I've probably been responsible for the deaths of more critters growing and harvesting organic vegetables in my backyard than eating cow. A head of spinach or cabbage usually has dozens on little bugs crawling inside it. One cow provides for a lot of steaks. I'm not sure cows are any smarter than bugs. Even if they are, one has to ask whether the lives of stupid creatures are any less valuable than the lives of smarter ones. Being a human being means you are on the top of the food chain. Unfortunately, that also guarantees that you are going to be an asshole to animals, bugs, and other little critters regardless if you are vegan, vegetarian, or carnivore. This is karma beyond your control.

Of course there's no reason to intentionally or senselessly cause harm or suffering to animals or bugs. That's karma within your control.

last week we drove past a deer that had just been hit and was struggling.  as someone who sees human death on a near daily basis, it bothered me only a little bit - i've had to create defense mechs and rationalizations that allow me to punch the clock.  pathetically, the Spock in me tried your line of argument with my wife when she started crying after seeing the deer, saying that we probably killed dozens of bugs on our short drive - it was epic fail.  i ended up having to revert to a Captain Kirk line of assuaging her distress over the whole event.   

Prime Directive.  You know, that thing every Captain of the Enterprise ignores.

My view of epistemology is that there is an absolute capital T Truth out there somewhere but that a person can never know it completely.  They can only approach it as more data is collected.

So somewhere between Anatheism and the Dao.  For me, even if you never get to the truth, the search brings you all that much closer even if it turns out to be further away than you thought.  I actually do believe there is absolute truth, it's just relative.

Ah Heisenberg, old Werner helped me win a few debates back in the day.  Love my fellow Austrians.  Always fun making someone choke on Schrodinger's cat too.   

Yes, Heisenberg was an interesting dude. Heisenberg's principle was presented to me back in the days when I took Modern Physics. I would need to go back and review many of the things I used to know and now forgot. But between that class and Error Correction stuff (Galois Fields), you ended up feeling like you really DNKS about this world (or any world for that matter). I was not alone in this, my classmates where all coming out of these classes head down eyes wide open... Literary... I you guys went through this and kept your cool then I don't know what to say... WOW maybe...

I remember when I was told that under Modern Physics one actually has a shot at going through walls, time is weird, and such and such... wait going through walls? Well there is a chance, and it seems it increases at the micro level very well... Don't know if you guys remember Diodes. Two words: Tunneling Effect. I'm not trying to show coolness factor here, just some examples of where that "WOW" came from...

I remembered there was quite a bit of Gaussian looking formulas there with Heisenberg... There was a point in my life where I was looking Gaussian curves pretty much everywhere! The addition of ANY "large" number of random processes give you.... A Gaussian process. Typical noise type used to show how well a system performs (BER(SNR))... A Gaussian... Typical OFDM output signal behavior as the size of the IFFT increases goes to... A Gaussian... Little aliens coming from other planets are... Gaussians.....Gheeeeezzzz!

AND on the other hand I'm Catholic... Go figure! But even from that end the message to me was YDKS: There was this really cool story I was told when I was in my early teens about St Thomas Aquinas (or some other St) trying to figure out the Absolute Truth while walking on the beach. Dude finds this kid moving water from the sea to a little hole in the beach sand. St Thomas looks at the kid and asks? What are you doing little dude?... Well, I'm going to move all that water into this hole! St Thomas start laughing and tell the kid to chill, that's just not going to happen... I mean, little dude, what were you thinking!?... Little dude tells St Thomas, indeed man, what where you thinking trying to figure out Absolute Truth, ha?... i.e. little dude told St dude YDKS... What hopes Ultrabike has? ZERO he believes... "I WANT THE TRUTH!"... "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!"

But I'm happy swigging my soft little pony hands in order to get to the Truth...

Saying all these opens me up for yet another beating... Or maybe I'm just freaking tired of yet another long day...