I'm guessing no one asked for GMO insulin and GMO cheese 30-40 years ago either, but dropping society's dependence on chopped-up cow pancreases and calf stomachs allowed us to significantly ramp up production and lower costs.
The salmon's orange color comes from the caroteniods in its food, and has nothing to do with GMOs. Wild salmon *tends* to pick up an orange color if it has eaten a lot of krill and shrimp, while farmed salmon almost always is orange because carotenoids are added to its feed, as the customers expect it.
It's a joint NASA/USGS mission, as per the summary. But even so, NASA's original mission statement could be interpreted as to cover earth science as well.
[...] is absolutely outside of the free speech modifiers in the constitution (see shouting fire in a crowded theater, if that is still taught in civics classes as opposed to weird gender things)
To be pedantic, shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater is probably protected by the First Amendment, because it's not directed, nor likely, to incite or produce imminent lawless action. Though shouting "Fire! Trample the people around you to survive!" may be illegal.
That's the feature I was talking about. In Firefox you by default have to type ' (single quote character) first, as per their manual. But link-only searching can be made into the default by going to about:config and toggling the preference "accessibility.typeaheadfind.linksonly" to "true".
I haunt a number of forums and found it a little tedious to have to ctrl+f whatever item I wanted to "click" on.
Firefox has a built-in feature to select links as you type on a page; no need to even press Ctrl+F first. On Chrome I have found the extension Type-ahead-find to closely replicate that feature.
I propose that the scientific method has a flaw. It should become optimistic at some point. If there are hundreds of Bigfoot sightings in a year, as some of the researchers claim, then it becomes unlikely that all are hoaxes or misidentification, so maybe the scientific method should then assume that Bigfoot is likely to exist and is undetectable for some reason.
The scientific method isn't a strict rule set. It wasn't until 1934 that the philosopher Karl Popper contributed to its modern interpretation with the concept of falsification, by which attempts are made at disproving hypotheses rather than proving them. If the hypothesis survives repeated good-effort falsification attempts, then it may be promoted to a theory. But if the hypothesis gets falsified, then the study's null hypothesis (i.e. status quo) continues to apply.
What you seem to be suggesting for the modern scientific method is to either reject Karl Popper's contributions (and bring back all the problems that it purported to solve), or that the null hypothesis for a topic should flip at some arbitrary point, despite no alternative hypothesis yet being able to reject the null hypothesis.
To continue with your Bigfoot example; if someone went out tomorrow and discovered an encampment, them only providing a blurry photograph and testimony would not survive serious falsification attempts if used in a study, because low-quality evidence such as these are either easy to fabricate or not even falsifiable. Higher-quality evidence that are still reasonable to find would be DNA samples (hair, bones, scat), detailed video or GPS coordinates of the encounter. Scientists and experts could meaningfully test these lines of evidence, and even visit these places to reproduce the findings.
This is a common joke in the skeptical community. To quote Steven Novella, paraphrasing Christopher Hitchens:
Journalists tend to have a limited pallet of story themes from which they choose, and then they conform the story to the chosen theme. Stories always need to be about something, such as corporate greed or government malfeasance, so that is the story that is told – regardless of the pesky facts.
Bad science journalism works that way also. That is why we can joke about common cliches, such as “Missing Link Discovered,” “Scientists Baffled,” and “It turns out everything we thought we knew was wrong.”
Not sure where you're getting that distorted claim from. In 2007 he referenced a study that supposedly warned that the Arctic could be ice-free during summer by 2014:
Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is “falling off a cliff.” One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years.
I'm don't know where he got that study from, but it's certainly possible for some study to reach that conclusion by extrapolating from known data if trends had held up. What studies Al Gore cherry-picks does not have to represent the state of scientific consensus, but he's right in that the Arctic ice is shrinking at a considerable rate.
the Drill Team began drilling the main borehole on the evening of December 23rd and reached the lake faster than expected at 10:30pm on December 26th with a borehole depth of 1084 meters.
Scientists and international projects tend to use SI units. Both the international foot and US foot are used in the US depending on state and task, but they're both defined in meters. So like you and the article demonstrated, you lose accuracy by sloppily converting it back and forth.
Thanks for the source. It and the source referenced by the article seem to indicate that the article incorrectly mentioned no-till and low-till together when speaking of the no-till statistic, as no-till alone account for 21% of planted acres. No-till and low-till together account for 51% of planted acres.
The numbers aren't as clear-cut for the Midwest, but assuming corn, soybeans and wheat each represent an equal amounts of planted acres in the "Heartland" figure, I'd estimate no-till to be around 35%, and no-till + low-till at 75%.
I'm not sure I completely follow. The article's source gets its "21 percent" figure from this report, which if I parsed it correctly counts the practice on a per-year basis. It also defines it:
Continuous No-till: All crops in rotation are produced
with practices having STIR values <20.
Though low-till farming isn't as clearly defined, and the article seems to incorrectly bundle them together.
That's some weird phrasing there. Is the US statistic not true because the midwest subset of that statistic has a different ratio? Regardless, what is your source?
Poisonous chemical pesticides and fertilizers are used in both organic and conventional farming systems. Any produce that reaches store shelves in western countries has to fall way below determined safety limits for human consumption.
I suspect that what you define as "clean food" and "higher quality" has no scientific anchoring.
Sustainable farming could be applied to either organic or conventional farming system, as its aim is to uphold long-term ecological health, regardless of it's implemented. Organic farming is more about the ideological decision to use naturally occurring pesticides and fertilizers, and prohibiting synthetic ones, regardless of results.
There doesn't seem to be much data on its effectiveness though, perhaps because it's a relatively recent viewpoint and not strictly defined, though there are reports of it improving productivity in some cases.
Why Yet Another Crypto Library instead of a more widely used one?
If you're referring to DSS then they probably mean that the bug bounty applies to the esig library or the standard it is based on. It's a convenient tool for applying and verifying EU-compliant document signatures (PDF, XML, ASiC) throughout EU institutions.
A contrived use case could be that you want to sign a legally binding contract with a Spanish bank to own a summer house, but you authenticate yourself with your Finnish bank, and the Spanish bank has outsourced the signing service to a company located in the Netherlands. But anyone involved can validate the signed document and see who were involved.
That's too bad. Consumers are paying the bill, and they want a label so they can choose.
It still doesn't matter, because the consumers are paying the bills. They get to decide.
Eventually, you'll put a label on it.
In context to what you were responding to, it sounded to me like you meant that labeling was completely the consumers' choice, regardless of what the label said, or its intent was. I thought that was a charitable interpretation of your arguments, but it's unfortunate that we misunderstood each other. I thought you had an interesting viewpoint though.
No, come on, that's not what I said. Producers have no problem putting the little "tm" symbol next to every single one of their trademarks, along with the name of the trademark holder, so why the problem labeling the produce with a simple indication that the organism is patented and the name of the owner?
Well it seems to me that you keep changing what you want on the label. In your initial post you wanted to label GMO. A couple of comments later you seemed to agree that mutation breeding, clones and hybrids should also be labeled, in addition to any intellectual property holder. Now you're saying that only information about any intellectual property holder should be included.
Now, if you want the label to include the technology used (mutation breeding, hybridization, cloning, GMO, etc.) in order for the consumer to have a choice of preferred technologies, then I think that the consumer is being presented with an irrelevant and misleading choice.
If you instead want the label to include the technology used in order to combat patents, then as I mentioned previously, I think that would be a disingenuous label with a hidden agenda. But apparently that's not what you were arguing, as you said.
If you want the label to include patent information in order for the consumer to have a choice of, say, "patented by X, Y, Z" or "non-patented," then I think that that's a less controversial stance, and possibly even useful information for the consumer.
But I'm at least glad that you withdrew your claim that a label would be "misinformation". That's a bogus argument that I see a lot. A true fact cannot be misinformation. Beyond that, it's the job of the producer to do the proper marketing and public relations to convince consumers their product is worth the money, instead of trying to hide this true fact.
"Misinformation" was in reference to the fake cancer treatment example. You seemed to be saying that anything the consumer wanted on the label, they could have. That could include misinformation, or in the case of labeling the technology used -- misleading information.
It is not misinformation to label a genetically-modified organism that is protected by intellectual property laws as a genetically-modified organism that is protected by intellectual property laws. Since it is a true fact, it is the very opposite of misinformation. It's quite suspicious that there is so much effort to this one very plain fact.
And again, I consider the presence of the label to be unjustified, as you have not shown the label to have any relevance for consumers. If more consumers were informed on food science, they may not want irrelevant labels on most of their food, as other people could draw incorrect safety conclusions, e.g. from reading that their potatoes are a result of radiation breeding, compared to being inbred.
No, the first patent of a plant didn't occur until 1931, and it wasn't a basic foodstuff.
You're may be right for US patents. Though as I'm unable to find the source I was thinking of, we'll stick with US patents. The oldest US "food" patent application I could find was a 1930 plum tree. Regardless, my point that food patents existed way before GMO companies still stands -- Why single out a specific technology when you're actually out to thwart food patents?
No, my way is more effective because it harnesses the power of consumer choice.
There will be labels.
So am I understanding you correct that you want to combat food patents by labeling the type of plant production used? That's would be a disingenuous label with a hidden malicious agenda.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm guessing no one asked for GMO insulin and GMO cheese 30-40 years ago either, but dropping society's dependence on chopped-up cow pancreases and calf stomachs allowed us to significantly ramp up production and lower costs.
The salmon's orange color comes from the caroteniods in its food, and has nothing to do with GMOs. Wild salmon *tends* to pick up an orange color if it has eaten a lot of krill and shrimp, while farmed salmon almost always is orange because carotenoids are added to its feed, as the customers expect it.
I'm glad you got it. But I was actually thinking of an old Simpsons episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Though now I wonder how far back that joke goes.
Don't let the name throw you. It's more of a guideline.
It's a joint NASA/USGS mission, as per the summary. But even so, NASA's original mission statement could be interpreted as to cover earth science as well.
A country can try to solve more than one issue at once.
[...] is absolutely outside of the free speech modifiers in the constitution (see shouting fire in a crowded theater, if that is still taught in civics classes as opposed to weird gender things)
To be pedantic, shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater is probably protected by the First Amendment, because it's not directed, nor likely, to incite or produce imminent lawless action. Though shouting "Fire! Trample the people around you to survive!" may be illegal.
That's the feature I was talking about. In Firefox you by default have to type ' (single quote character) first, as per their manual. But link-only searching can be made into the default by going to about:config and toggling the preference "accessibility.typeaheadfind.linksonly" to "true".
I haunt a number of forums and found it a little tedious to have to ctrl+f whatever item I wanted to "click" on.
Firefox has a built-in feature to select links as you type on a page; no need to even press Ctrl+F first. On Chrome I have found the extension Type-ahead-find to closely replicate that feature.
I propose that the scientific method has a flaw. It should become optimistic at some point. If there are hundreds of Bigfoot sightings in a year, as some of the researchers claim, then it becomes unlikely that all are hoaxes or misidentification, so maybe the scientific method should then assume that Bigfoot is likely to exist and is undetectable for some reason.
The scientific method isn't a strict rule set. It wasn't until 1934 that the philosopher Karl Popper contributed to its modern interpretation with the concept of falsification, by which attempts are made at disproving hypotheses rather than proving them. If the hypothesis survives repeated good-effort falsification attempts, then it may be promoted to a theory. But if the hypothesis gets falsified, then the study's null hypothesis (i.e. status quo) continues to apply.
What you seem to be suggesting for the modern scientific method is to either reject Karl Popper's contributions (and bring back all the problems that it purported to solve), or that the null hypothesis for a topic should flip at some arbitrary point, despite no alternative hypothesis yet being able to reject the null hypothesis.
To continue with your Bigfoot example; if someone went out tomorrow and discovered an encampment, them only providing a blurry photograph and testimony would not survive serious falsification attempts if used in a study, because low-quality evidence such as these are either easy to fabricate or not even falsifiable. Higher-quality evidence that are still reasonable to find would be DNA samples (hair, bones, scat), detailed video or GPS coordinates of the encounter. Scientists and experts could meaningfully test these lines of evidence, and even visit these places to reproduce the findings.
Their latest nightly of 4.0 still plays MKV files for me. Where are you getting this info from?
I'm don't know where he got that study from, but it's certainly possible for some study to reach that conclusion by extrapolating from known data if trends had held up. What studies Al Gore cherry-picks does not have to represent the state of scientific consensus, but he's right in that the Arctic ice is shrinking at a considerable rate.
Scientists and international projects tend to use SI units. Both the international foot and US foot are used in the US depending on state and task, but they're both defined in meters. So like you and the article demonstrated, you lose accuracy by sloppily converting it back and forth.
Thanks for the source. It and the source referenced by the article seem to indicate that the article incorrectly mentioned no-till and low-till together when speaking of the no-till statistic, as no-till alone account for 21% of planted acres. No-till and low-till together account for 51% of planted acres.
The numbers aren't as clear-cut for the Midwest, but assuming corn, soybeans and wheat each represent an equal amounts of planted acres in the "Heartland" figure, I'd estimate no-till to be around 35%, and no-till + low-till at 75%.
Then can you define low-till farming in a way that is consistent with any available data?
I'm not sure I completely follow. The article's source gets its "21 percent" figure from this report, which if I parsed it correctly counts the practice on a per-year basis. It also defines it:
Though low-till farming isn't as clearly defined, and the article seems to incorrectly bundle them together.
That's some weird phrasing there. Is the US statistic not true because the midwest subset of that statistic has a different ratio? Regardless, what is your source?
Poisonous chemical pesticides and fertilizers are used in both organic and conventional farming systems. Any produce that reaches store shelves in western countries has to fall way below determined safety limits for human consumption.
I suspect that what you define as "clean food" and "higher quality" has no scientific anchoring.
Sustainable farming could be applied to either organic or conventional farming system, as its aim is to uphold long-term ecological health, regardless of it's implemented. Organic farming is more about the ideological decision to use naturally occurring pesticides and fertilizers, and prohibiting synthetic ones, regardless of results.
There doesn't seem to be much data on its effectiveness though, perhaps because it's a relatively recent viewpoint and not strictly defined, though there are reports of it improving productivity in some cases.
Why Yet Another Crypto Library instead of a more widely used one?
If you're referring to DSS then they probably mean that the bug bounty applies to the esig library or the standard it is based on. It's a convenient tool for applying and verifying EU-compliant document signatures (PDF, XML, ASiC) throughout EU institutions.
A contrived use case could be that you want to sign a legally binding contract with a Spanish bank to own a summer house, but you authenticate yourself with your Finnish bank, and the Spanish bank has outsourced the signing service to a company located in the Netherlands. But anyone involved can validate the signed document and see who were involved.
That's too bad. Consumers are paying the bill, and they want a label so they can choose.
It still doesn't matter, because the consumers are paying the bills. They get to decide.
Eventually, you'll put a label on it.
In context to what you were responding to, it sounded to me like you meant that labeling was completely the consumers' choice, regardless of what the label said, or its intent was. I thought that was a charitable interpretation of your arguments, but it's unfortunate that we misunderstood each other. I thought you had an interesting viewpoint though.
No, come on, that's not what I said. Producers have no problem putting the little "tm" symbol next to every single one of their trademarks, along with the name of the trademark holder, so why the problem labeling the produce with a simple indication that the organism is patented and the name of the owner?
Well it seems to me that you keep changing what you want on the label. In your initial post you wanted to label GMO. A couple of comments later you seemed to agree that mutation breeding, clones and hybrids should also be labeled, in addition to any intellectual property holder. Now you're saying that only information about any intellectual property holder should be included.
Now, if you want the label to include the technology used (mutation breeding, hybridization, cloning, GMO, etc.) in order for the consumer to have a choice of preferred technologies, then I think that the consumer is being presented with an irrelevant and misleading choice.
If you instead want the label to include the technology used in order to combat patents, then as I mentioned previously, I think that would be a disingenuous label with a hidden agenda. But apparently that's not what you were arguing, as you said.
If you want the label to include patent information in order for the consumer to have a choice of, say, "patented by X, Y, Z" or "non-patented," then I think that that's a less controversial stance, and possibly even useful information for the consumer.
But I'm at least glad that you withdrew your claim that a label would be "misinformation". That's a bogus argument that I see a lot. A true fact cannot be misinformation. Beyond that, it's the job of the producer to do the proper marketing and public relations to convince consumers their product is worth the money, instead of trying to hide this true fact.
"Misinformation" was in reference to the fake cancer treatment example. You seemed to be saying that anything the consumer wanted on the label, they could have. That could include misinformation, or in the case of labeling the technology used -- misleading information.
It is not misinformation to label a genetically-modified organism that is protected by intellectual property laws as a genetically-modified organism that is protected by intellectual property laws. Since it is a true fact, it is the very opposite of misinformation. It's quite suspicious that there is so much effort to this one very plain fact.
And again, I consider the presence of the label to be unjustified, as you have not shown the label to have any relevance for consumers. If more consumers were informed on food science, they may not want irrelevant labels on most of their food, as other people could draw incorrect safety conclusions, e.g. from reading that their potatoes are a result of radiation breeding, compared to being inbred.
No, the first patent of a plant didn't occur until 1931, and it wasn't a basic foodstuff.
You're may be right for US patents. Though as I'm unable to find the source I was thinking of, we'll stick with US patents. The oldest US "food" patent application I could find was a 1930 plum tree. Regardless, my point that food patents existed way before GMO companies still stands -- Why single out a specific technology when you're actually out to thwart food patents?
No, my way is more effective because it harnesses the power of consumer choice.
There will be labels.
So am I understanding you correct that you want to combat food patents by labeling the type of plant production used? That's would be a disingenuous label with a hidden malicious agenda.