoor store I have a couple already, and they're really nice ones too. Why then make a new, crappy looking one.

Answer is simple, the new and shiny knife from the shop is expensive, and I might be the only one, but I'm a little afraid of damaging them, so I don't actually use them that much...

I was in a charity shop and found this knife for 2€, and thought "heck, so what if I ruin it trying". 

 This knife was slightly bent, but made of decent steel (most kitchen knives over 1 mm. thickness are today). So I bought it. Being a kitchen knife, it was also too big (big knives are good, but even that has a end). It's barely visible, but I've drawn a design on the knife blade. (You don't need one with a metal handle, wood is nicer, and you can always exchange a it for a home made new handle).

 I took a hacksaw to it to get rid of the bigger bits, and was pleasantly surprised to break the hacksaw, indicating a nice hard blade on the knife. After I was done with the hacksaw I removed the rest of the unwanted blade with a grinder (making sure not to overheat the steel, bucket of water nearby is handy). If you don't have a grinder, a coarse wet stone will do. After a little fine tuning with a file, the knife was ready for the wet stone.

Now the knife is nice and sharp, and I need to come up with a way to make a sheath. I would also like to polish the knife, guess I'll do something with very fine sand paper or use some fabric with the dust from the wet stone as abrasive.

Knife is ~15 cm. now, a good length for most wood craft.

The sheath. I forgot to take a lot of pictures of the process, but you'll get the idea.

As this is mostly just to try it out, I just located the toughest wood we had. Some hardwood would be better, but plywood is glued from lots of layers, making stiffer and less prone to moisture damage. I chose a wood sheath, as I did not have any leather of a suitable thickness to make a wrap around sheath. Plywood turned out to be a good choice, one can take of one of the layers at a time, providing an easier way of making even knife shaped hole in the wood. (This is the step you need to imagine).

The sheath is made from two pieces of wood, each with a blade shaped hole in it. These two are glued together to form the sheath.

I'm a big fan of leather for this kind of stuff, so I fashioned some leather to wrap around the wooden sheath. This leather is too thin and soft to function as a sheath in it's own right. The top part, where the belt loop is, is a double layer that ends at the stitch going across the sheath. The rest is a single layer of leather, suede side in, wrapped around the wooden sheath, and pulled tight with stitching.

You can just see the wooden insert into the leather wrapping, and the belt loop as a simple hole in the double leather at the top part.

I'm really looking forward to trying this out in the wild. My hopes are that the leather will protect the wood from the wet, while the wood will provide a snug home for the knife.

At this point, I'm a little bit sad I didn't get a knife with a wooden handle, but that's for another time!

Update!
I have upgraded the handle for the knife. I didn't love the metallic handle (and it was blasted cold in the winter). I did not take any pictures during the process, but I'm sure you'll get the idea.

The original knife handle was just steel. I grinded this off on both sides, and found out that the handle was hollow! This left me with two prongs sticking out from the blade - not a stable handle!
An old broomstick handle to the rescue. I took ~15 cm of the handle, added lots of glue and hammered the round wood in between the two steel prongs. All this I then wrapped (tightly) in leather string and covered it in glue to make the wrapping permanent and waterproof.
I like this result better!

About yeast

So I was visiting my friend (a chemical engineer), and it was beer brewing day. to control the temperature he uses a little "Arduino" board, that can communicate with e.g. MatLab.

We wanted to find the best way of "starting" the yeast for the brewing, so I looked online, and found that yeast is actually pretty tough - I told him to add a little sugar in some water with the yeast.

This answer of cause does not satisfy anyone, so I decided to do a little home experimenting. Knowing that I wouldn't want to spend the whole week, I opted for the little experiment, using no replications and only 20 samples.

The experiment was as follows:

Find out how best to start your yeast. I assumed that sugar and salt were deciding factors, sugar speeding up the growth and salt slowing it/killing it. The concentrations I tested were of the top of my head (no literature search here), so only one of the parameters had good values.

For testing salt and sugar I used beer bottles, as they are easy/fun to come by, and to measure yeast activity I used balloons. Yeast produces CO2 as it ferments sugar, so the bigger the balloon, the healthier the yeast.

See the setup in the picture below.

The result are pretty clear I think, though they deserve a little commenting.

• It seems that no salt and 4% salt are worse for yeast than 0.5-2% salt.
• For sugar the it seems that the sweeter the better, and my 4% were not high enough to inhibit the yeast growth. The yeast article on Wikipedia seems to indicate that sugar should inhibit the growth at some point.
• Yeast doesn't do anything in salt water.

This last comment might seem obvious, but it is not so as it was not only salt I had in the top five bottles. My first attempt on this set-up used dry yeast, which I had dissolved in water at 1% w/w concentration. All of the yeast died! So now you know that you should never try to start dry yeast in pure water (in Denmark there's no additives in dried yeast, while in other countries you can get it with e.g. ascorbic acid and growth medium, in which case it might work with pure water). This dead yeast concentration was added to the bottles prior to the live yeast being added, the latter only added after 6 hours of no activity. One could argue I should have redone the whole thing, but I thought it interesting to see if live yeast could "eat" dead dried yeast (the top row). It doesn't look like it.

So to sum up: If you want happy and strong yeast in your dough, use 0.5-2% salt, and at least 4% sugar. Word of advice, I'd go for 2% salt, as it tastes better, and improves the structure of the bread (less dry, tougher).

Feel free to copy and improve on this. In my humble opinion it's a great little experiment for school as well as for the curious kids at home.  

How to make a leather bottle al á Viking (or whatever oldschool badass culture)

I was at a Viking market south of Odense, Denmark, and I saw a guy with an awesome bottle!

Next step was to try to make one, so I made some coffee - one to get me going, one to keep me going.

 Using my kindergarten scissors and trusted Leatherman I fashioned two pieces of leather (bought at said Viking market) into the shape of a bottle.

 Because I did not have an awl, I used hammer and nail to make evenly spaced holes in both pieces of leather. To hold them in place use pegs, clamps or similar.

 I stitched them together using something called saddle-stitch, it's strong! The thread is hemp with bees wax. When stitching use two pliers, as it's almost impossible to pull the needles through with your fingers.

 Adding water to the thing causes it to "ballon". This one took about a litre of water. As you can see it's far from waterproof at this stage. If your stitch is tight enough though, the only place it won't leak, is your stitches!

 Playing with hot wax. I used bees wax, it's natural and it smells great. Melt it and pour it into your ( now dried) bottle, swirl it around, and empty the excess back into your melting cup. Repeat this to make sure you have a good coat.

 I chose to wax mine on the outside to, it makes the bottle really hard (think Nalgene bottle), and means the outer is waterproof too.

 I made a wooden cork for mine, I'm sure you can find other ways of closing yours.
The wooden cork is made to fit by heating up the opening of the bottle, then inserting the cork and afterwards tying some string tight around the neck of the bottle.

My bottle now hold mead more often than water :)

So I had some "Sugru" lying around

It had normal "flat/cylindrical" eye pieces. Using something called Sugru, a curable moldable rubber, I made new ones - they keep the unwanted light out!

Beer can stove, for when you should have listened to your girlfriend and brought a stove in the first place...

I had seen one of these made in a video once, making one in real life proved quite easy.

First step is the best - drink two beers (look for little "AL" sign on them, to make sure they're not laminate cans).

Then comes the somewhat harder part, you have to find a can with the same diameter as the rim of the beer can, red bull cans work, but are hard to drink... (try and pawn it of at a techno-party and have some vodka to go with it).

Cut the top of the two beer cans so that one is ~1.5 times as tall as the other. If you make a really tall one, you can cook longer before the fuel runs out, but it'll be more unstable as well. Try to cut really neatly. Now make evenly spaced holes (Ø<1mm) around the side of the tallest bottom part. In this same can take out the inner curved part that was the bottom of the beer can. Then cut the redbull can to the combined height of the two beer cans, when they're stuck fully into one another (this can be tricky).

After this you're good to go. Fill about 2/3 with ethanol and light through big centre opening. Let the stove heat up. When the ethanol is boiling put your desired pot on it, closing the top opening and forcing ethanol steam out the side "jets". This is the whole point of this stove design, as it preheats the fuel, and by only burning the ethanol steam in little jets, it makes sure the combustion is well oxygenated - hot stuff!

All well and good - it worked great in the kitchen, but real life has wind...
I resourced some metal and made a windscreen. If you need to do this, make sure there is no holes in it under the handle of your pot! (handle will melt)

And now, just add your favourite travel food to your trusted pot, and leave to simmer.
On a side note here, my girlfriend came up with a way of shortening cooking time for pasta/lentils/rice when you're on the trail. Simply put today dinner in a half litre bottle, fill with water, and leave it in your backpack until it's dinner time (works especially well for high altitude).

Thoughts on Vegetarianism - please comment, but think first!

Some of the (i)logical reasons for being vegetarian - some I though of, some I was told...

“It is morally wrong to take the life of a sentient being”

This is probably a big point of disagreement, since it is hard to logically prove that killing a sentient being is inherently wrong.

What is easy to agree on though is that it is wrong to cause suffering.

For further notice, “suffering” is referred to as a form of mental pain, that can be brought on by physical pain, by the expectation of pain in the future, the remembering of past pain, and pain brought on by stress because of the environment or the fellow organisms behavior.

Agreeing on this basic principle means that most slaughterhouses will have problems not causing suffering in their production of meat. There is a lot of doubt regarding the the level of consciousness of livestock, but giving them the benefit of the doubt, it can be assumed that going (for the first/last time), to the slaughterhouse will be a stressful experience a least.

Opposed to this is the end of life for livestock in small non-industrial populations. These animals will most likely die in their normal habitat, maybe by bolt gun, by the hand that usually feeds them - they’ll most likely not be stressed, as they won’t know what’s coming, and they won’t feel it coming either. No suffering here.

Lastly it can be postulated that dead group members leaves the remaining animals stressed (eg. hierarchical collapse), or mourning (as in elephants).

This is actually one of the reasons for not taking the lives of humans, apart from being a great taboo, it’ll also leave the relatives emotionally devastated.

Sorry for painting this morbid picture, but one vegan suggesting that you might as well kill a three-year-old as a pig, as they reportedly have the same mental capacities and thus suffer to the same extent when killed (no source was cited).

Fact is though that none of the above will know what happened, but death of the hominid will by all standards cause more suffering.

The conclusion for this topic is therefore that suffering should be minimalised, but animals need by no means suffer from being killed for the benefit of human consumption.

“It is healthier to be vegan”

Maybe. Studies like “The China Study” (I’ve only read the wikipedia summary) seem to prove that a vegan diet is more healthy, so surely this is true…

It didn’t take long to find other views on that opinion online, check out: http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fallac/

(a thorough statistical walkthrough of much of the study or just www.rawfoodsos.com for some light good night reading)

I my opinion/experience any diet that focuses on variety and quality of food is going to do wonders for most people - no matter what the “theme” is. The act of directing your attention to your diet, makes your diet better, everything is an active choice, and bad food are left out in this process.

As most vegans are so by choice, they choose their food with care (often out of necessity, as it can be hard to find). This is a rather stark contrast to the average citizen, who maybe buys more out of convenience than out of nutritional value. Comparing the two groups is a biased comparison, and yields predictable biased results.

“It’s more environmentally friendly”

Can be. Truth is, in most cases it probably is, and i my opinion this the only merit for vegetarian and vegan diets (allergies excluded).

For most endothermic (~warmblooded) animals around 90% of the energy going in one end is used for moving about, and for staying warm. This means that a maximum of ten percent of the energy eaten is fixed in the biomass of the animal (and accessible for our consumption). Obviously producing fodder for animals where human food could have been grown is a waste of resources, and also often pollutes because of pesticides and/or fertilizers (not mentioning the effect a huge monoculture can have on biodiversity in an area). But for getting rid of food waste, chickens and pigs are unbeatable, and together with your garden compost, they can re-fertilize your land effectively.

This is not environmentally unfriendly.

Animals can eat, and thereby convert, non-human food to human food. This can enable humans to source all their food locally, and in truth, the logistics involved in getting food around is probably more polluting than anything else (no source for this yet - working on it). So think about your quinoa from Brazil, your cashews from Vietnam or your lentils from India next time you think about how much CO2 my free range pig bacon has caused. Beef from Argentina fed with soy from USA is of course worse, but so is all production on an industrial scale.

(23/04/2015) An update to this:
In arid regions it can sometimes be more environmentally friendly to have cattle instead of growing the same amount of food as crops. By having extensive grasing of cattle in a big area one can produce a lot of food, without destroying the land and thus biodiversity. If this same land was to be farmed, huge resources would be devoted to watering the crops, draining nearby rivers, and the fields would be devastating to biodiversity.

“Animals are treated as slaves”

A hard one - it’s clearly hard to be objective here. Human slaves most likely suffer both physically and mentally, and “Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work” ((Laura Brace (2004). The Politics of Property: Labour, Freedom and Belonging. Edinburgh University Press. pp. 162–. ISBN 978-0-7486-1535-3)

Livestock is bought and sold and as such they are slaves, but surely the point of abolishing slavery is to lessen suffering!?

Think about an average wild boar, in their natural habitat they are threatened daily by wolves, bears, lack of food or the competition for it, hypothermia and if they’re male, fighting the other males and enforcing territories is a major stress factor.

I can’t be certain, but it seems to me that a free-range pig only suffer any of the above to a minor degree - if at all! (a farmer I spoke to thinks free-range pigs are cold during the winter). But, sensibly, it must be fair to assume that the life in a protected free-range pen is less stressful than the wild life. This is true for pigs, but certainly also for chickens, cattle, sheep and goats, they are all better fed, less stressed than their cousins in the wild. Not really slavery in my opinion.