The famous Harvard study is a little dubious in my humble opinion because it didn't include any measurement of the levels of pesticide in hfcs, nor did it involve actually feeding pesticide dosed hfcs to bees.
Correlations don't prove much, especially causality. There are other major variables here including the Varroa destructor, climate change, bee nutrition issues and the fact that there are places using neonicitinoids (say Australia) that aren't suffering from bee colony declines.
France (for 10 years), Italy and Germany have already tried various bans on neonicitinoids and didn't find bee population improvements.
âoeIf you want those perfect European apples, with no marks or bugs on them, Iâ(TM)m afraid farmers will have to spray something,â Mr. Neumann said, âoeand many of the older pesticides are even worse than the neonicotinoids.â
So neonicintinoids of unknown bee toxicity and better cost effectiveness are going to be replaced by older pesticides of unknown bee toxicity and worse cost effectiveness.
A faculty advisor mine really loved his work. He never retired, worked until he died at age 93.
His university tried to force him into retirement, cut his lab space and other wise tried to hassle him. He was 70 at the time.
In his early 70's he published some work on electrospray mass spectroscopy (ESMS) which was applicable to the analysis of proteins.
ESMS led directly the development of protease inhibitors and was a key part of the founding of the science of Protenomics.
That led to his being awarded a share in a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2002. He was 85 and by then had moved on to another university with less discriminatory attitudes towards older faculty.
The meme of capitalism is based on the idea that technological progress and investment of capital drives increasing productivity, and that increase in productivity drives increased wages and improved standards of living.
It's been as successful as heck.
Now that about 5% of the population is employed in agriculture and 8% in manufacturing, the question becomes what do you when all the material needs of a civilization can be supplied by 13% of the work force?
Or maybe 10%, or even less as time goes on.
Then there is the question of sustainability. I don't think what we have is sustainable. There is a set of giant externalities in place right now, the biggest being consumption of limited resources.
It's going to be a bit gut wrenching but these externalities have to be resolved.
That strategy would work if the Patent office didn't have a humungous backlog. But it does, so there are always more patents to process (and points to earn).
According to what I've read the problem is currently that the backlog is causing the Patent Office to approve patents too easily, reducing the quality of the patent.
No, my experience as a patent holder is that the patent process is one of negotiation. The first filing is make overly broad in order to see what you can get away with. When it's rejected you winnow it down to something that likely to get accepted, and perhaps beef up your arguments to get rid of any sticking points.
If anything I think the ubiquity of cameras carried by public citizens is having exactly the opposite effect this article claims. Actions by police trying to suppress people recording them in public are leading to court rulings clarifying the rights of citizens to photograph and record in public.
The Linux license model depends on the existence of copyright, and it is supported by large corporations who utilize the result in profit making endeavors.
Would Linux exist without copyright? Maybe, but I doubt if it would be supported by major corporations the way it is if it didn't have the license it does today.
Maybe you could defend DRM if it actually worked. But it doesn't. Anyone who really wants to can circumvent it, so the residual effect is that DRM merely reduces the value of the product to legitimate purchasers because the utility of the product is needlessly reduced.
DRM hurts honest people and does nothing to restrain the dishonest.
On Aug. 1, Salesforce.com "attempted to take its systems live for My Pillow" but more than 100 components "were not functional," his suit adds. Furlong subsequently disputed the $125,000 charge with American Express, and Salesforce.com credited back the amount, the filing states.
I'd suggest that rather than modding my comments about Seralini's work down people should investigate the scientific consensus opinions regarding his work. While you may dismiss work out of Monsanto if you like, the fact is that Seralini's work is funded by advocacy organization equally and thus should be viewed in that light too.
The gold standard are large scale government funded multigeneration studies like the one done in Japan that are mentioned in the article I posted in my now modded down comment.
These aren't subject to either being tainted by funds from Monsanto or Greenpeace, and they uniformly fail to repeat Seralini's results.
Sorry if my postings on this upset the anti-GMO crowd, but the facts are sometimes annoying.
A big problem comes when you conflate GMO which agribusiness.
They aren't necessarily the same thing.
The article points out that for a sustainable future in agriculture it looks pretty certain that GMO crops will be needed. We aren't going to have large scale sources of synthetic fertilizers forever, and certainly population pressure is continuing to increase.
Agribusiness is a different issue. There are clear political solutions to problems that people complain about that are independent of the choice of use of GMOs.
Slashdot Mirror
Research spending has a way of having unintended consequences. DARPA being the poster child for that.
> You don't put luddites with an IQ of near-zero in charge of science and finance.
We need to make people pass a basic test before they can vote. One that includes differential calculus questions.
Corn is wind pollenated....
Honey is 50/50 fructose/glucose, just like HFCS.
The famous Harvard study is a little dubious in my humble opinion because it didn't include any measurement of the levels of pesticide in hfcs, nor did it involve actually feeding pesticide dosed hfcs to bees.
Correlations don't prove much, especially causality. There are other major variables here including the Varroa destructor, climate change, bee nutrition issues and the fact that there are places using neonicitinoids (say Australia) that aren't suffering from bee colony declines.
France (for 10 years), Italy and Germany have already tried various bans on neonicitinoids and didn't find bee population improvements.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22339191
It's an unsettled scientific problem.
âoeIf you want those perfect European apples, with no marks or bugs on them, Iâ(TM)m afraid farmers will have to spray something,â Mr. Neumann said, âoeand many of the older pesticides are even worse than the neonicotinoids.â
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/business/global/hoping-to-save-bees-europe-to-vote-on-pesticide-ban.html?pagewanted=all
One thing to keep in mind is that honeybees are not native to the Americas. They are an import. Brought over in 1622 by European colonists.
This means indigenous American vegetation is not dependent on honeybees for fertilization.
So neonicintinoids of unknown bee toxicity and better cost effectiveness are going to be replaced by older pesticides of unknown bee toxicity and worse cost effectiveness.
Quite an experiment they are embarking on.
I don't think this will be over any time soon.
A faculty advisor mine really loved his work. He never retired, worked until he died at age 93.
His university tried to force him into retirement, cut his lab space and other wise tried to hassle him. He was 70 at the time.
In his early 70's he published some work on electrospray mass spectroscopy (ESMS) which was applicable to the analysis of proteins.
ESMS led directly the development of protease inhibitors and was a key part of the founding of the science of Protenomics.
That led to his being awarded a share in a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2002. He was 85 and by then had moved on to another university with less discriminatory attitudes towards older faculty.
If your old dog can't learn any new tricks, the chances are he couldn't learn any tricks when he was young as well.
The meme of capitalism is based on the idea that technological progress and investment of capital drives increasing productivity, and that increase in productivity drives increased wages and improved standards of living.
It's been as successful as heck.
Now that about 5% of the population is employed in agriculture and 8% in manufacturing, the question becomes what do you when all the material needs of a civilization can be supplied by 13% of the work force?
Or maybe 10%, or even less as time goes on.
Then there is the question of sustainability. I don't think what we have is sustainable. There is a set of giant externalities in place right now, the biggest being consumption of limited resources.
It's going to be a bit gut wrenching but these externalities have to be resolved.
That strategy would work if the Patent office didn't have a humungous backlog. But it does, so there are always more patents to process (and points to earn).
According to what I've read the problem is currently that the backlog is causing the Patent Office to approve patents too easily, reducing the quality of the patent.
No, my experience as a patent holder is that the patent process is one of negotiation. The first filing is make overly broad in order to see what you can get away with. When it's rejected you winnow it down to something that likely to get accepted, and perhaps beef up your arguments to get rid of any sticking points.
Yes, 100%. It also completely ignores recent court decisions which have ruled public photography to be a FIRST AMENDMENT right.
http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/know-your-rights-photographers
If anything I think the ubiquity of cameras carried by public citizens is having exactly the opposite effect this article claims. Actions by police trying to suppress people recording them in public are leading to court rulings clarifying the rights of citizens to photograph and record in public.
The Linux license model depends on the existence of copyright, and it is supported by large corporations who utilize the result in profit making endeavors.
Would Linux exist without copyright? Maybe, but I doubt if it would be supported by major corporations the way it is if it didn't have the license it does today.
Lots of things that are covered by copyright aren't art, yet are still very useful.
Maybe you could defend DRM if it actually worked. But it doesn't. Anyone who really wants to can circumvent it, so the residual effect is that DRM merely reduces the value of the product to legitimate purchasers because the utility of the product is needlessly reduced.
DRM hurts honest people and does nothing to restrain the dishonest.
There is plenty of legitimate research out there on GMO safety.
This review article published by the Society of Toxicology in the Oxford Series Toxicological Sciences is a good starting point.
http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/content/71/1/2.full
It is science that wins, not conspiracy theories.
On Aug. 1, Salesforce.com "attempted to take its systems live for My Pillow" but more than 100 components "were not functional," his suit adds. Furlong subsequently disputed the $125,000 charge with American Express, and Salesforce.com credited back the amount, the filing states.
So what is the big problem?
The old AmEx were great if you had to travel for your job.
Fly,
expense report,
get reimbursed,
pay Amex,
done
Well, we have all this handy surveillance tech now. Clearly we should use it to surveil where it would do the most good.
Congress.
> i was ridiculed
Then you are no longer a ridicule virgin. So BOHICA (Bend Over Here It Comes Again).
The cameras that were used in Boston were private building security cameras whose contents were voluntarily shown to the police.
Ray Flynn works for NYC. It's unlikely his opinions are going to much affect or inspire the installation of police cameras in Boston.
I'd suggest that rather than modding my comments about Seralini's work down people should investigate the scientific consensus opinions regarding his work. While you may dismiss work out of Monsanto if you like, the fact is that Seralini's work is funded by advocacy organization equally and thus should be viewed in that light too.
The gold standard are large scale government funded multigeneration studies like the one done in Japan that are mentioned in the article I posted in my now modded down comment.
These aren't subject to either being tainted by funds from Monsanto or Greenpeace, and they uniformly fail to repeat Seralini's results.
Sorry if my postings on this upset the anti-GMO crowd, but the facts are sometimes annoying.
A big problem comes when you conflate GMO which agribusiness.
They aren't necessarily the same thing.
The article points out that for a sustainable future in agriculture it looks pretty certain that GMO crops will be needed. We aren't going to have large scale sources of synthetic fertilizers forever, and certainly population pressure is continuing to increase.
Agribusiness is a different issue. There are clear political solutions to problems that people complain about that are independent of the choice of use of GMOs.
The Daily Mail? The web journal Entropy? Surely you jest.
Here's a clue. Any paper by Gilles-Eric Seralini contains very questionable statistical manipulation of data.
This article describes the large number of problems that more mainstream scientists have with his work:
http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2012/11/19/anti-gm-corn-study-reconsidered-seralini-finally-responds-to-torrent-of-criticism/
Finally, it is notable that Seralini's funding comes from Greenpeace, and organization not shy about distorting facts.