I swear Heinlein reuses this in Stranger in a Strangeland. Maybe he was an anti-specialization specialist.

17/22 at 35 years old. Hope to not have to fight in a war or set a bone, and I’d rather die peacefully.

But game to grow :)

> Specialization is for insects.

Was going strong right up until this.

Figured he was going for jack of all trades, master of one. Attacking specialization outright is just silly.

In context, the quote is actually from a list of principles/observations the character has written in a notebook. I do not read it as an argument that mastering a skill/field is bad, but simply an observation that never bothering to learn new skills would be rather boring.

Yes, the ideal Captain Kirk was modeled on. Too bad Heinlein was a horrible, horrible person.

and what did he specialize in, pray tell?

only if you are vegetarian, otherwise you should be aware how the meat arrived on your table.

Strongly agree. I've been vegetarian for years, the only exception I'll make is if I go hunting with my family. If you aren't willing to kill it and clean it yourself, at least once in a while, you should probably stick to salad.

> If you aren't willing to kill it and clean it yourself, at least once in a while, you should probably stick to salad.

Why? Is the idea that meat has a unique ethical component that a consumer must grapple with up close by killing and butchering?

There seem to be many items we consume that have complicated and unethical production processes, but nobody goes around telling people they need to make their own cell phone or t shirt at least once in a while.

I'll bite: There's something 'humane' about hunting an animal, rather than it being in captivity birth to plate. T-shirts and mobile phones were never alive so this doesn't strictly apply, but I think everyone could tinker with a Raspberry Pi and sewing at least once. It keeps us grounded with reality.

I agree with you. I wouldn't be able to make a cellphone from scratch in a million years, but I have researched where they come from, and have settled on only using secondhand units, so that I am not directly complicit to everything which goes into making one.

I've developed a similar stance to most products, and have largely abandoned spending money, exactly because factory farming is not that much different from making a cheap T-shirt, if not worse, in terms of cruelty and environmental damage.

you have a point, but actually we should. not so much build your own phone but at least understand how it, and anything else is produced, where the materials come from, the environmental and other damage the production causes, how the profit is distributed (how much are those miners earning?) etc.

for food those are actually more well known, and we are starting to care about that more, but the demand for eggs from cage free hens is really not much different than a demand for better working conditions for factory workers, or for environmental friendly production processes

> but nobody goes around telling people they need to make their own cell phone or t shirt at least once in a while

Maybe we should.

Please get started, especially for the cell phone. I'll wait :-)

But do it from first principles, I want to see ore mining going on :-D

the fairphone is at least tracking where their ore comes from

how is this relevant to the topic?