Watch "Arithmetic, Population and Energy" by Al Bartlett.
From his WP page*, he makes the mistake of conflating growth with exponential growth, thus proving that at his greatest shortcoming is his inability to understand that the human population is not growing exponentially**. The numbers for the last century points to quadratic growth.
*This is of course just from one sentence on WP, so it might be wildly simplistic. Please let me know if his more detailed points make my criticism irrelevant.
The medieval warming period was quite localized, with some areas getting hotter and some getting colder. When that is taken into account, the earth has been warmer than that since the middle of the 20th century. This also means that weather patterns are different in the two scenarios (medieval warm period vs. global warming), with different precipitation levels. The analysis of global food production is a bit more complex then just comparing average temperatures.
High fructose corn syrup has nearly the same mix of glucose and fructose as sucrose has*. Per calorie, it is slightly sweeter than sucrose, but that is pretty much the only difference.
*Sucrose isn't a mix but a chemical compound. It breaks down to equal amounts of glucose and fructose in the stomach fast enough that it doesn't make a difference.
I could also point out that the cure might be worse that the disease; people are going to switch to diet drinks to get around this issue, and many of the artificial sweeteners have their own issues.
Which sweeteners have which problems? And is it really worse than the same amount of sweetness from suger?
Do you really, seriously, truthfully believe that the Nanny State banning big sodas won't prevent soda addicts from... drum roll please... buying two of them?
Yes, it has been shown that people eat/drink more when they are served bigger portions or the utensils are bigger and that it is easier to resist an urge if you have to physically move to satisfy it. All of these would make it less likely for people to order another soda then it would be for them to finish one double soda.
Fine, but don't force me to spend my money on your fantasies.
I don't think anybody would object to private corporations making a moon base*, but if you want to use tax money on it, you had better come up with something better then "But it would be REALLY COOL".
I have only seen pictures of what kudzu can do, but I shudder at the thought of pesticide-resistan kudzu.
Are you sure that the resistance comes from GMO? Has it been established that it is the same gene? You would imagine kudzu to get it naturally. If it should be from GMO corn, isn't it a problem that corn is a grass and kudzu isn't? That seems like a big gap for crosspollination to cross, but I honestly don't konw anything about crosspolination.
Ski wax is full of perfluorinated compounds (think teflon) for exactly this reason, so I assume snowboard is already covered in something like that? Otherwise, could you wax it?
TMS'ing a surface just makes it lipophile, so fat will stick to it. If you want a chemical hydro- and lipophobe, perfluorinated hydrocarbons are the way to go (teflon, microwave popcorn bags, muffin forms, basically anything paper or board that contacts food without problems). It seems they are not that healthy, so superhydrophobic structures might be the way to go, at least for food containers. Read up on it, it is pretty cool.
A metal surface is not porrous and usually very smooth, and there is no way for superglue to make a (stable) chemical bond to the surface. There is nothing to hold on to.
Decades after the Vietnam war, they still have horrible deformities to deal with.
Because of Roundup? Weird, I thought it was Agent Orange, or to be more specific, the impurity of dioxin in 2,4,5-T that was to blame. But you wouldn't use an impurity in some batches of a pesticide that hasn't even been used, with or without impurities, for the last 25 years as an argument against pesticides today, would you? So they must have used Roundup.
Bee population die-offs have been causually linked to the systemic pesticides that some GMO crops have been bred to produce.
Do you have any links to neonicotinoid-producing GMO? I can't find anything.
The roundup ready controversy stems from the treatment of farmers that dont ise roundup ready crops by serving them patent lawsuits when cross pollination occurs naturally.
They serve patent lawsuits when cross pollination happens, the farmer notices this, kills the non-cross-pollinated plants with Roundup and uses the seeds of the remaining plants next year, at least in the most heavily marketed case. I am not saying this is OK, but it is pretty far from just cross-pollination.
Ah, yes, the documentaries that blames GM cotton for suicides when the number of such suicides have been nearly constant since 5 years before teh introduction of the crop in India.
Monsanto is evil, but most of the documentaries I see mentioned on/. are simply pure propaganda. You probably wouldn't use Expelled as if it told the truth, don't do the same with other documentaries.
They created life that cannot reproduce, so that farmers have to come to them each year to buy new seeds.
The terminator genes were developed to limit the possibility of spreading traits, e.g. pesticide resistance, to weeds. It really is a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario.
It isn't the natural process that makes it applicable for protection, it is the human work that is the basis for taking advantage of the natural process. In this case, it is the work done to make and test the GMO.
As for what I have read from the case, it is pretty clear that it derived from Monsanto, and that the farmer was aware. I am not saying it makes it OK, I am just really tired of people taking documentaries for truth. They have become the weapon of choice for propagandists, and if people aren't critical of them, they are going to end up believing Expelled or some other such nonsense.
The "crop yield increases" so frequently touted as the great advantage disappear after a few years.
There is so much disinformation about the drop yield of GMOs (from both sides) that I have given up trying to figure out the truth. Anyway, this might also be the case for other cultivars, and isn't relevant in whether we allow people to use it, only to whether it is a good idea for the individual farmer to use it.
Herbs become roundup-resistant, requiring the use of more roundup, leading to more pollution
This would be a problem for any herbicide-resistant cultivar. If we are going to pollute, let's at least pollute with Roundup, which is not harmful for mammals, and is mostly bound to the soil. It is by far the least bad of the pesticides (not that that makes it good, but if spraying with Roundup is a problem, we should ban all pesticides).
, and the destruction of bee populations (like there's no tomorrow)
This is not caused by roundup. The best guess we have is a new insecticide (I forget which).
Then there's lock-in, aggressive law-suits by Monsanto to force other farmers to start using their products, etc.. Lots of problems that don't exist with other cultivars. (Because no, you cannot separate GMOs from their salesmen.)
That is a problem of contract law or IP law, let's fix it there in stead of banning a potentially useful tool.
If that was the bar for every new cultivar, fine. If the bar depends on the origin of the cultivar, there should be a rational reason for this. If anything, the bar should be lower for GMOs, where we have some clue of what has happened, but I don't think the difference is big enough to warrant that.
A teacher can understand what essential part of understanding you are missing and make an analogy that explains exactly that. He can then change the analogy if you don't get it. This, of course, assumes rather few students per teacher, and good teachers. But by all means, let's find out where humans do well and where computers are better.
At the university where I work, the experience seems to be that class discussions work better in e-learning courses. This could be because even quiet types will join in, or because people spend longer time thinking about their answers. This is, of course, only anecdotal.
IIRC, the bandwidth is defined by how long time it takes the data to travel its own length. It would be reasonable to define the length of the data as the closest two such station wagons can travel at said speed. This means that the bandwidth of the method is not dependent on the number of cars, but is dependent on the number of lanes the cars can travel in. I suppose this definition makes more sense in the digital world, where creating more station wagons on a whim is not a problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Watch "Arithmetic, Population and Energy" by Al Bartlett.
From his WP page*, he makes the mistake of conflating growth with exponential growth, thus proving that at his greatest shortcoming is his inability to understand that the human population is not growing exponentially**. The numbers for the last century points to quadratic growth.
*This is of course just from one sentence on WP, so it might be wildly simplistic. Please let me know if his more detailed points make my criticism irrelevant.
**Sorry, couldn't resist that one.
The medieval warming period was quite localized, with some areas getting hotter and some getting colder. When that is taken into account, the earth has been warmer than that since the middle of the 20th century. This also means that weather patterns are different in the two scenarios (medieval warm period vs. global warming), with different precipitation levels. The analysis of global food production is a bit more complex then just comparing average temperatures.
Lovelock is not a climate scientists, so I fail to see the relevance of his exagerations. Do you have any examples of them being used for planning?
High fructose corn syrup has nearly the same mix of glucose and fructose as sucrose has*. Per calorie, it is slightly sweeter than sucrose, but that is pretty much the only difference.
*Sucrose isn't a mix but a chemical compound. It breaks down to equal amounts of glucose and fructose in the stomach fast enough that it doesn't make a difference.
I could also point out that the cure might be worse that the disease; people are going to switch to diet drinks to get around this issue, and many of the artificial sweeteners have their own issues.
Which sweeteners have which problems? And is it really worse than the same amount of sweetness from suger?
Do you really, seriously, truthfully believe that the Nanny State banning big sodas won't prevent soda addicts from... drum roll please... buying two of them?
Yes, it has been shown that people eat/drink more when they are served bigger portions or the utensils are bigger and that it is easier to resist an urge if you have to physically move to satisfy it. All of these would make it less likely for people to order another soda then it would be for them to finish one double soda.
English consists entirely of foreign words, pronounced wrongly.
Fine, but don't force me to spend my money on your fantasies.
/., SOMEBODY will complain.
I don't think anybody would object to private corporations making a moon base*, but if you want to use tax money on it, you had better come up with something better then "But it would be REALLY COOL".
*OK, this is
I have only seen pictures of what kudzu can do, but I shudder at the thought of pesticide-resistan kudzu.
Are you sure that the resistance comes from GMO? Has it been established that it is the same gene? You would imagine kudzu to get it naturally. If it should be from GMO corn, isn't it a problem that corn is a grass and kudzu isn't? That seems like a big gap for crosspollination to cross, but I honestly don't konw anything about crosspolination.
Ski wax is full of perfluorinated compounds (think teflon) for exactly this reason, so I assume snowboard is already covered in something like that? Otherwise, could you wax it?
TMS'ing a surface just makes it lipophile, so fat will stick to it. If you want a chemical hydro- and lipophobe, perfluorinated hydrocarbons are the way to go (teflon, microwave popcorn bags, muffin forms, basically anything paper or board that contacts food without problems). It seems they are not that healthy, so superhydrophobic structures might be the way to go, at least for food containers. Read up on it, it is pretty cool.
A metal surface is not porrous and usually very smooth, and there is no way for superglue to make a (stable) chemical bond to the surface. There is nothing to hold on to.
Decades after the Vietnam war, they still have horrible deformities to deal with.
Because of Roundup? Weird, I thought it was Agent Orange, or to be more specific, the impurity of dioxin in 2,4,5-T that was to blame. But you wouldn't use an impurity in some batches of a pesticide that hasn't even been used, with or without impurities, for the last 25 years as an argument against pesticides today, would you? So they must have used Roundup.
Bee population die-offs have been causually linked to the systemic pesticides that some GMO crops have been bred to produce.
Do you have any links to neonicotinoid-producing GMO? I can't find anything.
The roundup ready controversy stems from the treatment of farmers that dont ise roundup ready crops by serving them patent lawsuits when cross pollination occurs naturally.
They serve patent lawsuits when cross pollination happens, the farmer notices this, kills the non-cross-pollinated plants with Roundup and uses the seeds of the remaining plants next year, at least in the most heavily marketed case. I am not saying this is OK, but it is pretty far from just cross-pollination.
There's a few documentaries on the subject
Ah, yes, the documentaries that blames GM cotton for suicides when the number of such suicides have been nearly constant since 5 years before teh introduction of the crop in India.
/. are simply pure propaganda. You probably wouldn't use Expelled as if it told the truth, don't do the same with other documentaries.
Monsanto is evil, but most of the documentaries I see mentioned on
They created life that cannot reproduce, so that farmers have to come to them each year to buy new seeds.
The terminator genes were developed to limit the possibility of spreading traits, e.g. pesticide resistance, to weeds. It really is a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario.
It isn't the natural process that makes it applicable for protection, it is the human work that is the basis for taking advantage of the natural process. In this case, it is the work done to make and test the GMO.
As for what I have read from the case, it is pretty clear that it derived from Monsanto, and that the farmer was aware. I am not saying it makes it OK, I am just really tired of people taking documentaries for truth. They have become the weapon of choice for propagandists, and if people aren't critical of them, they are going to end up believing Expelled or some other such nonsense.
The "crop yield increases" so frequently touted as the great advantage disappear after a few years.
There is so much disinformation about the drop yield of GMOs (from both sides) that I have given up trying to figure out the truth. Anyway, this might also be the case for other cultivars, and isn't relevant in whether we allow people to use it, only to whether it is a good idea for the individual farmer to use it.
Herbs become roundup-resistant, requiring the use of more roundup, leading to more pollution
This would be a problem for any herbicide-resistant cultivar. If we are going to pollute, let's at least pollute with Roundup, which is not harmful for mammals, and is mostly bound to the soil. It is by far the least bad of the pesticides (not that that makes it good, but if spraying with Roundup is a problem, we should ban all pesticides).
, and the destruction of bee populations (like there's no tomorrow)
This is not caused by roundup. The best guess we have is a new insecticide (I forget which).
Then there's lock-in, aggressive law-suits by Monsanto to force other farmers to start using their products, etc.. Lots of problems that don't exist with other cultivars. (Because no, you cannot separate GMOs from their salesmen.)
That is a problem of contract law or IP law, let's fix it there in stead of banning a potentially useful tool.
Not necessarily bible thumper, tree hugger seems to be a more fitting derogative in this case.
But, in all seriousness, what problems exist with GMOs that doesn't exist with other cultivars?
No, they sue people for deliberately selecting the seeds to use by spraying them with glyphosate (at least, in the most marketed case).
If that was the bar for every new cultivar, fine. If the bar depends on the origin of the cultivar, there should be a rational reason for this. If anything, the bar should be lower for GMOs, where we have some clue of what has happened, but I don't think the difference is big enough to warrant that.
A teacher can understand what essential part of understanding you are missing and make an analogy that explains exactly that. He can then change the analogy if you don't get it. This, of course, assumes rather few students per teacher, and good teachers. But by all means, let's find out where humans do well and where computers are better.
At the university where I work, the experience seems to be that class discussions work better in e-learning courses. This could be because even quiet types will join in, or because people spend longer time thinking about their answers. This is, of course, only anecdotal.
IIRC, the bandwidth is defined by how long time it takes the data to travel its own length. It would be reasonable to define the length of the data as the closest two such station wagons can travel at said speed. This means that the bandwidth of the method is not dependent on the number of cars, but is dependent on the number of lanes the cars can travel in. I suppose this definition makes more sense in the digital world, where creating more station wagons on a whim is not a problem.
Patents, trademarks and copyright are also government-mandated monopolies.