Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 11:28:46 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com> Cc: cjclark@alum.mit.edu, Salvo Bartolotta <bartequi@neomedia.it>, "P. U. (Uli) Kruppa" <root@pukruppa.de>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Use of the UNIX Trademark Message-ID: <20011011112846.A17422@lpt.ens.fr> In-Reply-To: <00ad01c15232$ea21a340$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>; from tedm@toybox.placo.com on Thu, Oct 11, 2001 at 01:58:37AM -0700 References: <20011011095845.B475@lpt.ens.fr> <00ad01c15232$ea21a340$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
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Ted Mittelstaedt said on Oct 11, 2001 at 01:58:37: [snipped] The thrust of your mail is that many diseases are due to modern lifestyles. I agree there. No argument. But it's not easy to address that symptom. It's not just polluted air which causes cancer; it's additives in food, pesticides, junk food, synthetic drinks, etc. I was astounded to see the size of the "Nutrition Facts" label on American cans of Coke, or packets of potato chips, for instance. Do people actually add up their daily nutrition requirments from these things? None of these "Nutrition Facts" lists tells you what other poisonous chemicals may exist in the container: they only list carbohydrates, proteins, fats and other broad food categories. You claim that people in third world countries aren't worried about overpopulation. That's not true. The educated people are worried, and many studies have shown that education (especially, education of women) is related to lower birth rates. Overpopulation is a problem. But it has no correlation with tropical diseases, which exist for the same reason that the other diversity of tropical flora and fauna exist: conditions there are conducive to life. (Sometimes I think tropical countries are overpopulated and poor because one can be phenomenally poor and still live; one cannot live without shelter in a European winter. Not a very relevant factor in today's west with social security etc, but very relevant indeed 100 years ago.) You were arguing that epidemics don't take place except in crowded areas. True enough, but disease doesn't have to mean epidemic. Strange diseases can crop up in very deserted places too, and in the long term, take large tolls of life. Rather off-topic, anyway, from the original discussion about patents. R To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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