Except there's nothing carcinogenic about GMO food. There'd be a wholly different label. One that said something to the effect of: "Even though we have no reason to suspect that GMO food carries any risks to the consumer, we are labeling it as GMO food so you can avoid it, in case you are planning to wait until long-term studies can conclusively prove that there is no risk (at which point, you will likely be completely unable to purchase the food any longer, as it will have been replaced by some new technology)"
I would add that entire label. Snark and all. Technology is evolving rapidly and there is really no possible way we can prove that everything is empirically safe before its lifecycle has already expired. However, we have a pretty good grasp of the fundamental mechanisms of human health, and saying that we have no idea how something could be unsafe is pretty close.
Should we start long-term medical studies of things before the things are invented? But seriously, there are a lot of people investigating nanoparticle safety. Some of them across the hall from me. Time will tell whether your fear is well-founded or not.
Agreed. I've really been idling my brain with the idea of finding a viable third party idea that the dissatisfied 88% of the country can get behind, and I think that a party like the pirate party would do a good job. Unfortunately, the name is a serious problem for American voters...and at the same time there's no good way to get the publicity and initial support without the name.
The average middle-class citizen does not have the money to lobby Congress for changes to the tax law that will help him.
But the average middle-class citizen DOES have a staggering number of unemployed friends... Since they're not doing anything at all right now, why don't we get them organized to lobby congress? Can numbers make up for dollars?
Voting's great, but there has to be someone on the ticket that's worth voting for. Strangely, the tactical republican play to "fuck obama by making him come out against cybersecurity" will wind up winning him my vote. Assuming he doesn't just sign the bill in order to win the swing votes of a million grandmas who have no idea what cyberspace is.
To do genetic engineering, you HAVE to use a selection marker. When you insert a gene, you get something like a 1 in a million success rate. You need a way to kill off everything that wasn't a success, or you'll never find your needle in the haystack.
Everyone who does genetic engineering uses ampR as a selection marker, and no one says thing one about it. I wouldn't be surprised if the FDA REQUIRES you to use ampR as your selection marker in order to pass their crazy safety requirements - in fact, i looked it up, and while it's not a requirement, it's fully sanctioned. No one says "hey wait, what about penicillin resistance?" Why? Well, there are a bundle of reasons. To quote the FDA:
a) Danger of eating food with genetic modifications: None b) Potential to transfer genetic modifications to gut bacteria: None in the absence of selective pressure, nearly none in the presence. c) Potential to transfer genetic modifications to soil bacteria: None in the absence of selective pressure. Additionally, almost every bacteria that you could possibly transfer the gene to already has it. Seriously, every bacteria sequenced has resistance genes to almost every antibiotic out there, they're just not expressed very frequently. It's the way things are, because plants and fungi have been using antibiotics for millennia.
The use of antibiotic resistance genes as a selection marker is not a reason to hate Monsanto.
That depends on your sequencing depth. Do i really care if you get each individual position wrong 4% of the time when you give me 5000 base calls for that position? There might be 200 A+T+Gs, but the 4800 Cs are going to make it pretty obvious what's really going on there.
I've been waiting for a good name to describe the 3rd party that i've been kicking around, and i kind of like the connotations that the "Representative" party gives.
First, it doesn't suggest anything that differentiates the members from a 'normal' person, or that drives any kind of idealogical wedge between them...you can be a party member without having to toe any party line, because the only line to toe is that you actually, you know, represent.
Second, it strongly implies that the current "representatives" are not.
A+ idea. Someone will be in touch with you shortly to negotiate intellectual property transfer.
Only if we don't figure out a decent way to do without fossil fuels.
The same problem happened over and over since the industrial revolution: In the 1800s we reached a saturation point, beyond which there was not enough coal in the world to continue powering the projected demands for 5 years out. Someone came up with some technological improvements. Those improvements used a resource that eventually started to run low, and someone came up with more improvements.
There is scientific literature which states that the population growth rates in New York City were unsustainable, because within X years, there would be too many horses producing so much manure that the city would literally drown in shit.
That didn't happen, it's only figuratively drowning in shit.
just assume that mutation rates between Adam&Eve up to a while after Noah were much higher because God wanted it that way.
There has to be some reason why people don't live to be 400 years old anymore. Runaway mutation's a decent fit (although probably not as good as 'people never lived to be 400 y
I've recently moved back to kansas, and i've been stricken by exactly how MUCH emphasis the weather forecasters put on their SCIENCE. It seems like every local news weather team promo is basically just an advertisement for science. "Local news team weather uses Science science science science science. Channel X Science team weather science predicts weather with science. Science!"
It made me want to make my own competing god-based weather forecasting service. It should sell well here, right???
Of course not. Even a bible-thumper will use science when it comes to doing something in the real world.
That remaining 1% would be composed largely of trolls, unemployed busybodies, single-issue-firebrands (using their vote as leverage to promote their unrelated pet cause), and people who are getting paid under the table to vote for/against the bill by, parties who would profit from its passage or failure.
This is different from congress in that the busybodies in question are not collecting a paycheck. Sounds strictly better to me.
There are TWO urologists who have the same surname as me at the university where i went to school. Somehow, I got the default "surname@school.edu" address instead of either of them, and I frequently got emails intended for them.
It's much more fun to get unintended emails when they're about the problems some poor guy is having with his junk.
"I know my follow-up is scheduled for next week, but my scrotum is painfully swollen and I can barely walk. Can you see me any earlier?"
I was usually kind enough to let them know that they had the wrong address.
Plus, if you send out a fleet of ships every year for 30 years, with the first due back in 50 years, your company can go bankrupt after 30 and a shell company can re-buy the ships at 10% of their actual cost, multiplying your profit by an enormous factor.
Or they could just accept the fact that they're trying to sell something that reproduces naturally. Pet stores don't say "you can't breed these rabbits" - they either neuter them themselves or they deal with the fact that someone else might someday have extra rabbits to sell. It takes a lot of investment (sort of...as a geneticist myself, it's not even a million dollars or anything until you start futzing with the FDA and other gov't entities) so you should just make your distribution method more convenient than anyone else's & your prices competitive with whatever else is out there, even if the other stuff is basically selling exact copies of your product without the scientific investment.
If the cost of "food safety research" was borne by the regulatory bodies that demand it instead of the private companies hoping to sell food, there wouldn't be a need to have indefinite gene patents and teams of lawyers protecting the hundreds of millions of investment in a product. Genetics is cheap, it's all the regulatory crap that makes Monsanto have to behave like thugs to maintain profitability.
(not saying they wouldn't abuse the system to continue behaving like thugs while being incredibly profitable in my alternate setup, but there would be space for alternative, 'nice', companies to exist, and presumably people would recognize that "we hate monsanto, let's buy from otnasnom instead")
The main issue is locating the UPC codes. I don't know where they are on the packing so I have to sit there and spin each item around and around in my hands inspecting between one and six sides of it before I can locate it.
You don't have to locate the UPC codes! Every self-checkout scanner i've seen is reading from 2 angles simultaneously, meaning that you merely have to rotate the box twice to have checked all 6 sides. Pickup box, put above scanner, rotate twice or until beep, put in bag.
You don't save time over a real checker, but if the line's shorter, you're saving time over waiting in line.
Questioning christianity because you're a jew is way different than questioning AGW because you're a denier.
1) I'm not sure you're right, because i think i'm right. We both have exactly the same evidence supporting us. 2) I'm sure that 90% of EVERYONE ELSE, including 90% of experts are wrong, even though I have little to no evidence to support me and you have quite a bit.
Higgs Boson Deniers don't exist in bulk, but the ones that do are still out there trying to test their hypothesis instead of going on TV claiming that CERN shouldn't exist.
You can just ignore the rote memorization path, and use logic and reasoning on the exams.
You're hobbling yourself relative to those who take the easy route, with respect to grades, but you're given the opportunity to say you outscored your classmates despite hobbling yourself, and with a few exceptions (most notably freshman biology), you WILL outscore most of your classmates.
That's their whole argument. Everything that survived the period of time that they are referring to was capable of utilizing oxygen. After that, things got more and more complicated and diverse.
Basically, these guys just got an article posted to slashdot (and nature) describing how they just confirmed that evolution probably happened more or less how we expected that it did.
Science is nothing more than a marketing term to convince people to buy whatever they're selling.
The scientists just wanted to see if there was any merit in studying the effect of cellphones on bees. They chose an experiment which would disprove the hypothesis: "cell phones have no effect on bees". They succeeded. (as well as they can with n=2, at least) They now have reasons to continue investigations, with more hives, multiple levels of radiation, different distances, etc etc.
The person who wrote the article, on the other hand, is trying to sensationalize, overreach, and overconclude. The scientists just want more studies, the journalist just wants to convince people that the status quo is wrong.
Science is not to blame. Science journalism is to blame.
>For example, one can find scientific studies which indicate that high fructose corn syrup is unhealthy. There are also studies which will indicate that there is nothing at all wrong with high fructose corn syrup.
Your problem is that you (and perhaps the original authors) are oversimplifying. No scientific study would ever claim that HFCS is 'healthy' or 'unhealthy'. They would claim that eating X amount of HFCS causes an increase in Y. The other paper would claim that eating Z amount of HFCS does NOT cause an increase in Y(or A). Y may be related to health, and so might A, but 'healthy' is a value judgment which we do not make.
Read the surgeon general warning: "quitting smoking now may reduce serious risks to you health". These are the kinds of statements science is legitimately able to make. Not 'you will die young if you smoke' or ' cancer sticks are unhealthy'.
Slashdot Mirror
Except there's nothing carcinogenic about GMO food. There'd be a wholly different label. One that said something to the effect of: "Even though we have no reason to suspect that GMO food carries any risks to the consumer, we are labeling it as GMO food so you can avoid it, in case you are planning to wait until long-term studies can conclusively prove that there is no risk (at which point, you will likely be completely unable to purchase the food any longer, as it will have been replaced by some new technology)"
I would add that entire label. Snark and all. Technology is evolving rapidly and there is really no possible way we can prove that everything is empirically safe before its lifecycle has already expired. However, we have a pretty good grasp of the fundamental mechanisms of human health, and saying that we have no idea how something could be unsafe is pretty close.
Should we start long-term medical studies of things before the things are invented?
But seriously, there are a lot of people investigating nanoparticle safety. Some of them across the hall from me. Time will tell whether your fear is well-founded or not.
Agreed. I've really been idling my brain with the idea of finding a viable third party idea that the dissatisfied 88% of the country can get behind, and I think that a party like the pirate party would do a good job. Unfortunately, the name is a serious problem for American voters...and at the same time there's no good way to get the publicity and initial support without the name.
The average middle-class citizen does not have the money to lobby Congress for changes to the tax law that will help him.
But the average middle-class citizen DOES have a staggering number of unemployed friends... Since they're not doing anything at all right now, why don't we get them organized to lobby congress? Can numbers make up for dollars?
Voting's great, but there has to be someone on the ticket that's worth voting for.
Strangely, the tactical republican play to "fuck obama by making him come out against cybersecurity" will wind up winning him my vote. Assuming he doesn't just sign the bill in order to win the swing votes of a million grandmas who have no idea what cyberspace is.
He is exactly the only type of scientist that the public knows.
FTFY
To do genetic engineering, you HAVE to use a selection marker. When you insert a gene, you get something like a 1 in a million success rate. You need a way to kill off everything that wasn't a success, or you'll never find your needle in the haystack.
Everyone who does genetic engineering uses ampR as a selection marker, and no one says thing one about it. I wouldn't be surprised if the FDA REQUIRES you to use ampR as your selection marker in order to pass their crazy safety requirements - in fact, i looked it up, and while it's not a requirement, it's fully sanctioned. No one says "hey wait, what about penicillin resistance?" Why? Well, there are a bundle of reasons. To quote the FDA:
a) Danger of eating food with genetic modifications: None
b) Potential to transfer genetic modifications to gut bacteria: None in the absence of selective pressure, nearly none in the presence.
c) Potential to transfer genetic modifications to soil bacteria: None in the absence of selective pressure. Additionally, almost every bacteria that you could possibly transfer the gene to already has it. Seriously, every bacteria sequenced has resistance genes to almost every antibiotic out there, they're just not expressed very frequently. It's the way things are, because plants and fungi have been using antibiotics for millennia.
The use of antibiotic resistance genes as a selection marker is not a reason to hate Monsanto.
There are plenty of others.
That depends on your sequencing depth. Do i really care if you get each individual position wrong 4% of the time when you give me 5000 base calls for that position? There might be 200 A+T+Gs, but the 4800 Cs are going to make it pretty obvious what's really going on there.
I've been waiting for a good name to describe the 3rd party that i've been kicking around, and i kind of like the connotations that the "Representative" party gives.
First, it doesn't suggest anything that differentiates the members from a 'normal' person, or that drives any kind of idealogical wedge between them...you can be a party member without having to toe any party line, because the only line to toe is that you actually, you know, represent.
Second, it strongly implies that the current "representatives" are not.
A+ idea. Someone will be in touch with you shortly to negotiate intellectual property transfer.
Only if we don't figure out a decent way to do without fossil fuels.
The same problem happened over and over since the industrial revolution: In the 1800s we reached a saturation point, beyond which there was not enough coal in the world to continue powering the projected demands for 5 years out. Someone came up with some technological improvements. Those improvements used a resource that eventually started to run low, and someone came up with more improvements.
There is scientific literature which states that the population growth rates in New York City were unsustainable, because within X years, there would be too many horses producing so much manure that the city would literally drown in shit.
That didn't happen, it's only figuratively drowning in shit.
just assume that mutation rates between Adam&Eve up to a while after Noah were much higher because God wanted it that way.
There has to be some reason why people don't live to be 400 years old anymore. Runaway mutation's a decent fit (although probably not as good as 'people never lived to be 400 y
I've recently moved back to kansas, and i've been stricken by exactly how MUCH emphasis the weather forecasters put on their SCIENCE. It seems like every local news weather team promo is basically just an advertisement for science. "Local news team weather uses Science science science science science. Channel X Science team weather science predicts weather with science. Science!"
It made me want to make my own competing god-based weather forecasting service. It should sell well here, right???
Of course not. Even a bible-thumper will use science when it comes to doing something in the real world.
That remaining 1% would be composed largely of trolls, unemployed busybodies, single-issue-firebrands (using their vote as leverage to promote their unrelated pet cause), and people who are getting paid under the table to vote for/against the bill by, parties who would profit from its passage or failure.
This is different from congress in that the busybodies in question are not collecting a paycheck. Sounds strictly better to me.
Would the oppressive regimes not claim that their "police actions" are state secrets?
There are TWO urologists who have the same surname as me at the university where i went to school. Somehow, I got the default "surname@school.edu" address instead of either of them, and I frequently got emails intended for them.
It's much more fun to get unintended emails when they're about the problems some poor guy is having with his junk.
"I know my follow-up is scheduled for next week, but my scrotum is painfully swollen and I can barely walk. Can you see me any earlier?"
I was usually kind enough to let them know that they had the wrong address.
Plus, if you send out a fleet of ships every year for 30 years, with the first due back in 50 years, your company can go bankrupt after 30 and a shell company can re-buy the ships at 10% of their actual cost, multiplying your profit by an enormous factor.
Or they could just accept the fact that they're trying to sell something that reproduces naturally. Pet stores don't say "you can't breed these rabbits" - they either neuter them themselves or they deal with the fact that someone else might someday have extra rabbits to sell. It takes a lot of investment (sort of...as a geneticist myself, it's not even a million dollars or anything until you start futzing with the FDA and other gov't entities) so you should just make your distribution method more convenient than anyone else's & your prices competitive with whatever else is out there, even if the other stuff is basically selling exact copies of your product without the scientific investment.
If the cost of "food safety research" was borne by the regulatory bodies that demand it instead of the private companies hoping to sell food, there wouldn't be a need to have indefinite gene patents and teams of lawyers protecting the hundreds of millions of investment in a product. Genetics is cheap, it's all the regulatory crap that makes Monsanto have to behave like thugs to maintain profitability.
(not saying they wouldn't abuse the system to continue behaving like thugs while being incredibly profitable in my alternate setup, but there would be space for alternative, 'nice', companies to exist, and presumably people would recognize that "we hate monsanto, let's buy from otnasnom instead")
If you want the freedom to eat non-GMO food, I recommend you exercise your freedom to grow your own food.
The main issue is locating the UPC codes. I don't know where they are on the packing so I have to sit there and spin each item around and around in my hands inspecting between one and six sides of it before I can locate it.
You don't have to locate the UPC codes! Every self-checkout scanner i've seen is reading from 2 angles simultaneously, meaning that you merely have to rotate the box twice to have checked all 6 sides. Pickup box, put above scanner, rotate twice or until beep, put in bag.
You don't save time over a real checker, but if the line's shorter, you're saving time over waiting in line.
Questioning christianity because you're a jew is way different than questioning AGW because you're a denier.
1) I'm not sure you're right, because i think i'm right. We both have exactly the same evidence supporting us.
2) I'm sure that 90% of EVERYONE ELSE, including 90% of experts are wrong, even though I have little to no evidence to support me and you have quite a bit.
Higgs Boson Deniers don't exist in bulk, but the ones that do are still out there trying to test their hypothesis instead of going on TV claiming that CERN shouldn't exist.
You can just ignore the rote memorization path, and use logic and reasoning on the exams.
You're hobbling yourself relative to those who take the easy route, with respect to grades, but you're given the opportunity to say you outscored your classmates despite hobbling yourself, and with a few exceptions (most notably freshman biology), you WILL outscore most of your classmates.
That's their whole argument. Everything that survived the period of time that they are referring to was capable of utilizing oxygen. After that, things got more and more complicated and diverse.
Basically, these guys just got an article posted to slashdot (and nature) describing how they just confirmed that evolution probably happened more or less how we expected that it did.
Science is nothing more than a marketing term to convince people to buy whatever they're selling.
The scientists just wanted to see if there was any merit in studying the effect of cellphones on bees. They chose an experiment which would disprove the hypothesis: "cell phones have no effect on bees". They succeeded. (as well as they can with n=2, at least) They now have reasons to continue investigations, with more hives, multiple levels of radiation, different distances, etc etc.
The person who wrote the article, on the other hand, is trying to sensationalize, overreach, and overconclude. The scientists just want more studies, the journalist just wants to convince people that the status quo is wrong.
Science is not to blame. Science journalism is to blame.
>For example, one can find scientific studies which indicate that high fructose corn syrup is unhealthy. There are also studies which will indicate that there is nothing at all wrong with high fructose corn syrup.
Your problem is that you (and perhaps the original authors) are oversimplifying. No scientific study would ever claim that HFCS is 'healthy' or 'unhealthy'. They would claim that eating X amount of HFCS causes an increase in Y. The other paper would claim that eating Z amount of HFCS does NOT cause an increase in Y(or A). Y may be related to health, and so might A, but 'healthy' is a value judgment which we do not make.
Read the surgeon general warning: "quitting smoking now may reduce serious risks to you health". These are the kinds of statements science is legitimately able to make. Not 'you will die young if you smoke' or ' cancer sticks are unhealthy'.
Evolutionary Biology doesn't explain society or the relations between men and women. Ev Psych does.