You also have great areas in Alaska of jumbled up, blasted fauna caracases, many of them torn apart.
If you're trying to make a credible argument then linking to a site that talks about evidence of Noah's Flood and finding ancient Nuclear reactors is a BAD idea.
This may be a surprise but the racial groups, such as Europeans and East asians, that carry the Neanderthal fragments, have much higher average IQs than African populations where they are not present. For instance an average European has an average IQ of 105 compared to 70 in Africa. Though, the higher IQ is likely due to divergent racial evolution that occured well after the insertion of neanderthal genes, particularly the cold winters theory, that the groups that left africa had to evolve rapidly larger, more advanced brain capacity to cope with the more difficult, complex survival challenges of cold weather environments, such as the long term planning for winter and the skills needed for making of the clothes needed to survive the cold. The cold weather environment of the north provided the challenges that pushed evolution of specific racial groups to a higher level and explains much of the IQ differences between racial groups.
We know nutrition, culture, and education have huge effects on IQ, and these all factors covary by race both between countries and within countries.
If you look at charts of countries by IQ you see huge variations across regions with a similar ethnic profile.
We know non-genetic factors are clearly playing a huge role in these countries, could genetics play a role as well? Sure, but what's our evidence? We already know that IQ varies heavily according to non-ethnic factors within ethnically contiguous regions, it's obviously playing a role in ethnically diverse regions as well.
Just because race becomes available as a variable in some comparisons doesn't mean it takes the credit from the non-racial factors we know are playing a role.
Isn't realclimate.org just his advocacy site? I've had people point to it before. It's reads like a marketing hype rather than as a scientific discussion.
Are you looking at the same link I am? Other than using the "Myth #1" style of summarization used by many people (including marketing) if I have a criticism of realclimate.org it's that they write too much like scientists. Their writing is full of caveats, asides, and long winded explainations because the subject is inherently messy. Frankly I think their writing is just too dry and analytical to reach a general audience. Just look at this excerpt from the link in question:
MYTH #4: Errors in the "Hockey Stick" undermine the conclusion that late 20th century hemispheric warmth is anomalous.
[...]
The second falsehood holds that there are errors in the Mann et al (1998, 1999) analyses, and that these putative errors compromise the “hockey stick” shape of hemispheric surface temperature reconstructions. Such claims seem to be based in part on the misunderstanding or misrepresentation by some individuals of a corrigendum that was published by Mann and colleagues in Nature. This corrigendum simply corrected the descriptions of supplementary information that accompanied the Mann et al article detailing precisely what data were used. As clearly stated in the corrigendum, these corrections have no influence at all on the actual analysis or any of the results shown in Mann et al (1998). Claims that the corrigendum reflects any errors at all in the Mann et al (1998) reconstruction are entirely false.
Realclimate.org isn't marketing, it's dry scientific writing directed to laypeople, what the AGW community needs is an advocacy site written by non-scientists which is less concerned about the science and more concerned about the debate. Realclimate.org fills an essential niche in the debate but it's not the kind of hand wavy tabloidish mass audience style of blog that's needed to counter Watts Up With That?.
I wouldn't imagine that the FDA would have much to say, beyond the usual cleanliness checks, etc. that any food company faces. After all doesn't pretty much everything in his concoction qualify as a ingredient or food additive? Hell, it's probably a lot closer to real food than a Twinkie.
Well I read an account from one of the beta testers who got some mouldy product so cleanliness might be an issue.
But even besides cleanliness, very few foods items make the claim that not only is it healthy to live off them exclusively, but that you should. I don't know what other meal replacements like Ensure go through for approval but I think something making that strong a claim should have some more work to justify it. I really would be concerned that some geeks ending up with serious health issues by going a little to far with the Soylent.
Even with the established mean replacements like Ensure I'm skeptical about the healthiness. They have shelves of the stuff at the hospice where my dad is staying, I guess the nurses are smart enough not to drink it but many of the patients do. And I can tell you, the time I've been here not a single nurse has died but the patients are dropping off like crazy!!
They did try. Ever hear of the Korean War? The difference is they were smacked down for it before they could get very far. It would be like the rest of the world coming in and smacking down Germany as soon as they thought about annexing Austria.
The Korean War was essentially a civil war. Germany's claim to Austria wasn't nearly as strong though the Austrian's were at least partially supportive of it.
As for the current state of DPRK actions, no one contests that they're horrible, but they're sustainable which is what I was getting at, the things you list are the cost of maintaining a horrible repressive government. But as for atrocities, supposedly 11% of the North Korean population died during the Korean war (most not DPRK's direct fault, there was a war), that's not sustainable. I don't know a lot about the initial consolidation of power before/after but I doubt the upheaval was sustainable either. That's what I mean by the difference between horrible repression and atrocities.
North Korean is a horrible place to live, but that doesn't mean we can't make it worse. If we try a serious intervention of any kind and it goes badly things could get a lot worse, just recently a marginally reformist member of the government maybe did push too far and it did get a little worse.
Except Nazi's were a threat to the world and ended up attempting multiple genocides.
DPRK is more like a Nazi Germany who never tried to invade Poland and just focused on running Germany. The DPRKs atrocities are in the past, they're still doing massive horrible repression, but they've purged all the people they want to purge so the sense of urgency is gone.
I think there's a serious question of where to go from here. War is BAD. Notwithstanding their nukes of dubious quality the cost in lives would be immense. Internal change also seems unlikely, Kim Jong Un was pulled out of foreign university because his older brother seemed too affected by the experience. The DPRK's philosophy seems to be to keep dangerous ideas out as much as possible.
I'm not a Rodman fan and I'm really disturbed by his relationship with Kim Jong Un, but suspect it has a positive impact and I'm not where else potential change could come from.
But people in prison are already removed from society, it tries to rehabilitate them, but the idea of life without prison is pretty removed.
The idea of saying they have to be removed to the extent of being killed, I can see no practical reason for it, and selling it as returning the favour just seems petty.
You mean prosecutors don't have any discretion in Greece *not* to charge him? That's hard to believe. Surely they could have just said they didn't see pursuing this as in the public interest or that the case had no merit and would lose in court. Surely they could drop the charges now. Or are they just covering their kolo? What if the judge also covers his or hers?
This sort of theater is one reason I'm not sure I like civil inquisitorial legal systems. In common law countries, prosecutors will often drop cases that are bound to get thrown out of court or plain lose because it's a fruitless waste of resources to pursue such cases and also because, in adversarial systems, losing sucks balls for their careers. If there isn't a good solid case against the accused, he or she should go free. At least in theory.
I hate blasphemy laws, but if you're going to have them, you should apply them to the rule and not just charge the blasphemy that the politicians or lawyers don't like.
By that logic if you have a cancer that's not going to bother you for the next couple months you'd suggested waiting until the tumour starts causing issues before you get it treated.
Not a good analogy and not my logic. The phenomenology of cancer is much better understood than GW.
Actually I think the analogy is stronger than I first intended. There's also some cancers that are fairly benign and will never cause an issue (what you believe for GW), treating those is probably more harm than good. There's also some people who have cancers that are legitimate threats, and delay treatment or look for alternative medicine because the side effects of treatment are so serious (what I believe of the position you're taking on GW).
Treating the benign cancers causes a lot of unnecessary side effects, but delaying treatment of a legitimately dangerous cancer makes the side effects of eventual treatment that much worse and potentially costs you your opportunity to treat it. I believe the evidence suggests GW is something worth treating now.
I appreciate that and I'm very sympathetic to their desire to see what they view as justice but I'm not convinced the emotional reactions of the victim's family is the criteria by which we should decide punishment. Justice isn't simply carrying out the retribution the victim wants.
And it's a bit misleading to say we're turning society against the victim's family, people aren't attacking them, they're attacking a form of punishment they want. Victim or not, you can't advocate for something unjust then complain about being victimized because we don't give it to you.
On the contrary if #1 wasn't a candidate for life in prison he certainly wouldn't have been a candidate for execution, similarly with #3 he escaped from a minimum security prison, which is hardly the place where you'd put the sort of person who you'd consider for execution. Perhaps if you executed every convicted murdered, but that's a far harsher system no one has serious suggested.
As for #2... He was executed, it clearly didn't stop him from committing a murder he committed before his execution (or even arrest).
But what's the benefit of capital punishment? Revenge? Justice? Deterrence? Closure?
It's common practice for shepherds to shoot a sheep-killing dog. Farmers do away with work animals that kill the livestock all the time.
We attach very different standards to the lives of animals than we do the lives of humans as evidenced by the fact we see no problem with the farmer killing his livestock.
But what's the benefit of capital punishment? Revenge? Justice? Deterrence? Closure?
Personally I'm highly skeptical of the deterrence effect, and revenge doesn't sit right, which leaves only justice and closure.
Is execution the only deserving justice for a horrible crime, why can't life in prison be considered justice?
As for closure I can understand the desire of the victims family to want the killer gone, but the fact the family will feel better doesn't really justify killing someone.
It's not something to worry about in the next decade but beyond that...
Unfortunately, there are those that want to commit hundreds of billions of dollars right now to GW instead of things that we know right now will make a difference. If we committed that much to every "what if" we couldn't do anything else.
By that logic if you have a cancer that's not going to bother you for the next couple months you'd suggested waiting until the tumour starts causing issues before you get it treated.
If you accept that GW is both likely and serious it's logical to start spending money now.
So what happens if nuclear-armed China and India lose 38% and 25% of their food production capability? It's not something to worry about in the next decade but beyond that if GW really starts taking a bite out of their food production... If I was going to put my money on something triggering a nuclear war that would be it.
Bipedalism also makes a big difference, aside from reducing our cross section it makes running more efficient because we have fewer moving parts than 4-leggers. Our achilles, arches, and gluts also make a big difference. Compared to our modern ape relatives we clearly have pathetic arms but are much better suited to bipedalism and I'm not sure what drives that other than locomotion.
People with addictive personalities more prone to mental problems. Who'd have thunk?
Or , ya know, you could actually read the article. Its not about how prone someone is, its when the symptoms start. Schizophrenia shows early symptoms in childhood, and if you've got it, you will succumb to psychosis eventually. Whats happening here is the pot smokers are succumbing earlier. This wont affect most people, but those who are succeptible, perhaps pots a bad idea. The trick scientifically is identifying those in danger.
I'm not sure the OP is wrong, or that this shows the pot is harmful.
As you said the pot isn't causing the schizophrenia because the schizophrenia is there already, it's just correlated with an earlier onset of psychosis. So this is consistent with people who have a more severe form of the disorder self-medicating to cope, it's also consistent with people having other emotional issues that make them more prone to both pot use and psychosis.
The 6 years is a big number so assuming their numbers are good a causal effect definitely can't be dismissed, but it's not the only answer.
You didn't actually provide an argument. You made a broad observation (yes, drugs should elicit an effect) followed by a questionable assertion (aren't GMO crops supposedly distinguishably healthier?)
Aside from Golden Rice I'm not aware of any claims of GMOs being healthier.
'yet' was an allusion to potential but not-immediately-apparent, chronic or cumulative effects. I would bring up DDT/Agent Orange/... but those are very extreme examples and most definitely would/will feed trolls. More likely, if detrimental effects do appear, they won't be lethal, just suboptimal. Meanwhile, waiting won't do me any harm.
DDT/Agent Orange are biologically active molecules, side effects are expected. I'd definitely be in favour of testing some GMO's that do have a potential to go wrong for longer periods, but the question has to be for what? If you don't have any idea of what you're testing for then how do you decide when you've tested enough? That's the issue, no one has been able to show how GMO's are a health risk.
What we currently have is an absence of evidence, not evidence of absence.
As you yourself said "More likely, if detrimental effects do appear, they won't be lethal, just suboptimal". Why do you think this? Because we have decades of evidence of nothing going wrong, this has ruled out the hypothesis of significant health effects for these crops. If the only risks you can present are claims of "suboptimal" health you're presenting a non-falsifiable hypothesis.
>> Is it really so damning the Obama didn't consider Afganistan "his war"
I think it is, for a different reason. A lot of folks elected Obama to get us out our middle eastern wars as fast as possible. The fact that Obama's been dragging his feet on that front, even starting new wars (e.g., Libya), suggests (reaffirms?) that Obama has been a spineless president, bullied into more military action by his military advisers, Gates included.
I'm not sure spineless is the right word, I've always felt that Obama was best understood as someone with a strong progressive ideology and a very pragmatic approach.
Healthcare? Try to accomplish the progressive goals of strong universal insurance but with a conservative approach.
Wars? Talk nice and have a general policy of disengagement but don't rush it and fight if everyone really thinks it's necessary.
Budgets? Deal if at all possible (sequestration), only dig in when dealing is obviously impossible (debt ceiling standoff)
Guantanamo? Wants it closed, but if he can't close it in a proper way it's better to leave it open.
The NSA thing isn't surprising if you look at it through this light. The NSA obviously believed that a wide ranging surveillance program was critical, and if they brought that to Obama he was likely to agree even if it conflicted with his personal ideology.
In general I think the pragmatic approach is good though it does lead to making accomodations like the NSA spying and can leave you vulnerable to dogmatic opponents like the congressional Republicans.
We actually did reduce military funding. Twice even. It's not completely politically untenable like taxes that target the plutocratic class as much as the working and middle classes.
Wasn't one of those a sequestration cut that was put there partially because the idea of cutting the military was so verboten that it would make a deal to avoid it more likely?
Slashdot Mirror
You also have great areas in Alaska of jumbled up, blasted fauna caracases, many of them torn apart.
If you're trying to make a credible argument then linking to a site that talks about evidence of Noah's Flood and finding ancient Nuclear reactors is a BAD idea.
This may be a surprise but the racial groups, such as Europeans and East asians, that carry the Neanderthal fragments, have much higher average IQs than African populations where they are not present. For instance an average European has an average IQ of 105 compared to 70 in Africa. Though, the higher IQ is likely due to divergent racial evolution that occured well after the insertion of neanderthal genes, particularly the cold winters theory, that the groups that left africa had to evolve rapidly larger, more advanced brain capacity to cope with the more difficult, complex survival challenges of cold weather environments, such as the long term planning for winter and the skills needed for making of the clothes needed to survive the cold. The cold weather environment of the north provided the challenges that pushed evolution of specific racial groups to a higher level and explains much of the IQ differences between racial groups.
We know nutrition, culture, and education have huge effects on IQ, and these all factors covary by race both between countries and within countries.
If you look at charts of countries by IQ you see huge variations across regions with a similar ethnic profile.
We know non-genetic factors are clearly playing a huge role in these countries, could genetics play a role as well? Sure, but what's our evidence? We already know that IQ varies heavily according to non-ethnic factors within ethnically contiguous regions, it's obviously playing a role in ethnically diverse regions as well.
Just because race becomes available as a variable in some comparisons doesn't mean it takes the credit from the non-racial factors we know are playing a role.
Isn't realclimate.org just his advocacy site? I've had people point to it before. It's reads like a marketing hype rather than as a scientific discussion.
Are you looking at the same link I am? Other than using the "Myth #1" style of summarization used by many people (including marketing) if I have a criticism of realclimate.org it's that they write too much like scientists. Their writing is full of caveats, asides, and long winded explainations because the subject is inherently messy. Frankly I think their writing is just too dry and analytical to reach a general audience. Just look at this excerpt from the link in question:
MYTH #4: Errors in the "Hockey Stick" undermine the conclusion that late 20th century hemispheric warmth is anomalous.
[...]
The second falsehood holds that there are errors in the Mann et al (1998, 1999) analyses, and that these putative errors compromise the “hockey stick” shape of hemispheric surface temperature reconstructions. Such claims seem to be based in part on the misunderstanding or misrepresentation by some individuals of a corrigendum that was published by Mann and colleagues in Nature. This corrigendum simply corrected the descriptions of supplementary information that accompanied the Mann et al article detailing precisely what data were used. As clearly stated in the corrigendum, these corrections have no influence at all on the actual analysis or any of the results shown in Mann et al (1998). Claims that the corrigendum reflects any errors at all in the Mann et al (1998) reconstruction are entirely false.
Realclimate.org isn't marketing, it's dry scientific writing directed to laypeople, what the AGW community needs is an advocacy site written by non-scientists which is less concerned about the science and more concerned about the debate. Realclimate.org fills an essential niche in the debate but it's not the kind of hand wavy tabloidish mass audience style of blog that's needed to counter Watts Up With That?.
I wouldn't imagine that the FDA would have much to say, beyond the usual cleanliness checks, etc. that any food company faces. After all doesn't pretty much everything in his concoction qualify as a ingredient or food additive? Hell, it's probably a lot closer to real food than a Twinkie.
Well I read an account from one of the beta testers who got some mouldy product so cleanliness might be an issue.
But even besides cleanliness, very few foods items make the claim that not only is it healthy to live off them exclusively, but that you should. I don't know what other meal replacements like Ensure go through for approval but I think something making that strong a claim should have some more work to justify it. I really would be concerned that some geeks ending up with serious health issues by going a little to far with the Soylent.
Even with the established mean replacements like Ensure I'm skeptical about the healthiness. They have shelves of the stuff at the hospice where my dad is staying, I guess the nurses are smart enough not to drink it but many of the patients do. And I can tell you, the time I've been here not a single nurse has died but the patients are dropping off like crazy!!
Make no mistake, the security issues are very serious, but it sounds like the claim about accessing 70,000 records was misunderstood.
They did try. Ever hear of the Korean War? The difference is they were smacked down for it before they could get very far. It would be like the rest of the world coming in and smacking down Germany as soon as they thought about annexing Austria.
And to claim DPRK atrocities are "in the past" is ridiculous http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2013/country-chapters/north-korea
The Korean War was essentially a civil war. Germany's claim to Austria wasn't nearly as strong though the Austrian's were at least partially supportive of it.
As for the current state of DPRK actions, no one contests that they're horrible, but they're sustainable which is what I was getting at, the things you list are the cost of maintaining a horrible repressive government. But as for atrocities, supposedly 11% of the North Korean population died during the Korean war (most not DPRK's direct fault, there was a war), that's not sustainable. I don't know a lot about the initial consolidation of power before/after but I doubt the upheaval was sustainable either. That's what I mean by the difference between horrible repression and atrocities.
North Korean is a horrible place to live, but that doesn't mean we can't make it worse. If we try a serious intervention of any kind and it goes badly things could get a lot worse, just recently a marginally reformist member of the government maybe did push too far and it did get a little worse.
Except Nazi's were a threat to the world and ended up attempting multiple genocides.
DPRK is more like a Nazi Germany who never tried to invade Poland and just focused on running Germany. The DPRKs atrocities are in the past, they're still doing massive horrible repression, but they've purged all the people they want to purge so the sense of urgency is gone.
I think there's a serious question of where to go from here. War is BAD. Notwithstanding their nukes of dubious quality the cost in lives would be immense. Internal change also seems unlikely, Kim Jong Un was pulled out of foreign university because his older brother seemed too affected by the experience. The DPRK's philosophy seems to be to keep dangerous ideas out as much as possible.
I'm not a Rodman fan and I'm really disturbed by his relationship with Kim Jong Un, but suspect it has a positive impact and I'm not where else potential change could come from.
But people in prison are already removed from society, it tries to rehabilitate them, but the idea of life without prison is pretty removed.
The idea of saying they have to be removed to the extent of being killed, I can see no practical reason for it, and selling it as returning the favour just seems petty.
You mean prosecutors don't have any discretion in Greece *not* to charge him? That's hard to believe. Surely they could have just said they didn't see pursuing this as in the public interest or that the case had no merit and would lose in court. Surely they could drop the charges now. Or are they just covering their kolo? What if the judge also covers his or hers?
This sort of theater is one reason I'm not sure I like civil inquisitorial legal systems. In common law countries, prosecutors will often drop cases that are bound to get thrown out of court or plain lose because it's a fruitless waste of resources to pursue such cases and also because, in adversarial systems, losing sucks balls for their careers. If there isn't a good solid case against the accused, he or she should go free. At least in theory.
I hate blasphemy laws, but if you're going to have them, you should apply them to the rule and not just charge the blasphemy that the politicians or lawyers don't like.
By that logic if you have a cancer that's not going to bother you for the next couple months you'd suggested waiting until the tumour starts causing issues before you get it treated.
Not a good analogy and not my logic. The phenomenology of cancer is much better understood than GW.
Actually I think the analogy is stronger than I first intended. There's also some cancers that are fairly benign and will never cause an issue (what you believe for GW), treating those is probably more harm than good. There's also some people who have cancers that are legitimate threats, and delay treatment or look for alternative medicine because the side effects of treatment are so serious (what I believe of the position you're taking on GW).
Treating the benign cancers causes a lot of unnecessary side effects, but delaying treatment of a legitimately dangerous cancer makes the side effects of eventual treatment that much worse and potentially costs you your opportunity to treat it. I believe the evidence suggests GW is something worth treating now.
I appreciate that and I'm very sympathetic to their desire to see what they view as justice but I'm not convinced the emotional reactions of the victim's family is the criteria by which we should decide punishment. Justice isn't simply carrying out the retribution the victim wants.
And it's a bit misleading to say we're turning society against the victim's family, people aren't attacking them, they're attacking a form of punishment they want. Victim or not, you can't advocate for something unjust then complain about being victimized because we don't give it to you.
On the contrary if #1 wasn't a candidate for life in prison he certainly wouldn't have been a candidate for execution, similarly with #3 he escaped from a minimum security prison, which is hardly the place where you'd put the sort of person who you'd consider for execution. Perhaps if you executed every convicted murdered, but that's a far harsher system no one has serious suggested.
As for #2... He was executed, it clearly didn't stop him from committing a murder he committed before his execution (or even arrest).
But what's the benefit of capital punishment? Revenge? Justice? Deterrence? Closure?
It's common practice for shepherds to shoot a sheep-killing dog. Farmers do away with work animals that kill the livestock all the time.
We attach very different standards to the lives of animals than we do the lives of humans as evidenced by the fact we see no problem with the farmer killing his livestock.
But what's the benefit of capital punishment? Revenge? Justice? Deterrence? Closure?
Personally I'm highly skeptical of the deterrence effect, and revenge doesn't sit right, which leaves only justice and closure.
Is execution the only deserving justice for a horrible crime, why can't life in prison be considered justice?
As for closure I can understand the desire of the victims family to want the killer gone, but the fact the family will feel better doesn't really justify killing someone.
It's not something to worry about in the next decade but beyond that ...
Unfortunately, there are those that want to commit hundreds of billions of dollars right now to GW instead of things that we know right now will make a difference. If we committed that much to every "what if" we couldn't do anything else.
By that logic if you have a cancer that's not going to bother you for the next couple months you'd suggested waiting until the tumour starts causing issues before you get it treated.
If you accept that GW is both likely and serious it's logical to start spending money now.
So what happens if nuclear-armed China and India lose 38% and 25% of their food production capability? It's not something to worry about in the next decade but beyond that if GW really starts taking a bite out of their food production... If I was going to put my money on something triggering a nuclear war that would be it.
24 The Source, the Docs, and the Sound System.
Oh I wish I could mod that up :)
But I don't wanna eat webapps!
Bipedalism also makes a big difference, aside from reducing our cross section it makes running more efficient because we have fewer moving parts than 4-leggers. Our achilles, arches, and gluts also make a big difference. Compared to our modern ape relatives we clearly have pathetic arms but are much better suited to bipedalism and I'm not sure what drives that other than locomotion.
It will simply be the distro with no name
People with addictive personalities more prone to mental problems. Who'd have thunk?
Or , ya know, you could actually read the article. Its not about how prone someone is, its when the symptoms start. Schizophrenia shows early symptoms in childhood, and if you've got it, you will succumb to psychosis eventually. Whats happening here is the pot smokers are succumbing earlier. This wont affect most people, but those who are succeptible, perhaps pots a bad idea. The trick scientifically is identifying those in danger.
I'm not sure the OP is wrong, or that this shows the pot is harmful.
As you said the pot isn't causing the schizophrenia because the schizophrenia is there already, it's just correlated with an earlier onset of psychosis. So this is consistent with people who have a more severe form of the disorder self-medicating to cope, it's also consistent with people having other emotional issues that make them more prone to both pot use and psychosis.
The 6 years is a big number so assuming their numbers are good a causal effect definitely can't be dismissed, but it's not the only answer.
You didn't actually provide an argument. You made a broad observation (yes, drugs should elicit an effect) followed by a questionable assertion (aren't GMO crops supposedly distinguishably healthier?)
Aside from Golden Rice I'm not aware of any claims of GMOs being healthier.
'yet' was an allusion to potential but not-immediately-apparent, chronic or cumulative effects. I would bring up DDT/Agent Orange/... but those are very extreme examples and most definitely would/will feed trolls. More likely, if detrimental effects do appear, they won't be lethal, just suboptimal. Meanwhile, waiting won't do me any harm.
DDT/Agent Orange are biologically active molecules, side effects are expected. I'd definitely be in favour of testing some GMO's that do have a potential to go wrong for longer periods, but the question has to be for what? If you don't have any idea of what you're testing for then how do you decide when you've tested enough? That's the issue, no one has been able to show how GMO's are a health risk.
What we currently have is an absence of evidence, not evidence of absence.
As you yourself said "More likely, if detrimental effects do appear, they won't be lethal, just suboptimal". Why do you think this? Because we have decades of evidence of nothing going wrong, this has ruled out the hypothesis of significant health effects for these crops. If the only risks you can present are claims of "suboptimal" health you're presenting a non-falsifiable hypothesis.
>> Is it really so damning the Obama didn't consider Afganistan "his war"
I think it is, for a different reason. A lot of folks elected Obama to get us out our middle eastern wars as fast as possible. The fact that Obama's been dragging his feet on that front, even starting new wars (e.g., Libya), suggests (reaffirms?) that Obama has been a spineless president, bullied into more military action by his military advisers, Gates included.
I'm not sure spineless is the right word, I've always felt that Obama was best understood as someone with a strong progressive ideology and a very pragmatic approach.
Healthcare? Try to accomplish the progressive goals of strong universal insurance but with a conservative approach.
Wars? Talk nice and have a general policy of disengagement but don't rush it and fight if everyone really thinks it's necessary.
Budgets? Deal if at all possible (sequestration), only dig in when dealing is obviously impossible (debt ceiling standoff)
Guantanamo? Wants it closed, but if he can't close it in a proper way it's better to leave it open.
The NSA thing isn't surprising if you look at it through this light. The NSA obviously believed that a wide ranging surveillance program was critical, and if they brought that to Obama he was likely to agree even if it conflicted with his personal ideology.
In general I think the pragmatic approach is good though it does lead to making accomodations like the NSA spying and can leave you vulnerable to dogmatic opponents like the congressional Republicans.
We actually did reduce military funding. Twice even. It's not completely politically untenable like taxes that target the plutocratic class as much as the working and middle classes.
Wasn't one of those a sequestration cut that was put there partially because the idea of cutting the military was so verboten that it would make a deal to avoid it more likely?