Because the vast, vast, majority of those alterations are silent or non-sense modifications? Those 200 bases that get altered in GMO absolutely have an effect, aimed towards a specific outcome.
True, 90% of all mutations are benign, but you're missing a very important detail:
10% of these mutations make material changes. Given that there hundreds to thousands of genes in a given plant, you're invariably going to have MANY changes. So yeah, what I said still very much applies.
Ok let's put things into perspective for a minute:
Every time a plant breeds naturally, there are some millions of DNA nucleotides that are changed as a result of that process, and it happens in ways that are entirely unpredictable and unknown.
Yet in GMO, you're making a very deliberate change to some 200 (or less) nucleotides, and you know EXACTLY what that change does, because you've already observed its results before putting it on the market.
Why is it that I'm supposed to be afraid of the known very few GMO changes and not be afraid of the unknown thousands of changes in the natural process?
Being the libertarian that I am, normally I would be on board with that, except for one major problem: There's only so much room on the food labels, and there's so much other important information that could be put there instead, but isn't.
Take me for example: I have IgA nephropathy and am in stage 4 CKD. I have to be extra careful about how much potassium and phosphorus I consume. Yet most labels don't show potassium, and hardly any show phosphorus (at best you get a %DV count, which gives you a very poor idea of its actual contents.) The manufacturers don't have a problem giving you these figures if you ask, but they don't put them on the labels because the package is only so large.
A complete nutrition information chart given to the manufacturers from a food lab is very lengthy, and no food label on just about anything would be able to accomodate it all, so they typically only put on their labels what the FDA says they must.
That said, I'd be pissed as hell if the FDA started requiring immaterial facts such as a GMO label that affects nobody one way or another, but ignored electrolytes that can kill people like me.
I actually took a C# course a few years ago, and don't remember most of it. I'd rather not stick with.Net to be honest. If I go with another C language again, it would probably be C++.
Let's see where the shot that missed the drone would have/did land.
Are you dumb? When birdshot lands, it won't even so much as disturb the ground it hits. I've been rained on by birdshot before, it just feels like somebody is dropping warm BBs on your head from 10 feet above.
That depends on the city, as they all have their own ordinances stipulating where, when, and with what manner you can fire weapons. Most rural towns won't care if it's just birdshot (which won't even hurt a fly on its way down.)
No, it's not. It would be aggressive if he began brandishing the weapon prior to them taking any action. However because they began advancing first, and he issued a warning afterwards without taking any action, that's being defensive. If anything, the other party was being aggressive, because they confronted him first.
Firing a weapon in a populated area except in defense of life and limb is a colossally stupid idea
Shotgun pellets don't have a lethal return velocity, unlike a bullet. If he was firing upwards at a drone, then nobody else was in danger. I've been peppered by falling shotgun pellets while hunting once (many people have,) it's just like somebody dropped a bunch of BBs on your head from 10 feet up.
and patently against the law
No, it's not. It depends on where you live. Not every town has ordinances against that, and those that do have certain guidelines for where it is permissible (for example, an indoor or outdoor firing range that meets certain parameters.)
Well it's not your coworkers that rob you. It's the union boss who has ties to the mafia and likes to "skim a little off of the top" while pretending to be your friend, at least until you decide not to fall in line with the union rules, and which point you might earn yourself a pair of concrete shoes.
I don't know about anybody else, but I've written in scripting languages (bash, powershell) and have usually been pretty good at determining arithmetically what a program should do. The problem is I get stuck on the syntax a lot.
It's not simple logical controls (I do proper for loops, do while loops, if/else/then, etc. just fine after googling for a few examples) but the APIs are where I really get stuck. Speaking of powershell, a lot of the stuff I've wanted to do involves a.Net handler that I've had to look up, and finding what I need to do sometimes takes a few hours or even days. Also, on scripting languages (ESPECIALLY powershell) I get stuck on figuring out why I can't pass quotes into a function or something like that (for example, I needed to make a script prompt the user for UAC admin permissions if not running as admin, and never could figure out how to make it work if somebody happened to rename the script to include spaces in it, because one of the functions used for checking if the user was admin had issues taking quotes. I had to ask on stackexchange how to do it, and somebody else figured it out, and the solution wasn't obvious at all.)
I've also had situations where I've figured out algorithmically what a program should do to overcome a certain situation, and posted my idea to developers on e.g. forums, github, etc, and they've actually implemented what I couldn't do because I didn't know the syntax.
Every time a free trade deal is announced, a lot of people come around and say exactly this. And you know what? All of them have ended up in our favor.
I don't see why it wouldn't work to our advantage. The US has always been top notch in the tech sector, and hasn't depended on tariffs to do so. A lot of countries (especially ones in Europe) have tried using tariffs to try to counterbalance that, but it's never done anything other than make technology more expensive in those countries. If those trade barriers fall, then we'll see a LOT more money headed our way.
Well it's possible that in a few million years, our star will once again become in close proximity to it's neighboring stars, making an interstellar journey not so far fetched.
Possibly when the Milky Way collides with Andromeda. Or when that happens, we could get thrown out of our galaxy entirely and end up being a lonely star system somewhere out in the void of intergalactic space, and then not even star trek style warp drive will take us there.
I don't think the "Whole Foods" crowd would benefit at all. For example, they'd use it on a banana and see aspartic acid, which is *gasp* a CHEMICAL!!! And after that they'll go back to snake oil organic food and not bother using their new toy on it because they'll just remember the one ironclad rule: Natural is ALWAYS better.
Slashdot Mirror
Because the vast, vast, majority of those alterations are silent or non-sense modifications? Those 200 bases that get altered in GMO absolutely have an effect, aimed towards a specific outcome.
True, 90% of all mutations are benign, but you're missing a very important detail:
10% of these mutations make material changes. Given that there hundreds to thousands of genes in a given plant, you're invariably going to have MANY changes. So yeah, what I said still very much applies.
Ok let's put things into perspective for a minute:
Every time a plant breeds naturally, there are some millions of DNA nucleotides that are changed as a result of that process, and it happens in ways that are entirely unpredictable and unknown.
Yet in GMO, you're making a very deliberate change to some 200 (or less) nucleotides, and you know EXACTLY what that change does, because you've already observed its results before putting it on the market.
Why is it that I'm supposed to be afraid of the known very few GMO changes and not be afraid of the unknown thousands of changes in the natural process?
Being the libertarian that I am, normally I would be on board with that, except for one major problem: There's only so much room on the food labels, and there's so much other important information that could be put there instead, but isn't.
Take me for example: I have IgA nephropathy and am in stage 4 CKD. I have to be extra careful about how much potassium and phosphorus I consume. Yet most labels don't show potassium, and hardly any show phosphorus (at best you get a %DV count, which gives you a very poor idea of its actual contents.) The manufacturers don't have a problem giving you these figures if you ask, but they don't put them on the labels because the package is only so large.
A complete nutrition information chart given to the manufacturers from a food lab is very lengthy, and no food label on just about anything would be able to accomodate it all, so they typically only put on their labels what the FDA says they must.
That said, I'd be pissed as hell if the FDA started requiring immaterial facts such as a GMO label that affects nobody one way or another, but ignored electrolytes that can kill people like me.
But you forgot the first rule of the food religion: If it's not natural, then it tastes like chemicals causes cancer.
Definition of natural meaning it was grown on cow shit and never pasteurized.
Nonsense. I'm going to ask the one question that EVERYBODY has on their mind, but is afraid to ask:
Richard, what WERE you chewing in that infamous video clip?
I actually took a C# course a few years ago, and don't remember most of it. I'd rather not stick with .Net to be honest. If I go with another C language again, it would probably be C++.
Let's see where the shot that missed the drone would have/did land.
Are you dumb? When birdshot lands, it won't even so much as disturb the ground it hits. I've been rained on by birdshot before, it just feels like somebody is dropping warm BBs on your head from 10 feet above.
That depends on the city, as they all have their own ordinances stipulating where, when, and with what manner you can fire weapons. Most rural towns won't care if it's just birdshot (which won't even hurt a fly on its way down.)
You could still poke an eye out, ruin the neighbors flower bed, or otherwise just be destructive.
LOL, under what basis would ANY of this happen from falling bird shot? Do show your math here.
ok that's very aggressive.
No, it's not. It would be aggressive if he began brandishing the weapon prior to them taking any action. However because they began advancing first, and he issued a warning afterwards without taking any action, that's being defensive. If anything, the other party was being aggressive, because they confronted him first.
Firing a weapon in a populated area except in defense of life and limb is a colossally stupid idea
Shotgun pellets don't have a lethal return velocity, unlike a bullet. If he was firing upwards at a drone, then nobody else was in danger. I've been peppered by falling shotgun pellets while hunting once (many people have,) it's just like somebody dropped a bunch of BBs on your head from 10 feet up.
and patently against the law
No, it's not. It depends on where you live. Not every town has ordinances against that, and those that do have certain guidelines for where it is permissible (for example, an indoor or outdoor firing range that meets certain parameters.)
Well it's not your coworkers that rob you. It's the union boss who has ties to the mafia and likes to "skim a little off of the top" while pretending to be your friend, at least until you decide not to fall in line with the union rules, and which point you might earn yourself a pair of concrete shoes.
I don't know about anybody else, but I've written in scripting languages (bash, powershell) and have usually been pretty good at determining arithmetically what a program should do. The problem is I get stuck on the syntax a lot.
It's not simple logical controls (I do proper for loops, do while loops, if/else/then, etc. just fine after googling for a few examples) but the APIs are where I really get stuck. Speaking of powershell, a lot of the stuff I've wanted to do involves a .Net handler that I've had to look up, and finding what I need to do sometimes takes a few hours or even days. Also, on scripting languages (ESPECIALLY powershell) I get stuck on figuring out why I can't pass quotes into a function or something like that (for example, I needed to make a script prompt the user for UAC admin permissions if not running as admin, and never could figure out how to make it work if somebody happened to rename the script to include spaces in it, because one of the functions used for checking if the user was admin had issues taking quotes. I had to ask on stackexchange how to do it, and somebody else figured it out, and the solution wasn't obvious at all.)
I've also had situations where I've figured out algorithmically what a program should do to overcome a certain situation, and posted my idea to developers on e.g. forums, github, etc, and they've actually implemented what I couldn't do because I didn't know the syntax.
Well I wish a Merry Fuck Beta to Bennett, a Merry Fuck Beta to you, and a Merry Fuck Beta to all!
Well Obama did promise to be the most open and transparent president ever.
Spiral to the bottom.
Every time a free trade deal is announced, a lot of people come around and say exactly this. And you know what? All of them have ended up in our favor.
I don't see why it wouldn't work to our advantage. The US has always been top notch in the tech sector, and hasn't depended on tariffs to do so. A lot of countries (especially ones in Europe) have tried using tariffs to try to counterbalance that, but it's never done anything other than make technology more expensive in those countries. If those trade barriers fall, then we'll see a LOT more money headed our way.
That, and they never go away unless you just get the app and never visit their site without it.
https://xkcd.com/1174/
Maybe that's why this strange van showed up at my house after a made a tweet about how I planned to assassinate Obama's character.
couldn't have bore
Well the article is about the land north beyond the wall, so the interested editor might be a wildling, and wildlings don't know the difference.
Well it's possible that in a few million years, our star will once again become in close proximity to it's neighboring stars, making an interstellar journey not so far fetched.
Possibly when the Milky Way collides with Andromeda. Or when that happens, we could get thrown out of our galaxy entirely and end up being a lonely star system somewhere out in the void of intergalactic space, and then not even star trek style warp drive will take us there.
Well it's been all but proven that the future influences the past, so the keplerians are likely taking advantage of that.
I don't think the "Whole Foods" crowd would benefit at all. For example, they'd use it on a banana and see aspartic acid, which is *gasp* a CHEMICAL!!! And after that they'll go back to snake oil organic food and not bother using their new toy on it because they'll just remember the one ironclad rule: Natural is ALWAYS better.
Sometimes I wonder how short the attention span of the average Slashdotter is.
http://m.slashdot.org/story/29...