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If you care about this, don't waste time typing here, go to this campaign at Greenpeace to support Senator Tom Daschle's alternative energy plan - the Senate votes on it on only a week, in late February!

Now that the con artists on Wall Street are getting into what they call 'nanotech' and leading governments are starting to restrict basic science for fear of "terrorists", it's not surprising that the Foresight gollums and Greenpeace elves are starting a wary catfight. Each seems unsure about what the hell the other is talking about, but seems to see the other as a rival to take over the world and control "The Precious" AI and nanotech. It's hilarious.

Most highly recommended for amusement value are this rant from LSMcGill who claims among other things that "Ethical and moral debate is worthless" (which someone should tell Josh Storrs Hall) and that it's a choice between Foresight and bin Laden(this stuff must be easy if you can do it in a cave in the boonies while being carpet bombed!) and this unofficial stupid Al-Gore-like plan to take over the world by 'safely building a nice Bible type gardener God'. I nearly fell off my chair! Clearly these people are all on some kind of crack.

Also amusing are these heated exchanges between Dr. Frankenstein and Unabomber wannabes on kurzweilai.net and the thousands of amazing 'Also By Anonymous' posts at Greenpeace - takes a looong time to load (from Amsterdam) but well worth it!!!

Just read the anonymous post titles and you will feel exactly like you spent a week in a 'coffee house' over there! Better than a vacation in a crackhouse. Reality ranges from +0.95 to -3 on their own weird scale. Why not wade in wherever? Like slashdot anonymous folks are welcome but unlike slashdot they don't fall out of the list due to such silly stuff as scoring.

Enjoy!

Now that the con artists on Wall Street are getting into what they call 'nanotech' and leading governments are starting to restrict basic science for fear of "terrorists", it's not surprising that the Foresight gollums and Greenpeace elves are starting a wary catfight. Each seems unsure about what the hell the other is talking about, but seems to see the other as a rival to take over the world and control "The Precious" AI and nanotech. It's hilarious.

Most highly recommended for amusement value are this rant from LSMcGill who claims among other things that "Ethical and moral debate is worthless" (which someone should tell Josh Storrs Hall) and that it's a choice between Foresight and bin Laden(this stuff must be easy if you can do it in a cave in the boonies while being carpet bombed!) and this unofficial stupid Al-Gore-like plan to take over the world by 'safely building a nice Bible type gardener God'. I nearly fell off my chair! Clearly these people are all on some kind of crack.

Also amusing are these heated exchanges between Dr. Frankenstein and Unabomber wannabes on kurzweilai.net and the thousands of amazing 'Also By Anonymous' posts at Greenpeace - takes a looong time to load (from Amsterdam) but well worth it!!!

Just read the anonymous post titles and you will feel exactly like you spent a week in a 'coffee house' over there! Better than a vacation in a crackhouse. Reality ranges from +0.95 to -3 on their own weird scale. Why not wade in wherever? Like slashdot anonymous folks are welcome but unlike slashdot they don't fall out of the list due to such silly stuff as scoring.

Enjoy!

Now that the con artists on Wall Street are getting into what they call 'nanotech' and leading governments are starting to restrict basic science for fear of "terrorists", it's not surprising that the Foresight gollums and Greenpeace elves are starting a wary catfight. Each seems unsure about what the hell the other is talking about, but seems to see the other as a rival to take over the world and control "The Precious" AI and nanotech. It's hilarious.

Most highly recommended for amusement value are this rant from LSMcGill who claims among other things that "Ethical and moral debate is worthless" (which someone should tell Josh Storrs Hall) and that it's a choice between Foresight and bin Laden(this stuff must be easy if you can do it in a cave in the boonies while being carpet bombed!) and this unofficial stupid Al-Gore-like plan to take over the world by 'safely building a nice Bible type gardener God'. I nearly fell off my chair! Clearly these people are all on some kind of crack.

Also amusing are these heated exchanges between Dr. Frankenstein and Unabomber wannabes on kurzweilai.net and the thousands of amazing 'Also By Anonymous' posts at Greenpeace - takes a looong time to load (from Amsterdam) but well worth it!!!

Just read the anonymous post titles and you will feel exactly like you spent a week in a 'coffee house' over there! Better than a vacation in a crackhouse. Reality ranges from +0.95 to -3 on their own weird scale. Why not wade in wherever? Like slashdot anonymous folks are welcome but unlike slashdot they don't fall out of the list due to such silly stuff as scoring.

Enjoy!

Read this for a more intense idea of how Greens are thinking these days. Every time I read this I like the idea better.

I thought this was really funny until I realized that 1400 million people all trying to get rich quick by hacking up untested new molecules in sim on their new Red Flag Linux systems, easily hacked by the government or each other, was in fact the end of every wild thing in this biosphere.

I am now with Bill Joy, and "the terrorists", both of whom are way less scary than Pentagon killer robots or Chinese nanotech hackers. Sheesh. Just like you guys read William Gibson and built Cyberspace, now you are building Neal Stephenson's creepy Diamond Age world! And in that world, remember, the Chinese came out on top.

Okay then, I'll bite.

What if Monsanto then proceeded to BUY all of the land in the affected town, and had the residents pay rent or move out?

Regarding punishment, the state prosecutes criminal cases. What you (currently) hire a lawyer for is civil (monetary) damages. Since the libertarian stance on criminal punishment is to support restitution to the fullest degree possible by the wrongdoer, the part about hiring a lawyer for the civil case could be skipped.

As for getting scientists to conduct studies to prove harm, this surely be done more cheaply and effectively (with less corruption potential) than the EPA by a private organiziation supported by voluntary donation. In fact, Greenpeace already does this.

"There is no Linux for drinking water, you know."

Well from a spectrum of mainstream to full on radicals there are these organizations:

Sierra Club

Greenpeace

Earth First!

As point of fact, I am a scientist and I played a direct role in engineering a virus based biopesticide (baculovirus). I am absolutely convinced that biopesticides and engineered plants can be a safe component of farming technology. I am also convinced that corporations can not be trusted to design the best comprehensive technologies and certainly should not be trusted with our seed banks. If this topic concerns you, then send some funding to, or roll up your sleeves with, one of the above organizations.

That doesn't mean that the pursuit or release of knowledge should be restricted in any way.

As a scientist I am more concerned with what other scientists are *doing* that with what they are *developing*. Our colleagues who developed the techniques to clone DNA into plant cells (a number of whom I know personally) did nothing wrong, and should not have delayed publication because of the "ethical" consideration of what someone else could do with it. The people who are genetically altering corn to make it increasingly resistant to chlorinated organics (roundup) are *doing* something unethical; and they are the ones, largely highly intelligent people, whom we need to reach and educate. Some of the things I'm attempting to do could have direct, terrible applications in germ warfare - but they could also be a great boon to medical research. The resolution of that dillemma is clear: we cannot call a halt to scientific progress because of fear.

Other scientists, and some people may draw an increasingly meaningless distinction and call them engineers, are actually applying these developments to do things that shouldn't be done. Biopreparat doesn't exist anymore, but I'm sure biological weapons research continues. The people who nerve gassed the Tokyo subway where highly educated. These people are doing more damage with their own scientific expertise than laymen ever can, or will, with something you release.

Ethics requirements at graduate schools should be specific, factual and tailored to the particular focus of the student. Individuals who want to go into plant genetics should take courses in the political economics of third world agriculture - the same ones that pol sci students take. Courses in "ethics" are substanceless exercises in sophistry (say that 10 times fast) that don't teach the consequences of the particular actions a student might actually take.

While relatively uneducated terrorists can make certain uses of publically released technologies like culturing eukaryotic cells or near unbreakable encryption, the *real* danger, and it is a real danger, is when the scientists ourselves are actually setting out to do harm; or applying these technologies in ignorance for our own economic gain.

If you love New York, your heart will break when the smoke clears. Something about the city is busted for good, no matter what the mayor says.

One has only to think of London under the blitz or the San Francisco earthquake to know that great cities can recover from great disasters.

According to seminal urbanologist Jane Jacobs, cities are inherently resilient to catastrophe. More damage is done by misguided urban planning.

The World Trade Center, as its name suggests, serves a national and international market. The demand for the products and services that the companies in the World Trade Tower provided is still there. Compared to the damage caused by hurricanes in Florida, the cost to rebuild is manageable.

If New York could thrive despite a crime rate that killed many more people than the terrorist over the last 10 years, it can survive this single event.

I suspect that the most lasting effect is that architects will reconsider the need for 110 storey buildings.

And before anyone says it, yes, computers have reached Wales now...

Better not run Harpoon on them, or Greenpeace will be pissed.

Regarding nuclear material sent up with the help of rockets. Already these are widely used as power sources in Spy Satellites and deep space probes. Plenty of information is available. Then there are the UN/international guidelines.

Lets face it, Radioactive material, when not handled properly, is very dangerous. I work with some radioactive compounds (biological research), and I have a healthy respect for it.

However, some notable people do not. I dont know what the situation is in the states, but BNFL (British Nuclear Fuels Ltd) have been involved in numerous scandals over the last few years. This has not just affected the UK either. And that scares the shit out of me. And some anti-nuclear campagners.

Because we have become such a disgusting Global communitiy of useless consumers an attack on a SUV auto sales makes a small impact.

What really needs to happen is to attack and critisize and pressure EVERY wasteful auto dealer.

That would cause a change. That is what it takes before it is called a revolution.

We certainly have the technology for plentiful free energy. How many laws are on the books requiring a home to have some sort of solar power? How many corporations do you know who voluntarily save energy even though it will cost them more money? How many billions of dollars are spent bribing politicians in order for a corporation to continue its wasteful practices?

Stop supporting GAS you ignorant people. If you stop buying it. It will stop being important. What if GOD is unreasonably strict? We are all fucked...

Some other things to support
www.greenpeace.org
www.norml.org
www.disclosureproject.org

Due to your use of the phrase "hire car" I'm assuming this mathematical error is due to your familiarity with the metric system and lack thereof with miles and hours.

Travelling across the US in 2 minutes would be measured by multiplying 30 times the width of the country (~3000). This trip would average 90,000 mph. If this American motorist were driving the typical greenhouse-gas emitting SUV, the trip would consume 7500 gallons of gasoline.

They [the Chinese] probably don't even have all those nukes they keep whispering about. Have we ever seen them detonate one? Well have we? NO! They don't exist.
Ah, that would explain the newspaper articles about the non-existent explosion of china's imaginary nuclear weapons, for example here is one from cnn. And here is a link from greenpeace (not my favorite people) that contains a history of Chinese nuclear testing. How about a CIA paper on ICBM threats to the US that covers China's ICBMs. If you thing we've never seen China set off a nuclear weapon then you just haven't been paying attention!

Monsanto definitely has a bad rep.

Monsanto: Pure Concentrated Evil.

Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

What was significant about the Pinatubo eruption was the 17 Megatons of sulphur dioxide (which measurably increased ozone damage for at least two years), and the sulfates in the cloud of debris (5 cubic kilometers of stuff, with much of the heavier stuff landing nearby) in the upper atmosphere which shaded the Earth and decreased global temperatures.

You do not appear to have grasped either the seriousness of the problem or any of the views that you're trying to discredit. Perhaps that's why you haven't seen more 'substantive' evidence?

This is not about smog, or smoke, or anything you can dig up and look at. It's about the impact of industrialisation and, indirectly, capitalism on the equilibrium of the planet.

Which isn't an intrinsically bad thing, morally, except for the fact that we depend on that balance for our survival.

Global warming is not a synonym for climate change, it's just a particular example. The most severe problems we face are not simple sea-level issues but complex climatic phenomena like the direction and strength of the gulf stream and the migration of krill in the antarctic. These are the roots of the food chain and we're not going to like it much when they're cut. There are respectable, peer-reviewed studies (reg required) of these basic cycles which show them to be disrupted by our blundering.

There's a hundred-year lead time on this one. The changes we are seeing now have been accumulating for a century, and even if we all suddenly started conducting ourselves like a sane species instead of fouling our nest and flinging it around, we would still see terrible effects for decades.

So you're right, up to a point: the ability of people to fix this is highly questionable, their possession of the necessary insight even more so. But to deny that we are responsible for careless changes to the global ecosystem with unpredictable effects is the worst kind of head-burying.

A: Given the amount of energy required to mine and process uranium from the Earth's crust, nuclear fission is actually a less efficient form of power than traditional coal-fired power plants.

B: The energy expended in mining and processing (which is far more intensive for uranium than for any form of traditional fossil fuel) comes in the form of fossil fuels. This resurrects the problem of global warming, which you purported to solve. Furthermore, fission is not a sustainable model (ie. we can't do it indefinitely) due to the large input required in the form of fossil fuels, so neither environmental impact nor sustainability has been addressed.

C: Chernobyl

D: Three Mile Island

E: What were you saying about fission being "one such power source" that has "little environmental impact?"

F: The inventor of the LISP programming language does not qualify as a source. He is a programmer, not a scientist, not any qualified authority on energy or sustainability.

G: If you want to contend that an accident on the scale of or larger than Chernobyl will not occur, you're a moron. The fact of the matter is, it cannot be guaranteed that an accident or deliberate attack or earthquake or unforseen incident will not occur. Worst case scenario with solar or similar sources of power, power goes out. Worst case scenario with fission, power goes out and thousands die of massive radiation leak.

H: Remember that fission reactors are basically controlled A-bombs... even fusion is a better idea, given its far lower likelihood of massive explosions scattering radiation over FEMA's "ingestion area" of 7,500 square miles.

The question, then, is:

In light of the fact that other, cleaner and more sustainable sources of energy exist that lack even the remotest possibility of massive damage to the environment,

IS FISSION WORTH THE RISK?
---sig---

There are plenty of reasons why GM technology should be approached with caution; however I have to say I'm pretty repulsed by the means Greenpeace and similar organisations take to it. Their campaigns are almost entirely based around fuzzy, emotion-based appeals to anti-science sentiment. I am actually a member of Greenpeace, because I happen to think climate change is an enormous problem, but I nearly resigned over this.

Sorry if the links are screwed, this mozilla daily build is a bit flakey.
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles

There are plenty of reasons why GM technology should be approached with caution; however I have to say I'm pretty repulsed by the means Greenpeace and similar organisations take to it. Their campaigns are almost entirely based around fuzzy, emotion-based appeals to anti-science sentiment. I am actually a member of Greenpeace, because I happen to think climate change is an enormous problem, but I nearly resigned over this.

Sorry if the links are screwed, this mozilla daily build is a bit flakey.
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles

Oops, typo.
You probably meant rock-soiled browser, didn't you?

po_boy wrote: I refuse to believe that in the few thousand years since humans started being "civilized" that we have caused more animal species to become extinct than in the few million years before that. Unless species are becoming extinct at several thousand times the previous rates of extinctions, this is pretty much impossible.

well, If you "refuse to believe" then you are mindlessly dogmatic and debate with you is pointless... but, on the offchance that you were just being melodramatic when you employed that damning phrase, I'll present an argument here. Even if you refuse to believe what you don't like to hear, others who have been misled by your dogma may ne more open minded.

Widley accepted figures indicate that current rates of extinction are 100 times the "natural" rate and climbing to something between 1,000 and 10,000 times the natural rate of extinction. According to an article in the Washington Post:

"The speed at which species are being lost is much faster than any we've seen in the past -- including those [extinctions] related to meteor collisions," said Daniel Simberloff, a University of Tennessee ecologist and prominent expert in biological diversity who participated in the museum's survey. [Note: the last mass extinction caused by a meteor collision was that of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago.]

Most of his peers apparently agree. Nearly seven out of 10 of the biologists polled said they believed a "mass extinction" was underway, and an equal number predicted that up to one-fifth of all living species could disappear within 30 years. Nearly all attributed the losses to human activity, especially the destruction of plant and animal habitats.

Other sources of depressing news you won't want to believe:

According to scientists at the American Museum of Natural History:"This mass extinction is the fastest in Earth's 4.5-billion-year history and, unlike prior extinctions, is mainly the result of human activity and not of natural phenomena." The same scientists note that "In strong contrast to the fears expressed by scientists, the general public is relatively unaware of the loss of species and the threats that it poses." I guess they've been talking to po_boy...

http://www.greenpeace.org/majordomo/index-press-re leases/1997/msg00184.html

http://beacon-www. asa .utk.edu/issues/v78/n2/asteroids.2n.html

http://www.mapcruzin.com/ scr uztri/docs/news0922991.htm

http://www.well.com/user/davidu/ fie ldguide.html

http://www.pupress.princeton.e du/ titles/6276.html

http://www.well.com/user/davidu/ ext inction.html

You wrote: "We need a way to show the oil companies that we're fed up of lining their pockets with cash" which is kind of funny since there are so many ways, and so many organisations doing so.
Rule #1: Buy NO unneccessary plastic items. I make an exception, personally, for my kids' legos. But I don't buy a new case for my computer just because the ATX form came out, I hacksaw the old one. Plastics are essentially a waste product of the petroleum industry.
Rule #2: Buy NOTHING from Exxon. Because we need to convince the Oil Barons that there are some things that don't blow over - and Exxon's had the most egregious crimes as well as being the last vestigal trace of the original Petroleum Trust (Standard Oil = S.O. = Esso = Exxon, you can confirm this easily).
Rule #3: Stop whining and do something. I am converting my truck to gas/electric hybrid ASAP. My bud Pete runs used fryer oil in his (unmodified) Mercedes diesel.

Alternative Energy Engineering
Ballard Fuel Cells
Electro Automotive
Energy Conversion Devices, Inc.
Greenpeace International Homepage
Home Power Magazine
Hydrogen Web (English/German)
innEVations
Jerry Halstead's Car
Low Rolling Resistance Tires
Phoenix EAA
Roofing Systems
Unique Mobility
Veggie Van (BioDiesel)
Wilde EVolutions catalog
United Solar Systems Home Page

--Charlie

Sticks and Stones may break my bones but FUD will never concern me.

Well, you and most of the others commenting on this issue are sure willing to spread the FUD around....

1) Car battery disposal is not a major pollution problem (manufacture being another issue). Those little ever-readies that you're tossing blithely into the trash are one of the most pressing ecological issues of our time, but people driving electric cars recycle ALL their batteries (the spent cores are quite valuable) and most gas vehicle batteries are also recycled.

2) Point source pollution (i.e. power plants) is easier to control/prevent than distributed pollution (cf. privately operated internal combustion engines). Gas lawn mowers are one of the principal causes of air pollution in the US, incidentally.

3) Many people are supplied power from hydro, wind, or photovoltaic sources. If you actually become a part of the electric vehicle underground you will find that many people are generating their own power, or use power from commercial "green" providers.

Your statement "yes the energy does come from some coal or oil burning plant" is thus incorrect through overgeneralization, which makes it relatively accurate compared to most of what's being posted here. Your comments on ethanol and car prices are similarly FUDular.

Alternative Energy Engineering

Electro Automotive

Energy Conversion Devices, Inc.

Greenpeace International Homepage

Home Power Magazine

innEVations

Jerry Halstead's Car

Low Rolling Resistance Tires

Phoenix EAA

Roofing Systems

Unique Mobility

Wilde EVolutions catalog

United Solar Systems Home Page

Granted - I'm no expert either. I was just thinking that as it's a permanent structure rather than a ship or a portable structure, it might come under property law rather than marine salvage law.. as said, however - dammit, Jim, I'm a sysadmin, not a lawyer. Claiming ownership of property based on abandonment is a very long-term thing, if I remember rightly.
This article and article 60 of this one (from a vague web search) look interesting.

Here are a few resources for anyone with the guts to make a go of it, and the brains to do it right. Some cover artificial islands, and some natural.

Proposed Inhabited Artificial Islands in International Waters

United Nations Convention
on the Law of the Sea Alas, for an 'artificial island' server farm, Article 121 states "3. Rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf." Sections 60 and 80 confirm this. For 'natural islands' the key article seems to be Article 76, covering the 'continental shelf' provision.

Isn't the new volcanic island off New Zealand? if so, this summary of the New Zealand Geologic and Oceanographic Service's interpretation of UNCLOS may be useful.

There's a lot more, but basically sovereignity does *not* depend on actually possessing territory (the Vatican was sovereign during the time when Italy claimed its territory, as acknowledged by the other major powers) and actually possessing territory, the consent of the governed, and an independent, fully functioning government with military forces sufficient to defend that territory is not enough to guarantee sovereignity. (Taiwan was once thrown out of the UN because it was deemed to lack sovereignity despite possessing all of these)

Happy planning -- and best'o'luck to you!


_____________

The US Department of Labor's OSHA has quite a library that includes Material Safety Data Sheets (all those chemicals in that soap and what they do,) stastics and inspection data of companies and products, and information how to keep a workplace friendly to the worker and environment.

Most HR people should find this site a valuable resource to make a workplace safer through education; however, there are bosses who hate the hell out of this government organization. They inspect companies to follow up on complaints and they do have some big teeth. Some employers, such as ones refered to as "sweatshops" hate OSHA. I'm glad I work for a company that recognizes the value of a safe workplace when it comes to health insurance and community relations.

If you really want to get into evironmental concerns, there is Greepeace and and I would also strongly recommend checking out the National Audubon Society. These are organizations that help promote environmental awareness through activities involving recreation at national parks (read as camping at places very few venture) and activism (voting, writing letters, civil disobediance.) They are worth joining if you have kids as they sponsor many fun outings.

As an example of the interesting things they do, the Greenpeace homepage has information about ecologically friendly mousepads made out of 100% natural Amazon rubber.

Genetic engineering? GMO's?

Greenpeace site about genetic engineering


"Terminator seeds(tm)", anyone?

Uh, Greenpeace? And others, I'm sure. Polution and wildlife aren't new issues.

RP

"There is more tree coverage now then there was in 1900, due to the fact that much less land is now in farming use. Those stone walls that run thru the woods were put there by farmers clearing land for planting, not by your "god"."

No, wrong. Or misleading, at the very best http://www.greenpeace.org/~forests/

kindly correct me if i am in error, but gasoline is NOT a *resource*.

Merriam-Webster defines "natural resource" as "industrial materials and capacities (as mineral deposits and waterpower) supplied by nature." The gasoline you put in your car is a fossil fuel (though a recent slashdot article presents the view of a scientist who rejects that notion) and is thus a natural resource (it's of limited supply and is provided to us by mother nature). As you mentioned, gasoline is processed, purified, and additives are inserted; it's still a depletable resource.

gasoline is one of the worst and most inefficient 'sources of power' because of its intense and exorbitant release of toxins into the environment, such as CO (carbon monoxide). CO is *not* released in the exhaust of methane (natural gas) or other viable alternatives to gasoline.

A properly tuned engine will not emit high levels of CO, laws like California's help enforce that. CO is especially harmful to aerobic life because it is smaller/lighter than oxygen and is absorbed by red blood cells quicker than oxygen. The threat, then, is that an aerobic creature can suffocate while still sucking in lungfulls of "air." Methane (CH4) is lighter than air, colorless, and odorless (just like CO) and is produced naturally by human beings, swamps, rice, bovine, basically anything that can decay. The threat with methane is similar to the threat with CO, in that people locked in an airtight (or near-airtight) enclosure will suffocate if given only methane (look to shows like Geraldo and Oprah for instances of depressingly introverted people who've unwittingly committed suicide this way). Furthermore, methane production is a big issue for global warming advocates, because it has such a large capacity for trapping heat and turning this planet into a "Lil' Susy Homemaker" oven. See this for a brief synopsis of the implications. Still, most people scoff at this citing cows as the leading producers of methane. Regardless of what releases the most methane, it is a potentially harmful gas to have floating around in large quantities. Though I'm not an expert on the subject by any stretch of the imagination.

Monsanto is the last company I'd want producing plastic, oil, or any other product crucial to the US economy. Greenpeace crazies and eco terrorists are certainly right about one thing - dealing with Monsanto is dangerous for your long-term independence. Their clever mechanism for ensuring repeat buyers is to build infertility into the plants they sell. Farmers buy them because they are indeed very good crops for certain purposes, namely for surviving the popular but toxic herbicide RoundUp, which Monsanto also sells. Monsanto works vigorously to bankrupt competing seed sellers, so that only their perishable brand is available, thus locking farmers into their system for life. Prior to the development of these terminator genes, Monsanto would actually maraud around the countryside burning "illicitly stocked" seed.

http://www.mat.auckland.ac.nz/~king/Preprints/book /upd/umar99/monsan/ecol1.htm#anc hor52768

A recent company tactic as been to push this "system" as a solution for hunger in third-world countries. Of course, what it would really entail would be a complete regional ownership by Monsanto of the food supply.

http://www.greenpeac e.org/~geneng/highlights/food/98_10_15.htm

Monsanto is also renowned for suing magazines and television stations when they are about to produce an article critical of the company. Most news providers can't fight them, so they buckle and the issues are never aired.


http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/fox.html

And much like certain proprietary software companies, Monsanto patents its creations. We all are familiar with the stupidity of patenting ideas, and genetic engineering, especially of plants, is quite simply that. One plant can turn into two plants with only a negligable investment of soil, water, and sun. This means they are not a zero-sum game, and hence the arguments against patenting software apply to them.

Monsanto is one of the least palatable companies out there. They are easily the Microsoft of genetic science. I think I'd rather stick to the Sheiks for my gallon of gas and pound of shrink-wrap, thank you very much.

-konstant

As a Greenpeace supporter you urge me to respond to your offense on Greenpeace.

In Holland Greenpeace collaborates with the Dutch government to install solar energy collectors on houses of consumers. A dutch house-owner can apply for a subsidized solar collector which will cost less than half of normal prize. Thus it will be cheaper (in the long run=10 years) than buying energy from a local energy company. Thanks to Greenpeace! The project is aptly but confusingly named "Solaris". Greenpeace has a (dutch) website here.

On nuclear power: Greenpeace may be fiercely against nuclear power (I am not), in Holland it is the government that shuts down the old plants. And the government of the Netherlands are the people themselves.

The reason we shut the existing plants down is that old-style, colossal, complex nuclear power facilities are way too unprofitable to sustain. That is if you want to apply decent security measures.

A lot of American people and companies and local governments are ruthless in how they exploit the country. If you want to destroy all nature in your country, eventually you'll make life for yourself uncomfortable too. No more hot water for you - no more water at all. But we in Europe wouldn't care a bit.