I assume he still had to pay for what he took home, so how is him going to a farm and killing a chicken, pig and goat any better than someone else doing it and selling it to him? Hell, the people at the farm would probably have done it more humanely anyways.
Yes, he wants to be more thankful by providing himself with a concrete connection between the animal and his food, but what does that really change?
And I think a lot of the pig and goat will go to waste.
It is a different thing to personally perform an act than to simply know, logically, that it is being performed on your behalf. It makes act more real, more personal, more identifiable. Knowing that someone killed a goat at some point is not the same as having to perform the act itself. I have never done something like this, but I can understand how it would make you appreciate your food more, and really understand what you are doing when you are eating.
The article indicates the animal is still taken to a butcher, so one would believe that there is no more waste than any other time.
As to what it changes, I think you are looking at the system and saying one dead goat, one fed human, what's the difference. But it isn't the result that he is trying to change; he is trying to change himself. I can't believe you could do what he is doing and not come away from it with a different outlook.
I don't see anything wrong with the practice, and if it makes him feel a little more grounded, more power to him.
> Maybe some people just have a knack for this stuff?
True, but IMO that knack has to be fostered for it to develop. If you were raised on a farm, I assume you had some guidance. I doubt that a lot of kids whose parents are software developers would go into woodworking.
You would be surprised at how many software developers have hobbies that involve working with their hands. I spend much of my free time doing wood working and am sure it's something that I would introduce my children to at a young age (as my father did with me).
You know, my dad was a very skilled woodworker and home handyman, but he passed away before he had a chance to really start teaching me very much of it.
I've always kind of wanted to get into woodworking (although it's hard right now since I have an apartment, not a house), but I'm not sure how to best start. Do you know of any good resources you could recommend for an adult who wants to get into that kind of thing?
Depends on where you live - here in NYC there's things like Makeville where you can take classes, would assume there are similar in most urban centers.
If there aren't any, it's the same as learning programming - pick a small project and look for how-tos (like this breadbox, for example: http://www.am-wood.com/nov97/bread.html) and have at it. Work your way up to more complicated things once you've got some skills and tools under your belt.
Dolls houses is something you can make with virtually no space - and because it's furniture in miniature some of what you learn can scale up when you've got more room. Things like measuring, marking, joints, and wood types all apply - if you can accurately build something at 1/12th scale you can prob build it full size. And it costs virtually zero. And your kids will LOVE you for it.
Wooden boat building is a lot of fun, and doesn't have to take a lot of space. There are kits available for beautiful kayaks and such that people have built in their apartments. Be sure to plan how to get it out of the house if you build something bigger inside :) Also, beware of potentially toxic chemicals. Some wood dust (cedar) is dangerous.
That's a good point, but I'm not sure to what extent it's true; Where did Mike Rowe's grandfather learn to be a jack-of-all-trades? Most likely from his father or grandfather. If parents today choose to be "less interested in how things got made, and more interested in how things got bought" then chances are so will their kin.
If they use the wording "recommend this" and not "liked this" then I expect sharing and liking (but perhaps not commenting on) an article to constitute as recommending it.
It looks like they're comparing their new "Blender" search server with a specific case when search volume was higher than average on their old server... while this is definitely faster, I don't think it's 3x faster on average.
>> "Following the launch of Blender, our 95th percentile latencies were reduced by 3x from 800ms to 250ms and CPU load on our front-end servers was cut in half."
It doesn't look like that 250ms latency is at their 95th percentile search volume. It looks more like the average dropped from 600ms to 250ms, which is still very impressive.
It isn't really clear if the query volume went down after they implemented blender or if it stayed equivalent to the #tsunami level. If the query volume stayed the same then they are correct in their analysis.
