You are correct that no plants have built man-made pesticides into their DNA sequences, but then neither do GM plants. GM plants that produce pesticides have DNA sequences taken from other plants that naturally produce pesticides. So the pesticides produced from the DNA in GM plants are naturally occurring pesticides that are produced by other plants.
Many people prefer "organic" food because of the issue of pesticide residue. The thing is that several insects that feed on many food plants leave a chemical inside the fruit or vegetable that is significantly more hazardous to human health than the pesticide residue, which is generally on the outside and can be washed off. Additionally, "organic" food is more harmful to the environment because it requires a more acres to produce the same amount of food. The only thing going for organic is taste, however, that is probably due to most "organic" food being produced closer to the consumer than non-organic food. I do not remember the source, but I saw a study a couple of years ago that did blind taste tests between "organic" food and non-"organic" food and the results were mixed, especially when they compared locally grown non-"organic" food to "organic" food produced on a factory farm some distance away (in this case the locally grown food was generally found to taste better.
That would be a great point, if electric vehicles were a brand new tech, but considering that electric vehicles were first developed in the 1800s (only a decade or so after internal combustion vehicles), they aren't new tech.
You are absolutely correct, he is a vast improvement over Cynthia McKinney. My recollection of her leaving office did not quite match up to the way you presented it, so I googled her (my recollection was wrong). The interesting thing is that the Green Party had actively recruited her to run for President twice before she agreed to run in 2008. How bad does a Party have to be to want Cynthia McKinney as its standard bearer?
I take issue with you saying that Sheila Jackson Lee is the dumbest of the dumb, that title clearly goes to Representative Hank Johnson (the Congressman who was concerned that deploying too many troops to Guam might cause the island to capsize).
I am going to guess that this was something that came out while they were discussing strategies. Someone brought up something that they should plan to do, someone else mentiond that RIM already did that and was probably buyable. They tossed it around for a bit and decided that RIM's implementation would be to hard to integrate into the rest of what they were doing and moved on (with everybody there keeping in the back of their mind that it might be nice for their company to pick up RIM if the price were right).
You do know that they still make physical mockups of the airplane designs and put them in actual wind tunnels before they start mass producing them. right? And a pilot needs a certain amount of actual flight time before they are given a pilots license.
But there seems to be a paradox wherein drivers may become accustom to the longer yellows, diminishing the benefits...
My second link was to a series of studies that show that the benefits do not diminish with time. It is possible that longer yellows may make intersections that do not have the extended yellows even more dangerous. However, the solution to that is to extend those yellows as well. The most decisive study on the issue I saw was one which showed that if the rate of decceleration necessary to come to a complete stop was below 8 feet per second squared, drivers were virtually certain to stop, while if the required decceleration was above 12 feet per second squared, drivers were virtually certain to continue.
Is this the same IBM that predicted that there would only be a need for a handful of personal computers across the globe?
The prediction was that there would be a handful of computers across the globe. Of course,this was at a time when computers took up an entire room and the concept of a "personal computer" was ridiculous. At the time, the most prescient of people involved with computers thought that sometime in the 21st century computers would become so powerful that people would have terminals in their homes that would allow them to access a computer (that was located in some central location) over the phone lines.
Thank you. I opened up the comments to ask how their predictions for the last 5 years went. Something I always look for in an article about someone's predictions for the future is how did they do in the past at predicting the future. Unfortunately, most such articles never bother to tell you that the "prophet" they are quoting is not better than random at predictiing the future. If the source they are got one big thing right, they will tout that, but never mention that that one thing was one out of 100 and the other 99 weren't even close.
Anybody who thought that North Korea's draconian rules applied to those at the top (especially to the one at the very pinnacle) does not understand how totalitarian systems work, or what their purpose is.
I have seen several studies showing a very distinct link between length of the yellow and safety. This study shows that increasing the length of the yellow decreases red light violations and this article references several studies that show that this effect does not diminsh with time. So, your gut is wrong on this one (although I understand why you would suspect that to be the case).
I discovered I was part of the in-crowd after I graduated from something one of the likable members of the in-crowd said. I went to the same college as several people I graduated with and at one point in college this guy told me something along the lines of "everyone liked you in high school". I had always thought I was unpopular because I hung out with the dweebs, dorks and nerds. Of course that was partly because I was unwilling to hurt their feelings by telling them I didn't want to hang out with them and partly because I often hung out in the computer lab.
Actually, I don't think that is it. My bet would be that most payroll systems are coded to assume that everyone who pays the payroll taxes (Social Security and Medicare) pay the same percentage up to the limit (you only pay these taxes up to a certain amount because you only collect based on income up to a certain amount). They are now introducing a system whereby those who earn less than a certain amount pay less than those who earn more than that (and the cutoff point is different from the amount which you don't pay this tax on the income above that amount--although you still pay for everything less than that amount that you earn).
The problem is that it is only for two months and it is only for people who earn less than a certain amount. This is not income tax (which has varied according to how much you make since before computers were used to calculate payroll). This is for Social Security and Medicare taxes, which traditionally have been the same percentage for everyone up to a certain dollar amount of income (everything over that is not taxed). This only applies to people who make less than a certain amount. So, I suspect that, unlike income tax, this has traditionally been done by a straight percentage calculation (one that traditionally, also, automatically debited the same amount out of the the employer's payroll account without showing it on the paystub).
I don't go to my high school reunions because the people who are for the most part people I am not interested in meeting again. I went to the first couple and none of the people I had any interest in seeing were there, so I stopped going. I'm not on Facebook (and I am pretty sure that neither are the classmates I would be interested in talking to again).
While that might be true, it is unlikely to make as big of a difference as you seem to think. The variables in the game are such that making consistently reliable predictions about the outcome of plays is unlikely.
In every market there are two business strategies to success. The first is Apple's, which is to be the "high value" provider. The "high value" provider can survive with large margins, but must maintain the perception that they sell a higher value product than their competitors. The second is to be the "low cost" provider. The low cost provider must deliver the product at a lower cost to the end user than their competitors (which generally requires selling in large volume). The thing is that in any given market, there is only room for a limited number of companies pursuing either strategy. Right now, there are lots of companies pursuing the "high value" model in the portable computing market, but none embracing the "low cost" model.
Dell is an example of a company that rose to prominence as the low cost provider of computers. They have fallen on hard times because they have both failed to maintain a reputation as a low cost provider and to establish a reputation as a high value provider..
Really? I have a cellphone and it is none of those things. It is a device I use to place phone calls. I know people who have cellphones that double as computing devices. They are generally terrible as devices to have a phone conversation on. They, also, do not function very well as computing devices either (although they are great for playing games). I want a cell phone that is good for having a conversation on and I want a netbook that is acceptable as a computing device. These are devices that have different purposes and thus should have different form factors. Every attempt I have seen at combining these in one device has been a failure at both.
Ipad did not kill the mass netbook market. Netbook manufacturers killed the mass netbook market. The mass netbook market was for cheap (less than $250, and ideally less than $200), small (less than 10") computing devices. The netbook manufacturers wanted the buzz that was associated with netbooks, but they wanted to sell at the $350+ price point. There is no market there. In order to sell at that price point, they needed bigger screens, so they went with 10"-12" screens. At that point ($350+, 10"+ screen) they are just a small laptop and the buzz is gone.
I have posted replies at several points on here, but I agree that this is no more slashdot worthy than Christopher Hitchens death (which was also posted on slashdot, so I'm not quite sure what your point is).
While the power struggle could lead to foreign "adventures", I think it likely that if there is a power struggle it will lead to a complete collapse of the regime. If we are lucky, and there are people of bold insight in power in the right places, that would lead to the gradual (or not so gradual) re-integration with South Korea. On the other hand, if Kim Jong Un is able to take undisputed control, but feels that he appears weak to the army generals, he may launch foreign military adventures in order to shore up his support. Fortunately, since any such adventures would come at the expense of everyone else's national interests (importantly including China's) it is likely that they would be quickly squashed. The reason that China is most important in that equation is because China has been using North Korea for years as a test bed for testing the reaction of Western powers to various provocations (not that China has been in control of North Korea, just that when Western reactions have gotten too strong, China has exerted influence to rein in some of North Korea's more abhorent activities--less effectively under Kim Jung Il than under his father).
Slashdot Mirror
You are correct that no plants have built man-made pesticides into their DNA sequences, but then neither do GM plants. GM plants that produce pesticides have DNA sequences taken from other plants that naturally produce pesticides. So the pesticides produced from the DNA in GM plants are naturally occurring pesticides that are produced by other plants.
Many people prefer "organic" food because of the issue of pesticide residue. The thing is that several insects that feed on many food plants leave a chemical inside the fruit or vegetable that is significantly more hazardous to human health than the pesticide residue, which is generally on the outside and can be washed off. Additionally, "organic" food is more harmful to the environment because it requires a more acres to produce the same amount of food. The only thing going for organic is taste, however, that is probably due to most "organic" food being produced closer to the consumer than non-organic food. I do not remember the source, but I saw a study a couple of years ago that did blind taste tests between "organic" food and non-"organic" food and the results were mixed, especially when they compared locally grown non-"organic" food to "organic" food produced on a factory farm some distance away (in this case the locally grown food was generally found to taste better.
That would be a great point, if electric vehicles were a brand new tech, but considering that electric vehicles were first developed in the 1800s (only a decade or so after internal combustion vehicles), they aren't new tech.
You are absolutely correct, he is a vast improvement over Cynthia McKinney. My recollection of her leaving office did not quite match up to the way you presented it, so I googled her (my recollection was wrong). The interesting thing is that the Green Party had actively recruited her to run for President twice before she agreed to run in 2008. How bad does a Party have to be to want Cynthia McKinney as its standard bearer?
It tells you a lot about who the Hill considers its readers to be...people who might not be aware that islands are attached to the sea floor.
I take issue with you saying that Sheila Jackson Lee is the dumbest of the dumb, that title clearly goes to Representative Hank Johnson (the Congressman who was concerned that deploying too many troops to Guam might cause the island to capsize).
I am going to guess that this was something that came out while they were discussing strategies. Someone brought up something that they should plan to do, someone else mentiond that RIM already did that and was probably buyable. They tossed it around for a bit and decided that RIM's implementation would be to hard to integrate into the rest of what they were doing and moved on (with everybody there keeping in the back of their mind that it might be nice for their company to pick up RIM if the price were right).
You do know that they still make physical mockups of the airplane designs and put them in actual wind tunnels before they start mass producing them. right? And a pilot needs a certain amount of actual flight time before they are given a pilots license.
But there seems to be a paradox wherein drivers may become accustom to the longer yellows, diminishing the benefits...
My second link was to a series of studies that show that the benefits do not diminish with time. It is possible that longer yellows may make intersections that do not have the extended yellows even more dangerous. However, the solution to that is to extend those yellows as well. The most decisive study on the issue I saw was one which showed that if the rate of decceleration necessary to come to a complete stop was below 8 feet per second squared, drivers were virtually certain to stop, while if the required decceleration was above 12 feet per second squared, drivers were virtually certain to continue.
Is this the same IBM that predicted that there would only be a need for a handful of personal computers across the globe?
The prediction was that there would be a handful of computers across the globe. Of course,this was at a time when computers took up an entire room and the concept of a "personal computer" was ridiculous. At the time, the most prescient of people involved with computers thought that sometime in the 21st century computers would become so powerful that people would have terminals in their homes that would allow them to access a computer (that was located in some central location) over the phone lines.
Thank you. I opened up the comments to ask how their predictions for the last 5 years went. Something I always look for in an article about someone's predictions for the future is how did they do in the past at predicting the future. Unfortunately, most such articles never bother to tell you that the "prophet" they are quoting is not better than random at predictiing the future. If the source they are got one big thing right, they will tout that, but never mention that that one thing was one out of 100 and the other 99 weren't even close.
Anybody who thought that North Korea's draconian rules applied to those at the top (especially to the one at the very pinnacle) does not understand how totalitarian systems work, or what their purpose is.
I have seen several studies showing a very distinct link between length of the yellow and safety. This study shows that increasing the length of the yellow decreases red light violations and this article references several studies that show that this effect does not diminsh with time. So, your gut is wrong on this one (although I understand why you would suspect that to be the case).
I discovered I was part of the in-crowd after I graduated from something one of the likable members of the in-crowd said. I went to the same college as several people I graduated with and at one point in college this guy told me something along the lines of "everyone liked you in high school". I had always thought I was unpopular because I hung out with the dweebs, dorks and nerds. Of course that was partly because I was unwilling to hurt their feelings by telling them I didn't want to hang out with them and partly because I often hung out in the computer lab.
Actually, I don't think that is it. My bet would be that most payroll systems are coded to assume that everyone who pays the payroll taxes (Social Security and Medicare) pay the same percentage up to the limit (you only pay these taxes up to a certain amount because you only collect based on income up to a certain amount). They are now introducing a system whereby those who earn less than a certain amount pay less than those who earn more than that (and the cutoff point is different from the amount which you don't pay this tax on the income above that amount--although you still pay for everything less than that amount that you earn).
The problem is that it is only for two months and it is only for people who earn less than a certain amount. This is not income tax (which has varied according to how much you make since before computers were used to calculate payroll). This is for Social Security and Medicare taxes, which traditionally have been the same percentage for everyone up to a certain dollar amount of income (everything over that is not taxed). This only applies to people who make less than a certain amount. So, I suspect that, unlike income tax, this has traditionally been done by a straight percentage calculation (one that traditionally, also, automatically debited the same amount out of the the employer's payroll account without showing it on the paystub).
It is a reduction of "federal payroll taxes". These are generally considered to be the items that appear on your paystub under FICA.
I don't go to my high school reunions because the people who are for the most part people I am not interested in meeting again. I went to the first couple and none of the people I had any interest in seeing were there, so I stopped going. I'm not on Facebook (and I am pretty sure that neither are the classmates I would be interested in talking to again).
That would explain why Walmart and Target are doing so poorly, there is no longer any money to be made as the low cost provider.
While that might be true, it is unlikely to make as big of a difference as you seem to think. The variables in the game are such that making consistently reliable predictions about the outcome of plays is unlikely.
In every market there are two business strategies to success. The first is Apple's, which is to be the "high value" provider. The "high value" provider can survive with large margins, but must maintain the perception that they sell a higher value product than their competitors. The second is to be the "low cost" provider. The low cost provider must deliver the product at a lower cost to the end user than their competitors (which generally requires selling in large volume). The thing is that in any given market, there is only room for a limited number of companies pursuing either strategy. Right now, there are lots of companies pursuing the "high value" model in the portable computing market, but none embracing the "low cost" model.
Dell is an example of a company that rose to prominence as the low cost provider of computers. They have fallen on hard times because they have both failed to maintain a reputation as a low cost provider and to establish a reputation as a high value provider..
Really? I have a cellphone and it is none of those things. It is a device I use to place phone calls. I know people who have cellphones that double as computing devices. They are generally terrible as devices to have a phone conversation on. They, also, do not function very well as computing devices either (although they are great for playing games). I want a cell phone that is good for having a conversation on and I want a netbook that is acceptable as a computing device. These are devices that have different purposes and thus should have different form factors. Every attempt I have seen at combining these in one device has been a failure at both.
Ipad did not kill the mass netbook market. Netbook manufacturers killed the mass netbook market. The mass netbook market was for cheap (less than $250, and ideally less than $200), small (less than 10") computing devices. The netbook manufacturers wanted the buzz that was associated with netbooks, but they wanted to sell at the $350+ price point. There is no market there. In order to sell at that price point, they needed bigger screens, so they went with 10"-12" screens. At that point ($350+, 10"+ screen) they are just a small laptop and the buzz is gone.
I have posted replies at several points on here, but I agree that this is no more slashdot worthy than Christopher Hitchens death (which was also posted on slashdot, so I'm not quite sure what your point is).
While the power struggle could lead to foreign "adventures", I think it likely that if there is a power struggle it will lead to a complete collapse of the regime. If we are lucky, and there are people of bold insight in power in the right places, that would lead to the gradual (or not so gradual) re-integration with South Korea. On the other hand, if Kim Jong Un is able to take undisputed control, but feels that he appears weak to the army generals, he may launch foreign military adventures in order to shore up his support. Fortunately, since any such adventures would come at the expense of everyone else's national interests (importantly including China's) it is likely that they would be quickly squashed. The reason that China is most important in that equation is because China has been using North Korea for years as a test bed for testing the reaction of Western powers to various provocations (not that China has been in control of North Korea, just that when Western reactions have gotten too strong, China has exerted influence to rein in some of North Korea's more abhorent activities--less effectively under Kim Jung Il than under his father).