2003-04-04: Emergency Meat-Shield Supply

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The Comment Golem
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2003-04-04: Emergency Meat-Shield Supply

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Discussion thread for Emergency Meat-Shield Supply
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2012-11-23: [CT]Emergency Meat-Shield Supply

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Discussion thread for [CT]Emergency Meat-Shield Supply
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Nyerguds
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Re: 2012-11-23: [CT]Emergency Meat-Shield Supply

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...is that an Excel Saga reference? :mrgreen:
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Re: 2012-11-23: [CT]Emergency Meat-Shield Supply

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The proper use for regenerating food supplies is to eat them whole and let them regenerate inside your stomach.
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Re: 2012-11-23: [CT]Emergency Meat-Shield Supply

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Anthony wrote:The proper use for regenerating food supplies is to eat them whole and let them regenerate inside your stomach.
That's a body horror waiting to happen. Either it will regenerate faster than you can digest, leaving you with an entire organism either bursting through your chest or clawing its way up your throat, or it will turn out that the regeneration is entirely nonmagical-- meaning it obeys conservation of mass-- and it'll devour you from the inside out.
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Re: 2012-11-23: [CT]Emergency Meat-Shield Supply

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BloodHenge wrote:or it will turn out that the regeneration is entirely nonmagical-- meaning it obeys conservation of mass-- and it'll devour you from the inside out.
Even magical regeneration may obey conservation of mass. I though Ellis regenerates simply by putting all pieces of his body back together. If he HAVE some mass to start with - familliars can be from something which isn't ordinarry matter. I always suspected it's that case with Pokemons - the technology which can transfer them to and from computers doesn't seem to work with humans, although that may be simply because writters didn't bothered to think about that.
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Re: 2012-11-23: [CT]Emergency Meat-Shield Supply

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I probably could have worded that better. I basically meant that, unless the matter needed to regenerate is produced spontaneously or brought in from elsewhere, either the creature won't regenerate while being digested, or it will have to ingest its surroundings. Although, if it regenerates by reconstituting its original mass, that could cause problems all its own as it's continually undigested.

If Pokémon aren't composed of ordinary matter, then it seems rather odd that they would eat (unless what they eat isn't composed of ordinary matter either, but in the anime Ash's Pikachu likes the same kind of ketchup that humans eat). Another disconcerting thing about the Pokémon world is that, aside from Pokémon themselves, the only living things appear to be humans and sessile plants, Pokémon appear to be universally sapient or near-sapient, yet humans still eat eggs and meat. Even trainers, breeders, and coordinators, who seem to spend the majority of their time empathizing with sapient beasts, eat eggs, meat, and milk that have no visible in-universe source other than these selfsame sapient beasts.
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Re: 2012-11-23: [CT]Emergency Meat-Shield Supply

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BloodHenge wrote:
Anthony wrote:The proper use for regenerating food supplies is to eat them whole and let them regenerate inside your stomach.
That's a body horror waiting to happen. Either it will regenerate faster than you can digest, leaving you with an entire organism either bursting through your chest or clawing its way up your throat, or it will turn out that the regeneration is entirely nonmagical-- meaning it obeys conservation of mass-- and it'll devour you from the inside out.
there is a third option where it regenerates slower then you digest and "ignores" conservation of mass (energy to matter conversion, the energy being ambient mana) in which case it will only be getting smaller until fully dissolved, but in the duration it will provide more sustenance then expected, making it excellent as an iron ration.

Problem here is that a society with excess has an obesity problem not a malnutrition problem...

Also, why is magic limited to only regenerating living beings?

Also, as a familiar he is a disspellable mana construct. As such eating him would be like trying to eat mana rather then flesh (something the human stomach isn't equipped to do).

Another reason against magical slaughterhouses is that it might just not be cost efficient or practical even if still doable.
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Re: 2012-11-23: [CT]Emergency Meat-Shield Supply

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taltamir wrote:Also, as a familiar he is a disspellable mana construct. As such eating him would be like trying to eat mana rather then flesh (something the human stomach isn't equipped to do).
Do we know that it isn't? I've never tried it. Beyond that, Meji's a Half-Elf, so even if humans can't digest raw mana, maybe she can.
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Re: 2012-11-23: [CT]Emergency Meat-Shield Supply

Post by Imp-Chan »

taltamir wrote:Problem here is that a society with excess has an obesity problem not a malnutrition problem...
Actually, it frequently has both, and malnutrition can cause obesity. The widespread assumption is that in order to be fat, people have to be eating too much, but really eating the wrong things (or even the right things but in the wrong ways) can cause it just as much.

For example, growing up, I routinely ate only two meals a day. Lunch was a peanut butter and jelly or honey sandwich, an apple, some veggie sticks, and a juice box (only 100% juice) or a small diet soda. Dinner was usually some variation of brown rice and steamed veggies, or vegetarian stews, or similar. Proteins ran the gamut from lentils with brown rice to fish (which I didn't like) to chicken. Usually chicken breasts, because they're very lean. Rarely did we eat beef or pork, and when we did it was usually small amounts in a stir-fry form. There was virtually no added fat anywhere in our diet, everything was made fresh and from scratch. It sounds ideally healthy, it definitely wasn't overeating, and I was pretty active, but I was still overweight or right on the uppermost edge of on weight the entire time I was growing up. Why? My body was on a permanent binge/starve cycle, and on top of that it was routinely deprived of necessary nutritional fats. So, I'd do stupid things like spend my allowance on salty fatty junk food, and then eat the whole bag of chips in one go, because my body was craving fat and it didn't know any better.

That was bad enough when I was in an environment with regular access to healthy food... when I got to college and was so poor that I was rationing my ramen, I started gaining weight like crazy. I looked back and did the math later... I was eating fewer than 800 calories a day on average, and I actually thought I must be overeating because I was gaining weight. I would break down and splurge on going to the dining hall with my friends (I did not have a meal plan), and then of course I would overeat for real, and then I'd hate myself for both the expenditure and the indulgence. From the perspective of a decade later and a fair bit of research, I can see that the fact that I did that probably is what kept my body alive when I ate so little the rest of the time, but I had a seriously unhealthy relationship with food, and it hasn't exactly gotten a lot better since. It's a continuing battle to eat small meals often, and when you're depressed or in pain all the time it's really hard to get out there and make yourself be active, either.

If there was just one class that I could require for all US students, it would be "How Food Works," a combination of studying nutrition and learning how to prepare and maintain a balanced diet on a very tight budget. I think it would have a massive and positive impact on our nation, affecting everything from health to body image to personal debt. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go finish making Lemon Chicken Orzo Soup.

^-^'
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