Enquiring minds want to know

Since I was a wee lad, I've been a person that asked questions, tested ideas and questioned authority.

It must have been around 2nd grade. I got sent to the principles office for questioning a teachers understanding of the universe. I stood my ground because I knew that I was right and she was wrong. You see, the order of the planets is not fix. One planet, Pluto, has an elliptical orbit and is periodically closer to the sun the Uranus. Not more than a few months before this, this silly second grader had read that in the newspaper. Silly teach, how dare you question me! [evil laugh]

I cracked my first network in Junior High. Given myself super admin authority and creating a small gaming universe to keep my attention during free time.

In High School, I dabbled in Speech team. I found a category that suited me to a tee. Discussion. In this category, a group of 6-9 students are put in a group and given a task and as a group, solve the problem or develop a sound strategy for solving the problem. Here's where I excelled. I was very good at taking an idea and testing it. Kicking the tires and seeing if it had legs. Why is this useful? Because when someone in the group is trying to be in charge, the others tend to follow the guy that get you to the end.

In college, I first attending a Midwestern Lutheran private college. Why would someone like me do this, you ask? Well, the money was right. It was cheaper to go here then the U of M. And besides, on my campus visits, there were a lot of hot girls. Be honest. How much thinking do you think an 18 year old boy really does that isn't about girls. I said be honest.

While attending this school, I drifted between many subjects, never really finding my niche. I enjoy many things, but mostly, I've always enjoyed exercising my noodle. I came across a line of classes on J-term that really got me going. It was a class called, "Science and Religion" and was taught by the religion department. Me, in a religion class? Its true. I enjoyed it so much, I eventually decided I wanted to major in Religion. I know. Everyone that knew me was shocked.

I had discover that religion departments were just about turning out good Lutherans, but could be about something completely different...philosophy religion. We studied what made religious thought what it was and in particular what shaped religious thought. Whoa! That's not where this was going...but I felt I needed to let you know.

In that class I mentioned earlier, I found a couple of books that really spoke to me. It told things like I thought the should be. Not that book, these books, "The Consequences of Pragmatism", by Richard Rorty and "Structure of Scientific Revolution", by Thomas Kuhn. These books didn't change me as much as they helped me figure out who I was.

Pragmatism is a concept by which you evaluate an action by its outcomes. Some things are simple, if I whack my head on the keyboard, my head will hurt. Other things aren't so easy.

After all this explaining, I'm going to add to my repertoire some questions that hopefully someone out there can help answer for me. Since I like to test theories and really dive into subjects so that I might hope to someday understand others view points, I just need a little help sometimes with the details.

Groups like PeTA strongly encourage everyone to become a vegan. A vegan being someone that doesn't eat any animal products. I really want to know, if the entire world stops eating meat, whats going to happen to the cows? Seriously. If farmers no longer need to raise cows to produce milk and beef, the millions of cows on the planet will no longer be needed. What is the plan for dealing with them? Have you met a cow? They don't do well without a farmer. The have no natural defenses and are really quite dumb. Will we be letting the free to roam around until they are some animals lunch? What's gonna happen to all the cows? (Chickens too?)