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For those too lazy to read comments..

Michael considered fate at 13:58   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment

I thought this bit that my pal Ross left in response to this post on killing was pretty interesting:

Killing animals...Nature or nurture?

About killing animals... after working in an animal lab for a year and a half, I became desensitized to "sacrificing" animals. Maybe more interestingly, I became accustomed to thinking of animals as things. A friend of mine who has worked in animal labs many more years than me, describes himself as "messed up" ...he has regular nightmares about it.

Animals like to socialize, they clean themselves, they cry when they're in pain or lonely, they like to be touched, and they like to play. How could we not be "messed up" when we kill?

I had to develop a mindset that animals are just "things", so it was easier for me to treat them as such? Maybe just like you look at the animal your dinner plate.

I feel bad when I kill ants sometimes. One of the most amazing things I've ever done was resuscitate a bee that was drowned in a pool. It sounds stupid, but my argument is that WE ARE inately programmed to think killing is bad, and I'll go further to say that humans inherently want to do just the opposite...nurture and keep things alive.

I argue that we learn that killing certain animals is okay, adapting to the idea over time so that we can survive. Each person..yes..even after all the generations before us who have killed to survive...each person has to adapt to handle the harsh reality of death and killing, because I don't think it is in our blood.

Good points, I guess. I'm not so sure he is wrong, quite frankly.

That being said I would like to say that I really enjoy the word Scramjet. A Scramjet is essentially a really rockin' jet engine that has no moving mechanical parts. Essentially you cram an assload of oxygen into a tube with fuel and ignite it.. of course, this is how jets work in general.. the difference is that a normal subsonic jet compresses the air with fans. A ramjet, on the other hand, simply uses the speed of the aircraft to scoop air fast enough to feed the jet - although they only work well at supersonice speeds.. The problem is that in a ramjet one still has to slow the air down enough inside the engine for good combustion.. A scramjet takes all the above advantages - AND allows for combustion without slowing the air down. They tell us it could help us build shit that'll crank at Mach 10 or more. How cool is that?

Regardless, it's fun to say. Scramjet. Scramjet.

Sounds almost as cool as Dork, huh?