Funny that I don't hear a Call to Arms to stop the practice of selective breeding for desired traits.
You're looking in the wrong crowd.:)
My wife is one such person. She used to groom dogs, and she worked at a pet shop and at a local chapter of the Humane Society. So she's familiar with the results of poor breeding.
It's not so much that breeding for a particular trait is bad, as much as doing so at the detriment of other important traits.
The AKC is pure evil. The fact that they have "specs" for registerable breeds and that they allow "line breeding" and inbreeding is proof (in my mind, at least). See this link for evidence. This can result in bad traits. Two well-known examples are that Dalmations are often deaf (though, to be fair, it's more common in any purebred dog than a mutt), and that German Shepherds often develop bad hips.
It may be an American (capitalistic make-money-fast) kind of thing. Appearently, the original shepherd lines from Germany were execllent dogs. It wasn't until they were bred for AKC specs that they went downhill. Again, German Angora rabbits are excellent dual-purpose meat and wool animals (we've researched this, as we raise own own rabbits for meat as well as wool), but the Americanized version -- the "show quality" one -- is lacking in both traits, but it looks prettier.
The last trade show I went to was Networld/Interop, back in '97 (I think). Is it still around and how it it doing? Anyone?
I just can't justify the couple of grand trade shows cost my employer, so I don't go in spite of having one trip allocated per admin per year in the budget. I can get the marketing spiel online, as well as archives of booth babe pics (e3girls, anyone?:), so where's the real incentive to even go to trade shows anymore?
Sorta the same reason I don't subscribe to computer rags anymore -- no more added value above and beyond what the internet offers.
Yes, there are those of us who see these as two entirely different things. You (and the scientists) may think the end result is "the exact same result" but I'm sceptical. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
While by its very nature, DNA provides for some sanity checks on what's viable, artificial mingling of DNA in the lab hasn't been through as rigorous a Q&A procedure as good old natural reproduction. I don't care if the resulting "species" can continue to pro-create -- it cheated by skipping a few important steps to being with.
I'm not a Luddite, folks. I think the science is cool and promising. But I think we shouldn't "go there" until we know what the hell we're doing. Look at the panacea antibiotics once were, and now look at how royally screwed up the situation now is. Genetic fudgery can have far more catastrophic results fifty years from now.
While there might be some local laws (I don't know of any off hand) about movie ratings, it is not a law.
I don't have time to find and cite the relavent law, but I believe that Utah (or maybe just Salt Lake City) has a law that says it's a crime to admit a sub-17-year-old into an R (or worse) movie. I remember some stink about it in the local press when either South Park or Showgirls was in theaters.
Even more so was the Aliens Total Conversion mod for Doom (or was it Doom II?). That, my friends, has been the only game ever to literally have me jumping out of my seat as I played it (at midnight, with the lights out, and headphones on).
Granted, my gaming has asymptotically been aproaching nill ever since that time as I grew older (that game is, what, 10 years old now?), but man, I've never found a more thoroughly immersive gaming experience as Aliens TC.
BTW... anyone know where I can score a full copy of Doom and Aliens TC online? I've heard that Doom was released to the public domain (or at least the core engine) and that Aliens TC was pushed waaay underground by the studio (Fox?) that owns the Alien franchise. Will that stuff even run under Linux? This post has my nostalgia running high.:)
The Terminator II mod for Doom II was kinda fun, but it got kinda old after you were left with nothing more than fifty T-1000's coming after you. No real plot or goal, unlike the ATC mod.
I'd still buy it if it was rebranded, just for the great flavours, but I'm not sure everyone would.
No doubt! B&J's Cookie Dough is the best cookie dough icecream brand, bar none. When I ran into a 5-quart bucket of the stuff at Costco a few years ago, I thought I would die of joy. However, I only got to buy one -- Costco just stopped carrying it for some reason.
Sweet! -- thanks for the link. Why the difference between the US and European sites? Maybe they feel us USians can't handle anything other than a GUI tool.:)
I can't speak for iPod users, but Plextor has this annoying habbit of releasing Plexwriter firmware updates wrapped in a Windows-only installer (or at least I can't find the bare Opal_10x.bin files anywhere on their site.
My solution? Fire up Win2k in a VMware session, d/l the installer, launch the installer, then snag the binary image from the Windows temp directory. I can then use the "pxupdate" utility from Joerg Schilling (the guy who writes cdrecord).
I can't flash the firmware under VMWare, and Windows will not be allowed to boot natively on my PC anymore.
I suspect that Linux-only iPod users could use a similar scenario using VMWare, Win4Lin, bochs, or maybe even wine to extract the update files.
A major pita to be sure, but it still beats having a real install of Windows. Plus, as others have pointed out, those Windows-centric steps need only be taken once, then the necessary files can be spread far and wide on the 'net.
So, the only real objection I see is that you have an issue with things that can't self-procreate. But, what about, say, seedless grapes, or oranges, ro watermelon? They can't self-procreate. Are these things not "blessed 'safe' by nature"? Are they "unnatural"?
Hybrids have a foot in both camps. The offspring of a hybrid can reach maturity, so it's okay in a sense. However, hybrids cannnot themselves procreate, which is nature's way of saying it wasn't really such a good idea after all.
Take mules, a cross between donkeys and horses. Mules aren't "seedless" yet they are rarely viable reproducers. Same for the occasional dolphin/whale hybrid.
I don't think GE is inherently evil -- but it lacks the QA of time that traditional breeding has under its belt. Sure, Super Cow's milk may up my life span by 10 years and prevent cancer, but can you tell me it won't cause sterility (random, bad problem unforseen by creators of Super Cow) after a few generations of people consuming it? No you can't, but you'd be hard pressed to argue that there's a risk like that in the traditionally bred milk cow after a couple of hundred years of selective breeding.
You seem to be assuming that scientists can do better than nature at the genetic level. You have a lot more faith in modern science than I do. Sure, we can crank out specific traits better than nature can with GE, but it will take 'til the end of either of our lifetimes before we know whether or not it was a good idea back in 2004.
How many substances were deemed safe, only to be found horribly toxic to people 50 years later? Lead. DDT. More than I can rattle off from memory. Yet chemicals are much simpler beasts than genetic engineering.
If I existed 100 years from now, as I am today, and no major problem in GE foods had arrived, I'd probably be singing its praises. You're already singing the praises of GE, yet it hasn't left the starting gate yet. It's that same overly-eager optimism of the scientific community that worries me the most, not the potential benefits of GE.
I concede to your primary conclusion: the total nutrition per unit of locally arable land must be increased.
My simplistic solution doesn't address that. The total caloric value of carrots is horribly low by weight in it's raw form. Pumpkins and sweet potatoes are much better than carrots (both high in vitamin-A and other vitamins/nutrients), but still don't hold a candle to brown rice in terms of overall nutrition and caloric value.
Various kinds of legumes and quinoa generally spank brown rice in terms of overall balance of nutrition per weight, but (like rice) totally lack vitamin-A.:) And all of these foods alone lack something critical for basic human health.
So, we have 2 solutions for locally-grown food supply. (1) Grow multiple, complimenting crops (google "three sisters farming" for an example of early Native American cleverness); or (2) use GE to get the required nutrients we need in an already-near-ideal food such as rice.
I still don't see how you can equate GE with selective farming/breeding, though. If you can get a rice plant and a dandelion to cross-polinate and have the result actually grow something edible, I'm all for it. The fact that we must shoehorn a trait into an unwilling species just doesn't sit well with me. If it can't be done within the bounds of reproduction that nature set forth for that species, I think there's an inherent gamble on our part to feel we can do better with no consequences down the road.
So I guess we can just agree to disagree on that last point.
I see your point. And, if your sources are accurate, then there is indeed a problem.
However, aren't we (the technologically advanced countries) going a little overboard? According to the current version of the USDA nutritional database (v16-1, as used in my handy copy of nut,
41.5g (1.46 ounces) of carrot is provides enough vitamin-A for your typical 2000-calorie diet per day.
Carrot!
Carrots are a fairly easy-to-grow, well-known crop. Judging by the bulk prices (pretty darned cheap, in my opinion) of carrots at every grocery store I've ever shopped at, they must be in surplus, easy to grow, and easy to ship (or all of the above). Anyone with knowledge of root cellars knows that carrots last a good long time under the right conditions.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to simply ship every family in Ethiopia few pounds of bulk carrots ever month or so, than to spend the hundreds of millions (or even billions, perhaps?) to genetically engineer a strain of rice with bloody dandelion genes? It would also be immediately available, rather than the required wait for testing/approvla and whatnot required for GE foods? Hell, send 'em sun-dried carrots -- no refrigeration require and less shipping weight!
Using the same software, and sorting foods by vitamin-A content, there are several hundred foods which, per 100g, exceed the daily vitamin-A recommendations. Many of those are considered weeds in the right context (and grow as such -- such as Lamb's Quarters). Surely there must be something that will grow (either naturally or in agriculture) in Ethiopia that will supply the majority indigent population with the needed vitamin-A it needs? Why not introduce dandelions themselves? They're (obviously) high in vit-A.
I'm being a wise-ass on purpose, but I'm not trying to be insensitive to the plight of Ethiopian children. There are certainly logistical problems with sending carrots to (or even growing then in) Ethiopia. However, I believe there must be a better way to go about this than creating a Frankenstien variety of rice. We are far from the point where we need to muck with mother nature's dip switches in order to reliably feed the population now or in the future (this assertion is based on the assumption that the studies/reports in the parent post deal with standard agriculture practices).
I'd go into a rant about how industrialized agriculture doesn't use sustainable methods, and how it can do much better with more natural methods vs methods which enrich companies and ruin farm land, but I've posted enough right now.
WTF, every last damn thing you are eating has been carefully cultivated for 10,000 years.
Exactly. That's 10,000 years of nature at work, with a little guidance from us humans. If there was a cross of wheat strains that just wasn't "right" by nature's standards, it wouldn't even be propogated (though the cross might grow). That's why I like heirloom varieties, versus hybrids and GE varieties -- they've stood the test of time within Nature's machinery.
I don't have a problem with "unnatural" food, in the sense that (as you correctly point out) that the chickens and cows we have today (of which we raise both, BTW) resemble very little of what their non-slective-bred ancestors from 10,000 years ago were like. Sure, a modern breed of chicken might not be able to survive in "the wild" (having bred out the traits that make survival easier), but those chickens can procreate with natural, sexual reproduction. That, in and of itself, is a validation by nature that what you have is still "right" in the biological sense.
I do have a problem with the "unnatural" varieties that are simply not possible when left to natural procreation processes.
I'll trust the milk of my family's Jersey cow, with a few hundred years of good old-fashioned breeding pedigee to back it up, whereas I won't trust milk from Super Cow v2.05 (Patent Pending) produced in a test tube in 1997 by some multinational agri-corp.
Now do you understand my objection? One is relatively tested and blessed "safe" by nature, whereas the other hasn't.
That having been said, I think that genetically engineered crops are inevitable, and mostly beneficial.
Some believe that engineered crops are only beneficial to the corps that create and patent them. Most debates I've heard on the issue center around the facts that (1) we have enough food-growing capacity to feed everyone; and (2) people starve in the world due to lack of money to buy food and/or that delivery of said food is fouled up by political hindrances.
I suppose that capitalists would argue that if McDonald's can increase the profit on an extra-large order of fries by $0.005 by using potatoes spliced with sea urchins which increases yield and is hardier against blight, then everybody wins. I, however, am not comforrable with this assertion. The costs to society (unknown safety and "ownership" of a food crop by a multinational corp) seem to big for me to find this acceptable.
My wife and I like to patronize Native Seeds. We inherently like the concept of heirloom seeds (a major middle-finger to Monsanto and the like), but we can get those even from the major seed catalogs. However, Native Seeds specialized in high-altitude, low-irrigation varieties well-suited for the Southwestern US.
I encourage everyone in the/. community with a green thumb to support the biodiversity of the un-patented plant realm of heirloom crops (especially food crops). The day we can't save our own seeds w/o paying royalties to Monsanto is a day I dread.
I'm sorry, but having a kid really is no big deal. It's as big a deal as breathing -- we're all designed to do it, and it will happen regardless of what we do about it (birthing, that is, not conceiving).
I get so much amusement out of those evening local news segments when some woman gives birth in a car on the way to the hospital or on an elevator.
Whoop. Dee. Freakin. Doo.
It's not like the baby needs two nurses and a doctor (who arrives for the last 10 minutes and catches the kid), an IV drip, an EEG monitor, and a motorized hospital bed to make its way into the world. Yeah, sometimes they do, but statistics are in favor of an uneventful birth.
Common -- there are 6 billion of us alive right now. Then there's the billions before us. You tellin' me that human reproduction is truly a beag deal? Give me a break. Sure, seeing my son born was kinda neat. My wife thought the event sucked.:) But then again, she did the natural birth thing -- she didn't cop out like many women do and go epidural and/or C-section (when not necessary). But it was in no way a miraculous, life-shattering, earth-moving event. It was the result of nature in action. Nothing more.
Remember Howie Mandel? The head-under-the-surgical-glove comedian guy? The voice of the cartoon "Bobby's World"? Star of "St. Elsewhere"? Well, he had one of the most classic lines in one of his 80's comedy routines.
Paraphrased:
"So, my wife and I are expecting our first baby."
Cheers, hoots, and applause by the audience
(Mock surprise and confusion) "It's really no big deal -- all I did was fuck my wife."
A succinct (albeit, crude) point if there ever was one. Having a kid ain't no big deal.:-)
Now... raising a kid. That's a hell of a lot more work, and a lot more impressive if the kid turns out okay in the end. And my hat goes off to any parent who can do a good job of it in this crazy world of ours. That's something to celebrate about.
I never claimed to be unable to manage but please explain to me how a small vibrating piece of plastic in my pocket hurts YOU?
It doesn't -- I commend you for having the discipline and/or courtesy to use the vibe rather than the ringer where appropriate. However, most people are not that selfless. That's why there's an increasing market (or at least a perceived one) for cell jamming.
That said, if I'm paying to hang out in an establishment for the expected ambiance of "quiet", then I feel that that trumps a person's need to have their cell phone ring in the same establishment. And if you choose to place yourself in such an establishment where everyone does let their phones ring (even though you don't yourself), it's just silly for you to complain about it when jamming becomes the norm in such places.
If you need to be contacted in a moment's notice, then stay near a phone. My point wasn't to sound like a Luddite (BTW -- we've tossed our microwave, washer, and dryer, and we've done fine, thank you), but to point out that in the face of public backlash against mobile annoyances, we can route around such backlash. It'll just be a little more inconvenient, that's all. Nobody is entitled to convenience.
I do feel that public locations should never block signals of any kind. But private property is, well, private property, and barring violation of civil rights, they should be able to impose whatever restrictions they want to.
Perhaps I got a little too harsh/personal with the childbirth thing. I aplogize. I would have been irked to miss the birth of one of my kids -- but then again... I kept near a phone (or my wife) when the time was near. I wish you and your wife a healthy kid and your wife a speedy delivery.
I know people abuse them and annoy but this is stupid. My wife is due to have our second child in 3 days. I NEED to have my cell work (vibrate) wherever I am.
That's right. It's not like the human female has evolved over thousands of years to easily squeeze out a pup or two without much intervention.
If you were her doctor/ob/gyn in addition to being her husband, I'd appreciate your point. If you're *that* concerned about the delivery -- and if you're not the doc, there's not much you'd be able to do anyway -- then take some time off and hang with your wife until the big event comes around.
And while not trying to not sound like one of those raving loons on alt.support.childfree (or whetever it's called), you have no rights or expectations to a social life should you choose to procreate. I know -- I'm a father of two. When I left my kids with the sitter/evening daycare, I would give them my cell number, but I never left it on. If the situation was *that* dire, I'd hope they'd call the hospital/police/etc rather than me. And it it's not that dire, they can handle the kids 'till I pick them up.
Sheesh -- you'd think childbearing and parenting were rare events, fraught with peril, if parents in this thread were actually taken seriously. Kids (and expectant mothers, for that matter) just aren't that fragile.
Man, these cell phone jammer articles sure do get people all riled up. How did we *ever* survive life before the 90's when every 12-year-old and her dog didn't have cell phone. Those were dark days indeed.:) Lighten up, folks. You can manage w/o your precious portable phones.
Gary Oldman is awesome -- always plays a great psycho. I think my favorite flicks with him are "Immortal Beloved" and "The Professional" (which has a very young Natalie Portman, if I recall). The expression on his face before his life ends in the latter was just classic.
Wanna rent everything under the sun? Check out netflix.com -- I'm a former satisfied customer. Lately, I just decided to buy the TV series' on DVD outright, rather than waste the money on rentals. There's enough good TV on DVD -- even now -- for my wife and I never to pull out the rabbit ears again.
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You're looking in the wrong crowd. :)
My wife is one such person. She used to groom dogs, and she worked at a pet shop and at a local chapter of the Humane Society. So she's familiar with the results of poor breeding.
It's not so much that breeding for a particular trait is bad, as much as doing so at the detriment of other important traits.
The AKC is pure evil. The fact that they have "specs" for registerable breeds and that they allow "line breeding" and inbreeding is proof (in my mind, at least). See this link for evidence. This can result in bad traits. Two well-known examples are that Dalmations are often deaf (though, to be fair, it's more common in any purebred dog than a mutt), and that German Shepherds often develop bad hips.
It may be an American (capitalistic make-money-fast) kind of thing. Appearently, the original shepherd lines from Germany were execllent dogs. It wasn't until they were bred for AKC specs that they went downhill. Again, German Angora rabbits are excellent dual-purpose meat and wool animals (we've researched this, as we raise own own rabbits for meat as well as wool), but the Americanized version -- the "show quality" one -- is lacking in both traits, but it looks prettier.
Silly breeders. :)
gnut, a console nutella app which appears to be a dormant project these days, was pretty cool as far as real applications.
I just can't justify the couple of grand trade shows cost my employer, so I don't go in spite of having one trip allocated per admin per year in the budget. I can get the marketing spiel online, as well as archives of booth babe pics (e3girls, anyone? :), so where's the real incentive to even go to trade shows anymore?
Sorta the same reason I don't subscribe to computer rags anymore -- no more added value above and beyond what the internet offers.
Yes, there are those of us who see these as two entirely different things. You (and the scientists) may think the end result is "the exact same result" but I'm sceptical. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
While by its very nature, DNA provides for some sanity checks on what's viable, artificial mingling of DNA in the lab hasn't been through as rigorous a Q&A procedure as good old natural reproduction. I don't care if the resulting "species" can continue to pro-create -- it cheated by skipping a few important steps to being with.
I'm not a Luddite, folks. I think the science is cool and promising. But I think we shouldn't "go there" until we know what the hell we're doing. Look at the panacea antibiotics once were, and now look at how royally screwed up the situation now is. Genetic fudgery can have far more catastrophic results fifty years from now.
It was an old DOS menu system. I remember a v5.0 -- did it ever make it to 5.1?
That was a pretty cool program.
Check out Goldstien's latest show "Off the Wall" (also hosted on 2600.com). Not as tech oriented as OtH, but still a decent listen.
I don't have time to find and cite the relavent law, but I believe that Utah (or maybe just Salt Lake City) has a law that says it's a crime to admit a sub-17-year-old into an R (or worse) movie. I remember some stink about it in the local press when either South Park or Showgirls was in theaters.
Dude, I loved that show! Cheesy, yes, but cool for me as a kid.
Even more so was the Aliens Total Conversion mod for Doom (or was it Doom II?). That, my friends, has been the only game ever to literally have me jumping out of my seat as I played it (at midnight, with the lights out, and headphones on).
Granted, my gaming has asymptotically been aproaching nill ever since that time as I grew older (that game is, what, 10 years old now?), but man, I've never found a more thoroughly immersive gaming experience as Aliens TC.
BTW... anyone know where I can score a full copy of Doom and Aliens TC online? I've heard that Doom was released to the public domain (or at least the core engine) and that Aliens TC was pushed waaay underground by the studio (Fox?) that owns the Alien franchise. Will that stuff even run under Linux? This post has my nostalgia running high. :)
The Terminator II mod for Doom II was kinda fun, but it got kinda old after you were left with nothing more than fifty T-1000's coming after you. No real plot or goal, unlike the ATC mod.
No doubt! B&J's Cookie Dough is the best cookie dough icecream brand, bar none. When I ran into a 5-quart bucket of the stuff at Costco a few years ago, I thought I would die of joy. However, I only got to buy one -- Costco just stopped carrying it for some reason.
Sweet! -- thanks for the link. Why the difference between the US and European sites? Maybe they feel us USians can't handle anything other than a GUI tool. :)
My solution? Fire up Win2k in a VMware session, d/l the installer, launch the installer, then snag the binary image from the Windows temp directory. I can then use the "pxupdate" utility from Joerg Schilling (the guy who writes cdrecord).
I can't flash the firmware under VMWare, and Windows will not be allowed to boot natively on my PC anymore.
I suspect that Linux-only iPod users could use a similar scenario using VMWare, Win4Lin, bochs, or maybe even wine to extract the update files.
A major pita to be sure, but it still beats having a real install of Windows. Plus, as others have pointed out, those Windows-centric steps need only be taken once, then the necessary files can be spread far and wide on the 'net.
Hybrids have a foot in both camps. The offspring of a hybrid can reach maturity, so it's okay in a sense. However, hybrids cannnot themselves procreate, which is nature's way of saying it wasn't really such a good idea after all.
Take mules, a cross between donkeys and horses. Mules aren't "seedless" yet they are rarely viable reproducers. Same for the occasional dolphin/whale hybrid.
I don't think GE is inherently evil -- but it lacks the QA of time that traditional breeding has under its belt. Sure, Super Cow's milk may up my life span by 10 years and prevent cancer, but can you tell me it won't cause sterility (random, bad problem unforseen by creators of Super Cow) after a few generations of people consuming it? No you can't, but you'd be hard pressed to argue that there's a risk like that in the traditionally bred milk cow after a couple of hundred years of selective breeding.
You seem to be assuming that scientists can do better than nature at the genetic level. You have a lot more faith in modern science than I do. Sure, we can crank out specific traits better than nature can with GE, but it will take 'til the end of either of our lifetimes before we know whether or not it was a good idea back in 2004.
How many substances were deemed safe, only to be found horribly toxic to people 50 years later? Lead. DDT. More than I can rattle off from memory. Yet chemicals are much simpler beasts than genetic engineering.
If I existed 100 years from now, as I am today, and no major problem in GE foods had arrived, I'd probably be singing its praises. You're already singing the praises of GE, yet it hasn't left the starting gate yet. It's that same overly-eager optimism of the scientific community that worries me the most, not the potential benefits of GE.
My simplistic solution doesn't address that. The total caloric value of carrots is horribly low by weight in it's raw form. Pumpkins and sweet potatoes are much better than carrots (both high in vitamin-A and other vitamins/nutrients), but still don't hold a candle to brown rice in terms of overall nutrition and caloric value.
Various kinds of legumes and quinoa generally spank brown rice in terms of overall balance of nutrition per weight, but (like rice) totally lack vitamin-A. :) And all of these foods alone lack something critical for basic human health.
So, we have 2 solutions for locally-grown food supply. (1) Grow multiple, complimenting crops (google "three sisters farming" for an example of early Native American cleverness); or (2) use GE to get the required nutrients we need in an already-near-ideal food such as rice.
I still don't see how you can equate GE with selective farming/breeding, though. If you can get a rice plant and a dandelion to cross-polinate and have the result actually grow something edible, I'm all for it. The fact that we must shoehorn a trait into an unwilling species just doesn't sit well with me. If it can't be done within the bounds of reproduction that nature set forth for that species, I think there's an inherent gamble on our part to feel we can do better with no consequences down the road.
So I guess we can just agree to disagree on that last point.
However, aren't we (the technologically advanced countries) going a little overboard? According to the current version of the USDA nutritional database (v16-1, as used in my handy copy of nut, 41.5g (1.46 ounces) of carrot is provides enough vitamin-A for your typical 2000-calorie diet per day.
Carrot!
Carrots are a fairly easy-to-grow, well-known crop. Judging by the bulk prices (pretty darned cheap, in my opinion) of carrots at every grocery store I've ever shopped at, they must be in surplus, easy to grow, and easy to ship (or all of the above). Anyone with knowledge of root cellars knows that carrots last a good long time under the right conditions.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to simply ship every family in Ethiopia few pounds of bulk carrots ever month or so, than to spend the hundreds of millions (or even billions, perhaps?) to genetically engineer a strain of rice with bloody dandelion genes? It would also be immediately available, rather than the required wait for testing/approvla and whatnot required for GE foods? Hell, send 'em sun-dried carrots -- no refrigeration require and less shipping weight!
Using the same software, and sorting foods by vitamin-A content, there are several hundred foods which, per 100g, exceed the daily vitamin-A recommendations. Many of those are considered weeds in the right context (and grow as such -- such as Lamb's Quarters). Surely there must be something that will grow (either naturally or in agriculture) in Ethiopia that will supply the majority indigent population with the needed vitamin-A it needs? Why not introduce dandelions themselves? They're (obviously) high in vit-A.
I'm being a wise-ass on purpose, but I'm not trying to be insensitive to the plight of Ethiopian children. There are certainly logistical problems with sending carrots to (or even growing then in) Ethiopia. However, I believe there must be a better way to go about this than creating a Frankenstien variety of rice. We are far from the point where we need to muck with mother nature's dip switches in order to reliably feed the population now or in the future (this assertion is based on the assumption that the studies/reports in the parent post deal with standard agriculture practices).
I'd go into a rant about how industrialized agriculture doesn't use sustainable methods, and how it can do much better with more natural methods vs methods which enrich companies and ruin farm land, but I've posted enough right now.
Exactly. That's 10,000 years of nature at work, with a little guidance from us humans. If there was a cross of wheat strains that just wasn't "right" by nature's standards, it wouldn't even be propogated (though the cross might grow). That's why I like heirloom varieties, versus hybrids and GE varieties -- they've stood the test of time within Nature's machinery.
I don't have a problem with "unnatural" food, in the sense that (as you correctly point out) that the chickens and cows we have today (of which we raise both, BTW) resemble very little of what their non-slective-bred ancestors from 10,000 years ago were like. Sure, a modern breed of chicken might not be able to survive in "the wild" (having bred out the traits that make survival easier), but those chickens can procreate with natural, sexual reproduction. That, in and of itself, is a validation by nature that what you have is still "right" in the biological sense.
I do have a problem with the "unnatural" varieties that are simply not possible when left to natural procreation processes.
I'll trust the milk of my family's Jersey cow, with a few hundred years of good old-fashioned breeding pedigee to back it up, whereas I won't trust milk from Super Cow v2.05 (Patent Pending) produced in a test tube in 1997 by some multinational agri-corp.
Now do you understand my objection? One is relatively tested and blessed "safe" by nature, whereas the other hasn't.
Some believe that engineered crops are only beneficial to the corps that create and patent them. Most debates I've heard on the issue center around the facts that (1) we have enough food-growing capacity to feed everyone; and (2) people starve in the world due to lack of money to buy food and/or that delivery of said food is fouled up by political hindrances.
I suppose that capitalists would argue that if McDonald's can increase the profit on an extra-large order of fries by $0.005 by using potatoes spliced with sea urchins which increases yield and is hardier against blight, then everybody wins. I, however, am not comforrable with this assertion. The costs to society (unknown safety and "ownership" of a food crop by a multinational corp) seem to big for me to find this acceptable.
"Greeting to the US -- the Arsenal of Freedom. Where we live by the motto -- peace through superior firepower."
I encourage everyone in the /. community with a green thumb to support the biodiversity of the un-patented plant realm of heirloom crops (especially food crops). The day we can't save our own seeds w/o paying royalties to Monsanto is a day I dread.
I get so much amusement out of those evening local news segments when some woman gives birth in a car on the way to the hospital or on an elevator.
Whoop. Dee. Freakin. Doo.
It's not like the baby needs two nurses and a doctor (who arrives for the last 10 minutes and catches the kid), an IV drip, an EEG monitor, and a motorized hospital bed to make its way into the world. Yeah, sometimes they do, but statistics are in favor of an uneventful birth.
Common -- there are 6 billion of us alive right now. Then there's the billions before us. You tellin' me that human reproduction is truly a beag deal? Give me a break. Sure, seeing my son born was kinda neat. My wife thought the event sucked. :) But then again, she did the natural birth thing -- she didn't cop out like many women do and go epidural and/or C-section (when not necessary). But it was in no way a miraculous, life-shattering, earth-moving event. It was the result of nature in action. Nothing more.
Remember Howie Mandel? The head-under-the-surgical-glove comedian guy? The voice of the cartoon "Bobby's World"? Star of "St. Elsewhere"? Well, he had one of the most classic lines in one of his 80's comedy routines.
Paraphrased:
"So, my wife and I are expecting our first baby."
Cheers, hoots, and applause by the audience
(Mock surprise and confusion) "It's really no big deal -- all I did was fuck my wife."
A succinct (albeit, crude) point if there ever was one. Having a kid ain't no big deal. :-)
Now... raising a kid. That's a hell of a lot more work, and a lot more impressive if the kid turns out okay in the end. And my hat goes off to any parent who can do a good job of it in this crazy world of ours. That's something to celebrate about.
It doesn't -- I commend you for having the discipline and/or courtesy to use the vibe rather than the ringer where appropriate. However, most people are not that selfless. That's why there's an increasing market (or at least a perceived one) for cell jamming.
That said, if I'm paying to hang out in an establishment for the expected ambiance of "quiet", then I feel that that trumps a person's need to have their cell phone ring in the same establishment. And if you choose to place yourself in such an establishment where everyone does let their phones ring (even though you don't yourself), it's just silly for you to complain about it when jamming becomes the norm in such places.
If you need to be contacted in a moment's notice, then stay near a phone. My point wasn't to sound like a Luddite (BTW -- we've tossed our microwave, washer, and dryer, and we've done fine, thank you), but to point out that in the face of public backlash against mobile annoyances, we can route around such backlash. It'll just be a little more inconvenient, that's all. Nobody is entitled to convenience.
I do feel that public locations should never block signals of any kind. But private property is, well, private property, and barring violation of civil rights, they should be able to impose whatever restrictions they want to.
Perhaps I got a little too harsh/personal with the childbirth thing. I aplogize. I would have been irked to miss the birth of one of my kids -- but then again... I kept near a phone (or my wife) when the time was near. I wish you and your wife a healthy kid and your wife a speedy delivery.
That's right. It's not like the human female has evolved over thousands of years to easily squeeze out a pup or two without much intervention.
If you were her doctor/ob/gyn in addition to being her husband, I'd appreciate your point. If you're *that* concerned about the delivery -- and if you're not the doc, there's not much you'd be able to do anyway -- then take some time off and hang with your wife until the big event comes around.
And while not trying to not sound like one of those raving loons on alt.support.childfree (or whetever it's called), you have no rights or expectations to a social life should you choose to procreate. I know -- I'm a father of two. When I left my kids with the sitter/evening daycare, I would give them my cell number, but I never left it on. If the situation was *that* dire, I'd hope they'd call the hospital/police/etc rather than me. And it it's not that dire, they can handle the kids 'till I pick them up.
Sheesh -- you'd think childbearing and parenting were rare events, fraught with peril, if parents in this thread were actually taken seriously. Kids (and expectant mothers, for that matter) just aren't that fragile.
Man, these cell phone jammer articles sure do get people all riled up. How did we *ever* survive life before the 90's when every 12-year-old and her dog didn't have cell phone. Those were dark days indeed. :) Lighten up, folks. You can manage w/o your precious portable phones.
Gary Oldman is awesome -- always plays a great psycho. I think my favorite flicks with him are "Immortal Beloved" and "The Professional" (which has a very young Natalie Portman, if I recall). The expression on his face before his life ends in the latter was just classic.
Heck, there's even Naked News. All news. No fluff(ers).
Wanna rent everything under the sun? Check out netflix.com -- I'm a former satisfied customer. Lately, I just decided to buy the TV series' on DVD outright, rather than waste the money on rentals. There's enough good TV on DVD -- even now -- for my wife and I never to pull out the rabbit ears again.