Soy Milk vs. Regular Dairy Milk

Although they are completely different substances, dairy milk and dairy milk are often compared. The reason is that soy milk has recently been marketed as a replacement for cow's milk for consumption by people in all the ways that milk are including drinking, using for cereal, in recipes, etc. Many manufacturers add many nutrients such as the vitamins and minerals as vitamin d and calcium. Some also add flavoring to make the taste more comparable to milk.

Taste wise, they do taste different than each other. Some people say that soy milk is not good, or that it is an acquired taste. That being said, I think they are both very good. In fact I like soy milk better than dairy milk in most cases. I would much rather have a big glass of soy milk to drink by itself or with food. I also like soy milk more on cereal. Sometimes though milk just can't be replaced. For example if you are eating ice cream or another type of sweets. So personally I like soy milk more and use it more than regular cow's milk.

As far as nutrients go, soy milk contains protein and calcium - two of the main nutrients in dairy milk. Many manufacturers add even more nutrients, which of course vary by producer. Many brands of soy milk contain b vitamins, vitamin d, vitamin c, and many minerals. These added nutrients also help soy milk compete with dairy milk. People don't want to replace dairy milk with something that has little or no nutritional value. Some dairy farms use steroids or growth hormones on their cows. This can be detrimental to the quality of the milk they produce. However there are studies that suggest that too much soy can be unhealthy, especially for males.

Soy milk does not need to be refrigerated until it is opened. It can last up to a year on the shelf before it is opened. However after it is opened it must be kept in the fridge where it can last for about a week. However milk has a determined shelf life and it must always be kept at a cool temperature. You can't increase the shelf life of milk.

So I guess that both soy milk and cow milk has their own places on the market. Some people will always prefer cows milk, while some people are lactose intolerant or just don't like milk so they buy soy milk instead. They may not taste the same, but maybe that's a good thing. The nutritional content is very similar so one is not really much better for you than the other. It mostly comes down to what you like better. Milk is usually cheaper than soy milk. However soy milk can be stored for a long time so you can stock up on it and have extra in the pantry. You could never do that with milk.

A Man's History Does Not Always Predict His Future

Some people always seem to think that people are bound to repeat their mistakes over and over, so if they have done something wrong or bad in the past, they are likely to do the same in the future. However you must think on the contrary - if a man has done wrong in the past and has had to pay for it, he is likely to remember and not make the same mistake again. This goes for everything from the small insignificant actions to the large and very major actions with severe outcomes. For instance, if a baby touches the hot stove, he will get burnt and learn that it is hot and not to touch it. Or on the larger scale, if a man commits a crime and has to do time in prison, he is more likely to remember that next time and not commit the crime. Even a great man like Henry Ford thinks this way. As a matter of fact, in his book My Life and Work, Henry Ford wrote, "we do not hire a man's history, we hire the man. If he has been in jail, that is no reason to say that he will be in jail again. I think, on the contrary, he is, if given a chance, very likely to make a special effort to keep out of jail." And Personally I think he is absolutely correct in this. Just because someone has done something in the past does not mean they are a bad person. Good people sometimes do bad things by accident or of no fault of their own. And of course we all make bad decisions every now and then, just because some people make different decisions does not always make them bad. Of course some people who go to jail are bad and do belong there, but I think the majority of people who get caught up in the legal system for the first time are not bad people they just did a few bad things and got caught. But if someone goes to jail chronically and just doesn't learn, then obviously there is something wrong with them. But I just wanted to make a point that I thought of while reading.

How Fast Technology Increases

In relation to my last post, I just wanted to write a note about how fast technology increases. Something called Moore's Law states that technology will continue to double in capability, speed, capacity, etc. every 18 months. And I think it has pretty much stayed true over the years. What made me think about this is the state of hard drives. When I was young, they said hard drives couldn't be created larger than 40 megabytes! Then a few years ago, I read an article about how they found a way to increase the capacity of hard drives to about 250 gigabyte (about half for 2 1/2" laptop drives), but that they would not be able to go much, if any, larger than that. Fast forward to today, when standard hard disk drives can hold 4 terabytes and solid state drives, which were pretty much non-existant a few years ago because flash memory could not hold more than a few gigs, can now hold over 2 terabytes in a very small form factor.

How Fast Things Change and Information Spreads With Technology Nowadays

Back about 100 or 200 years ago, information used to take days, weeks, or even months to spread. The Pony Express was a revolution in the speed of mail and still that was incredibly slow compared to today's standards. Then inventions like the telegraph and then the telephone changed the world. Instead of waiting months for people to get across the country on horses to bring mail, bits of information could take literally seconds to travel the entire world. With the instantaneous manner of the internet, news can spread to millions all over the country and world within hours.

What made me think of this is today I heard something on the news that I wanted to see on the internet. The news was talking about something that happened on one of the late night talk shows. So I go on google, type a few words in and bam there was the video I wanted. Later I wanted to show somebody this video so I went back to google, the search term that I used earlier was still in the search history so I started typing and it auto-completely filled in the rest with the same exact term I used earlier. But the second time the entire search engine results page was different. The site that I saw the video on earlier didn't show up on the first page so I clicked another link. It just happened to be that the link was to a video on bing, funny since I was using google. But it just goes to show that everything changes these days. As a web developer who is also familiar with web marketing, I know it can take months or years to get onto a good spot on google. To know that you can be blown out of the water by competing pages just because something happened on TV or something similar is pretty scary. Why go through the work of making good content that people want to link to and getting the word out by good promotion when you can be knocked out of position within a matter of hours. Companies that have a decent SEO operation might have statistics run every month or so. In this time so much could happen online and in the world that you wouldn't even know what happened and you could go from rank 1 to 100. Well that is why it is important to have very good content and great marketing so you can try to stay relevant no matter what happens. And also don't ever put all your eggs in one basket otherwise you could lose everything you have going on before you ever knew what hit you.

Dogs Do The Cutest Things

All dogs develop their own personality that differs as much as those of humans. My dogs always seem to have a sweet and funny side. For example, my miniature pinscher Lucas always hides food in the oddest places. One of his favorite things to hide around the house is bread. He loves to hide any kind of bread, rolls, pizza crust, etc. I don't know why if it is just a coincidence or if he figured out that bread gets crunchy if you save it for a few days hidden in the bottom of the laundry basket. Besides the laundry basket or pile of clothes on the ground next to it, he also likes to hide things in corners, under tables, behind furniture, and anywhere he thinks we won't find it. Well today I saw him pawing at something on the ground. I didn't think anything of it at first but he kept on doing it. So I looked down and I saw that he was trying to get into my girlfriend's makeup bag. So I open it up and what do I find? Of course, a piece of stale bread. He was so happy to get it out, but then after I gave it to him he just left it there untouched, where it still lies in fact. He also likes to nudge and paw at our blankets on the bed until we let him under. He loves to cuddle under the blankets to stay warm. Right now I am in one room with the door closed and my girlfriend and somebody else is out there and he knows it so he won't quit. As I am typing this right now he just jumped in my lap and stepped all over my laptop and almost erased this whole post. And he won't stop liking me now. LOL He is so cute.

My other dog Brian, who now lives with my mom, has some funny quirks as well. Since he is a basenji he naturally has some funny quirks. But I think my basenji has some very odd behavior characteristics (that's why many people refer to the Basenji Training Guide for questions and information about their basenji). Last night he got up in the middle of the night, came in my room and sniffed around then left. He went in the other room and sniffed around and then went right back to his bed in the hallway. He also loves to do his basenji yodel right when anybody leaves the house for about 30 seconds. But it is so loud the 30 seconds seems like 30 minutes. Sometimes he will even go outside and seem to forget anybody is home and yodel and howl for a bit. Then when we come outside he keeps going for another few seconds before he stops. Speaking of making strange noises, anytime that he is laying and anybody tries to hold him or pick him up or he thinks they are trying to pick him up he will growl the meanest growl you've ever heard from a basenji. Even if you just try and pet him sometimes he will start growling. If I actually pick him up while he is laying or sleeping, he gets so mad. And with some people, I think mainly people who wear contact lenses, he loves to sniff their eyeballs. He will get right up in my eye, touching my eyelashes and sniff for a few seconds and then move on to the next one.

And don't even get me started on my brother's bulldog. Now a bulldog is a breed of dog that requires an instruction manual (or Bulldog Training Guide :) LOL). He used to be the sweetest little puppy but then when he went through puberty and went slightly crazy. He got very aggressive with people, especially males. But especially the males in the house besides my brother (his master). But especially me! To this day, even though I haven't seen him in a few years, he starts growling and acting very aggressive the second he sees me. I can be in across the room and he will automatically notice me as soon as he or I enter the room. We thought having him spayed would help, that is what everybody told us. But no it didn't seem to help one bit with his behavior. I bet my brother could write a book about his English bulldog.

And all my dogs love to dig in the trash and food. Once my dog got into a pizza box that I thought was up too high for him to reach. But no he got into it and spilled hot sauce, a whole 4 ounce container to fall and spill all over the carpet and walls. It was ridiculous. And after that he ate what was left of a pizza - I think it was about half a pizza. And my girlfriend's old dog once got into a box of valentine's day chocolate. Needless to say, she ate the whole box. But she never got sick or even looked uneasy or ill. Well I could go on like this hours writing about my dogs, especially their funnier moments. But like I said, my brother could write an whole book on his English bulldog, so I bet I could write an entire library of books on my dogs!

XBox One - Not the Original XBox 1, the New XBox One

We've been waiting for it for years now. 8 years to be exact. But now it's finally here, the new Xbox has been announced. And it's not called the Xbox 720 like most people have speculated. Actually the number to denote the model number wasn't doubled to 720, it wasn't increased at at - it was decreased. By 359 actually. That's right the new Xbox will now be the Xbox One. If you're like me and all my friends, that's what you already call the original Xbox, which means that the new Xbox model will cause nothing but confusion among gamers. Hopefully the technical specs and other features more than make up for the stupidity in the naming convention.

So what are the tech specs and cool new features of the Xbox One? Well don't look for the controller itself to be a exciting new design. It looks pretty much exactly the same as all the different Xbox 360 controllers, so nothing new and exciting in the design department there. The console itself, and the included Kinect both have a cool new design that distinguishes it from other Xbox models. And speaking of Kinect, yes the Xbox One will come bundled with a new and updated Kinect that is so sensitive that it can sense movement in your wrists as well as detect your heartbeat. Some people have dismissed this fact, but personally I think it is really cool. Not just the fact that you can sense your heart beat and your wrists moving, which is pretty cool and can add some neat game play elements. But also the fact that all Xbox One models will come with a Kinect. That means that all games can take advantage of the features provided by Kinect. I don't expect all games to use the Kinect as the only controlling mechanism, but imagine if they used the Kinect in conjunction with the regular controller. In a racing or first person shooter game you could move your head around to move the view in the game. If you moved to the left or right a little the camera could shift slightly in that direction. Or if you ducked your head down your character on the screen could match your movement and duck also. This wouldn't completely change the gameplay, but it would give it a great new immersive feeling that no other console could match. I think that this could give game developers a bunch of new options for their games. I know the Kinect is nothing new, but the fact that all Xbox One consoles will have a Kinect means that they can now take advantage of that peripheral like the couldn't before. And as far as the technical aspects, the new Kinect will capture 1080p @ 30 fps, compared to the current Kinect that only captures VGA.

More info will come out as we get closer to the release date, but what they have shown us seems pretty cool. Hopefully it lives up to the hype. You can find more info about the XBox One here: http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/21/microsoft-confirms-that-the-xbox-one-will-come-with-an-incredibly-sensitive-new-kinect/

Should Supreme Court Justices Get Automatic Tenure?

All Supreme Court justices get automatic tenure as soon as they are appointed to the position. But is this a good idea or not? Personally I think that it is a bad idea. I think that the Supreme Court needs to have a good amount of diversity and if people are allowed to stay on the Supreme Court then the same people will be there for years. I believe that the Supreme Court needs new blood as it were, so that they have new perspectives of cases. If not they keep the same people for years on end they will end up ruling the same way in different cases. But maybe they should have new and different views on things. What are your views on the subject? Should they get automatic tenure? Should some Supreme Court justices get tenure? Or should they have term limits just like all political positions? I believe the latter. Post your views in the comments section, I would love to read what everybody thinks.