Except shortly everyone Googling for his name will know who he is and what industry he works in. Nice responsible journalism. Why not ruin someone's life so you can write an interesting article.
Boo-fucking-hoo!
He's a pornographer. If he has a problem with his friends and family knowing that, maybe he should work in that field. This is as absurd as some guy driving race cars being terribly secretive about his job because all his family rides bikes.
I didn't take the damn class, she did. How the hell am I suppose to know how to do something I have neither done nor seen done or even had explained to me?
It happened, regardless of you believing me or not.
It is trivial to genetically alter a virus or DNA.
Let me give you some context here. I live in San Francisco. The city has a huge push for Biotech businesses to move here so they are pushing for training at the JC. I didn't mean that she could necessarily design a new virus, just that it was easy to create physically.
I know it doesn't sound reasonable, but she brought home all the spectrographs of the altered RNA. This stuff is fairly trivial these days. I think the bio class was part of a BioTech program they just started.
Just go grab a used DNA synthersizer, some spectography equipment and you're just about set.
Go read the article, it explains exactly how easy it is.
Bt pollen does appear to harm "good" insects like butterflies
I'm pretty sure that's been shown to be wrong, recently. And I don't necessarily think it will be bad for the environment, I do however think it often is bad for the environment in practice. Besides heavy use of pesticides causing environmental damage, they can also make the pests more and more resistant. Top this off with the cross-pollination of other plants and the company suing people when their fields get contaminated by patented crops and it seems to me that there are very serious issues here that are not being discussed.
Finally, does it really require explanation that higher yields mean less land is needed per unit yield?
Aah, that hadn't occured to me.
Like I said before, I'm not necessarily against GE, but I think we should use it for things other than our food supply while we determine the full health and environmental effects. This just seems like common sense
Check out seasteading. It's pretty much what you're talking about, a bunch of deep sea floating colonies. Of course, your internet traffic would likely still be monitored. The best way to deal with this is A two fold strategy:
One. Encryption, lots of it, with lots of people using it.
Two. Build a wireless network that never touches wire, a separate internet, if you will.
We have been selectively breeding food, not genetically engineering. And yes, in fact, we do run a greater risk of creating poisonous strains of corn. Before that would have been impossible, or near enough, now we can do it with the inclusion of a simple gene sequence.
GM food is engineered to require less pesticides.
That is at best misleading and at worst outright wrong. The RoundUp Ready line of crops are specifically engineered to resist pesticides so that higher levels can be used. Some plants do require less pesticides, but these are the ones which produce their own pesticide.
As for your contention that GM food reduces the amount of land needed, I'd like some hard statistics on that. If it's true that would be a good thing, but given how wrong you were on the previous point I'll assume you're wrong for lack of evidence.
Um, yes, I do in fact know what the story was about. I was responding to someone who was talking about genetic modification. Offtopic maybe, but not clueless.
Is it so crazy that people are concerned that the very first thing we did with genetic modification on a broad level was to alter food? I mean, what if we had started irradiating all our food when we first discovered radiation? People like you, who unquestioningly support any new scientific advance as good are just as dangerous, if not more so, than those who reject all advances outright.
As for the dangers of the current genetically modified food; we really can't tell. It isn't as if all types of genetically altered food would present the same dangers, some may be perfectly safe, other not so safe. The big problem now is the increasing use of pesticides when growing crops and the increase in price for farmers. Not the big industrial farms, they make up for the price in economies of scale, but the small farms and local producers. It is often cheaper, and more profitable, for small farmers to grow organically.
So on the whole, I have found that I would prefer to not have a relativey new technology pervading our food supply as it does now.
Granted. But it's not something individual Americans can choose not to be a part of.
Nonsense. The majority of people could easily switch to a non auto-centric lifestyle, if they actually wanted to. Problem is they don't want to. Oh, they say we'd be better off, but they don't want to give up their car. They always have an exuse, regardless of the real necessity of their car. And then we have the folks who swear up and down that the most important right we hold as americans is that of car ownership and that they'd die to protect it.
Sorry, but it is the educated, not the rich. The rich are, of course, overrepresented in the ranks of the educated. Another important note, education is not intelligence, uneducated people can be intelligent.
I have learned about evolution in psychology classes
That's probably the problem.
So you dont consider humans higher on the chain, considering they can adapt to new environments without requiring any biological changes.
Again, there is no higher and lower and there is no chain. I do think that, from an evolutionary point off view, humans are incredibly well adapted for the world we have created; little suprise there.
The ability to reason and manufacture tools to the degree that we can, seems to indicate we're higher than most species that can't adapt fast enough to sudden environmental changes.
You seem to insist on imposing value judgements on evolved traits. That's fine, I guess, but ultimately useless.
Just because it is MS does not change the fact that this is a patent-system absurdity
I know this in my head but deep down, way deep down, where the best of the belly laughs come from, I know that Microsoft being forced to pull the 360 would be the funniest thing to happen in a long, long time.
Imagine you and anyone of your environment don't know sight. Your being is without photosensitivity ENTIRELY. But suddenly there's something causing for something usefull to evolve
You got this backwards, environment does not cause traits to come into being. Mutation causes traits to come into being and then environment causes the most useful to be spread.
I think you've got a fundamental confusion with what evolution is, what the theory says and how it works.
why are there still some species left that are considered lower down on the evolutionary chain?
There is no lower or higher on the evolutionary chain, nor is there transitionary forms. There are species which exist now, species which have existed and those which may exist. There are species that are older, "lower", because they have proved fit for their environments. There are species that evolved later, normally not a direct line of decent, that are fit for *their* environment. I don't know if you've read a good book on evolution but it covers this, pretty basic stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
Except shortly everyone Googling for his name will know who he is and what industry he works in. Nice responsible journalism. Why not ruin someone's life so you can write an interesting article.
Boo-fucking-hoo!
He's a pornographer. If he has a problem with his friends and family knowing that, maybe he should work in that field. This is as absurd as some guy driving race cars being terribly secretive about his job because all his family rides bikes.
GP: in china, red means happy.
P: thats also the color that is assocaited with communism.
'Cuz communism means happy!
I didn't take the damn class, she did. How the hell am I suppose to know how to do something I have neither done nor seen done or even had explained to me?
It happened, regardless of you believing me or not.
It is trivial to genetically alter a virus or DNA.
Yes, the evil people always hide in garages.
Let me give you some context here. I live in San Francisco. The city has a huge push for Biotech businesses to move here so they are pushing for training at the JC. I didn't mean that she could necessarily design a new virus, just that it was easy to create physically.
I know it doesn't sound reasonable, but she brought home all the spectrographs of the altered RNA. This stuff is fairly trivial these days. I think the bio class was part of a BioTech program they just started.
Just go grab a used DNA synthersizer, some spectography equipment and you're just about set.
Go read the article, it explains exactly how easy it is.
My roommate genetically altered a virus in her bio class the other day.
Keep in mind that this was a beginning bio class, at a junior college.
It's easy, it doesn't take a whole ton of education.
And I don't even trust the people who have access to bio-warfare now.
Bt pollen does appear to harm "good" insects like butterflies
I'm pretty sure that's been shown to be wrong, recently. And I don't necessarily think it will be bad for the environment, I do however think it often is bad for the environment in practice. Besides heavy use of pesticides causing environmental damage, they can also make the pests more and more resistant. Top this off with the cross-pollination of other plants and the company suing people when their fields get contaminated by patented crops and it seems to me that there are very serious issues here that are not being discussed.
Finally, does it really require explanation that higher yields mean less land is needed per unit yield?
Aah, that hadn't occured to me.
Like I said before, I'm not necessarily against GE, but I think we should use it for things other than our food supply while we determine the full health and environmental effects. This just seems like common sense
Check out seasteading. It's pretty much what you're talking about, a bunch of deep sea floating colonies. Of course, your internet traffic would likely still be monitored. The best way to deal with this is A two fold strategy:
One. Encryption, lots of it, with lots of people using it.
Two. Build a wireless network that never touches wire, a separate internet, if you will.
We have been selectively breeding food, not genetically engineering. And yes, in fact, we do run a greater risk of creating poisonous strains of corn. Before that would have been impossible, or near enough, now we can do it with the inclusion of a simple gene sequence.
GM food is engineered to require less pesticides.
That is at best misleading and at worst outright wrong. The RoundUp Ready line of crops are specifically engineered to resist pesticides so that higher levels can be used. Some plants do require less pesticides, but these are the ones which produce their own pesticide.
As for your contention that GM food reduces the amount of land needed, I'd like some hard statistics on that. If it's true that would be a good thing, but given how wrong you were on the previous point I'll assume you're wrong for lack of evidence.
Um, yes, I do in fact know what the story was about. I was responding to someone who was talking about genetic modification. Offtopic maybe, but not clueless.
Is it so crazy that people are concerned that the very first thing we did with genetic modification on a broad level was to alter food? I mean, what if we had started irradiating all our food when we first discovered radiation? People like you, who unquestioningly support any new scientific advance as good are just as dangerous, if not more so, than those who reject all advances outright.
As for the dangers of the current genetically modified food; we really can't tell. It isn't as if all types of genetically altered food would present the same dangers, some may be perfectly safe, other not so safe. The big problem now is the increasing use of pesticides when growing crops and the increase in price for farmers. Not the big industrial farms, they make up for the price in economies of scale, but the small farms and local producers. It is often cheaper, and more profitable, for small farmers to grow organically.
So on the whole, I have found that I would prefer to not have a relativey new technology pervading our food supply as it does now.
Granted. But it's not something individual Americans can choose not to be a part of.
Nonsense. The majority of people could easily switch to a non auto-centric lifestyle, if they actually wanted to. Problem is they don't want to. Oh, they say we'd be better off, but they don't want to give up their car. They always have an exuse, regardless of the real necessity of their car. And then we have the folks who swear up and down that the most important right we hold as americans is that of car ownership and that they'd die to protect it.
So, we're fucked.
are you saying the word 'free' has two meanings?
New here?
Sorry, but it is the educated, not the rich. The rich are, of course, overrepresented in the ranks of the educated. Another important note, education is not intelligence, uneducated people can be intelligent.
One word: Encryption
Start using it, get everyone you know to use it. Encrypt everything.
The only way we can get the feds to stop sniffing illegally is to make it impossible.
I have learned about evolution in psychology classes
That's probably the problem.
So you dont consider humans higher on the chain, considering they can adapt to new environments without requiring any biological changes.
Again, there is no higher and lower and there is no chain. I do think that, from an evolutionary point off view, humans are incredibly well adapted for the world we have created; little suprise there.
The ability to reason and manufacture tools to the degree that we can, seems to indicate we're higher than most species that can't adapt fast enough to sudden environmental changes.
You seem to insist on imposing value judgements on evolved traits. That's fine, I guess, but ultimately useless.
Just because it is MS does not change the fact that this is a patent-system absurdity
I know this in my head but deep down, way deep down, where the best of the belly laughs come from, I know that Microsoft being forced to pull the 360 would be the funniest thing to happen in a long, long time.
That's called a coup.
Hmmm. An open source coup at MicroSoft.
I like it.
Let's get working on this kids.
That would make it *not* the first animal on land.
I know that was a joke, but evolution does none of those things. It creates the diversity of species we see today, it does not create life.
You're making the assumption that pedophilia is an evolved behavior and not one that rises from certain social contexts.
Imagine you and anyone of your environment don't know sight.
Your being is without photosensitivity ENTIRELY. But suddenly there's something causing for something usefull to evolve
You got this backwards, environment does not cause traits to come into being. Mutation causes traits to come into being and then environment causes the most useful to be spread.
I think you've got a fundamental confusion with what evolution is, what the theory says and how it works.
why are there still some species left that are considered lower down on the evolutionary chain?
There is no lower or higher on the evolutionary chain, nor is there transitionary forms. There are species which exist now, species which have existed and those which may exist. There are species that are older, "lower", because they have proved fit for their environments. There are species that evolved later, normally not a direct line of decent, that are fit for *their* environment. I don't know if you've read a good book on evolution but it covers this, pretty basic stuff.