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User: yndrd1984

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  1. Re:unforseen consequences? on Monsanto Executive Wins World Food Prize · · Score: 0

    What happens when these plants pollenate other plants?

    Floral sex? Seriously though, at most it will lead to normal crossbreeding.

    Is there going to be any ecological impacts?

    With the stuff in use now and currently in development, probably not. In the long run, possibly, but it's hard for me to get upset with an existing technology because it might possibly lead to something else that isn't even on the drawing board yet.

    There is plenty of food to go around. It is a distribution problem.

    Absolutely right. But that's only because advances made in the last half-century let us grow so much more food. So why stop now and risk turning our merely political problem back into a supply and political problem?

    not ok for journalists to investigate the animal side of the food industry

    Sure, GMO seed companies and their long history of animal cruelty. *eyeroll*

  2. Re:Just like the Nobel on Monsanto Executive Wins World Food Prize · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Just because something is predicted by repeatedly-incorrect Malthusian doomsday scaremongers doesn't mean it's inevitable.

  3. Re:doesn't help people take games seriously either on Sexism Still a Problem At E3 · · Score: 1

    So to support the idea that women are often assaulted at gamer conventions you cite - one person's anecdote of being treated as ignorant, some people saying sexual or rude things using the internet or texts, people in fantasy games wearing unrealistic dragon-fighting equipment (really?, the guy beside you is in a bathrobe and making fireballs with a baton), a bunch of unsupported blanket statements, and your own blatant bigotry toward a group that you're accusing of committing crimes.

    All of these might be germane to some other discussion, but they have nothing whatsoever to do with things that people should get arrested for.

  4. Re:So the correct action is... on Canadian Couple Charged $5k For Finding 400-Year-Old Skeleton · · Score: 1

    GMO corn has been discussed here many times related to how some people believe that it does harm.

  5. Re:OH CANADA! on Canadian Couple Charged $5k For Finding 400-Year-Old Skeleton · · Score: 1

    In this case, I am pretty sure the original killer no longer needs their help.

    Yeah, and I'm sure they were qualified to do a proper forensic investigation to determine that.

  6. Re:doesn't help people take games seriously either on Sexism Still a Problem At E3 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Check out the Women in Engineering forums on "hostile work environment" specifically with regard to professional conferences

    I'll do that, but I have to warn you that if the "hostility" is similar to what's found at atheist conferences (elevator-gate) or developer's conferences (dongle-gate) I'm not exactly going to be horrified.

  7. Re:doesn't help people take games seriously either on Sexism Still a Problem At E3 · · Score: 1

    Teach your daughters that they are just as valid of human beings as your sons.

    Good idea - just don't forget teach your sons that they're valuable human beings as well.

  8. Re:doesn't help people take games seriously either on Sexism Still a Problem At E3 · · Score: 1

    We have a culture that endorses the objectification of women...

    Are you suggesting that it doesn't objectify men as well?

    "realistic boob bounce" ... blatant sexism

    Do all depictions of female sexuality imply sexism?

    "armor bikinis"

    So when your elven princess comes back to life after getting killed by a battleaxe-wielding cow and a soul-eating midget in a bathrobe, summons her pet dinosaur from the ether, and charges back into battle without worrying about permanent injury, you have a problem with the realism of ... her armor?

  9. Re:Umm sexist much on Facebook's Complaint Process Is Arbitrary — But So Is Campaigning · · Score: 1

    Women are allowed to make sexist comments with impunity. Just like how minorities are allowed to form racially specific groups without retribution.

    Are you trying to make some sort of equivalence between how Western society treats or treated women and how it treats or treated, for example, ethnically African people? Sorry, but it looks that way, even though you'd have to be embarrassingly ignorant to make that argument.

    Could you imagine the uproar if we were to make a white's only awards show? Or a magazine called "Ivory"?

    I would be overwhelming, and rightly so - there's almost no measure of societal health that you can make that shows any other racial group doing better than whites, nor are whites in general held back by prejudice.

    On the other hand if (for example) blacks, compared to whites:

    lived longer and had more government support for their health care
    were on average significantly wealthier and had more disposable income
    were almost twice as likely to go to college, and were more likely to be in med- or law-school
    got reduced sentences for all crimes across the board
    were given preferential treatment in almost any dangerous situation - from evacuations to the draft
    had lower rates of suicide, homelessness and untreated mental illness
    and did better in a host of other well-being statistics...

    And in addition, whites were regularly assumed to be violent, domineering, self-absorbed, manipulative, irresponsible, foolish pedophiles... Then I might think that "Ebony" and "Ivory" should be treated equally.

  10. Re:Conservation of Energy on Own the Controversy! Blackbird DDWFTTW Up For Auction! · · Score: 2

    Flux ? You have no idea what you are talking about. Wind is not electromagnetic energy.

    Flux just means the net flow of something through a region of space, so it's perfectly fine to describe wind that way. There's heat flux when something changes temperature, diffusion flux when something dissolves, and both mass and volumetric flux in a fluid stream. Heck, even "the garbage flux of New York" is using the word correctly (if rather strangely).

  11. Re:Many classes of non-human on Book Review: The Human Division · · Score: 1

    Lots of people truly do hate pedophiles, and Dodgie worded his post in a way that is easily interpreted as hateful, but it could just as well have been colorful phrasing.

    It could be, it could also be sarcasm or trolling, but I just addressed the most straightforward interpretation. If he wants to, he can clarify.

    Acting on being a Jew (attending Synagogue, observing Chanukah, and so on) harms nobody else...

    Are you sure about that? "Acting on being a Jew" (for many) implies support for Israeli policies that many believe prevents peace in the region, sexism and sectarianism that have led to assaults, complete isolation of children from other cultures, and of course circumcision.

    Sorry to jump you like this, but it irritates me when people treat religion as above reproach simply because it's religion. (You're throwing a kid in a volcano? ... Oh, it's for a religious ceremony! My bad, carry on.)

  12. Re:Many classes of non-human on Book Review: The Human Division · · Score: 1

    I don't have a problem with them being treated as mental illness, but then I think the cure for such illnesses should be high speed injection of lead to the head

    Oddly enough that was pushed as a 'cure' for blacks and Jews as well. Violence seems to be some people's Final Solution to everything.

    I just don't understand how someone can have that much blind hatred - at least without being a victim or fighting against similar urges themselves.

  13. Re:Many classes of non-human on Book Review: The Human Division · · Score: 1

    Are you saying being black or jewish is a mental disease that can be treated?

    Neither my post nor the part of the preceding post that I was replying to (which I quoted) even mentioned those two groups.

  14. Re:Many classes of non-human on Book Review: The Human Division · · Score: 1

    Most of this is utter nonsense, based on how we treat others of our own species, not how we treat other species.

    The endangered species list would like a word with you.

    If you don't eat them, and they don't eat you, there is almost never interspecies conflict. The greater the physical differences, the less likely any conflict.

    Good point, but I think technology makes so many new things exploitable that it makes those physical differences vastly less important. Rabbits aren't in competition with blackberry bushes or songbirds now, but give the rabbits the right tools and they might start clearing out the berry bushes to grow more vegetables and spraying insecticide to keep the caterpillars down, and suddenly even the robins are effectively on the losing end of a conflict.

    Given that even with non-interstellar tech we use almost anything we can get our hands on for some purpose I have to assume that there's going to be something that we and any other given technological species both want. Maybe most other species will be eager for mutually-beneficial trade, but assuming that it always comes out that way seems optimistic.

  15. Re:Many classes of non-human on Book Review: The Human Division · · Score: 1

    The implication of your post indicates that as we progress we will advance our thinking such that we no longer demonize grown men who cornhole little boys or people that blow up things in public in order to scare people. I'm fairly certain that this is not an advancement of humanity but instead a sure sign of its decline.

    Right. Because there's no way that either of those things could ever be treated as mental illnesses that need to be treated rather than evils that need to be punished.

  16. Re:facebook is an american company on Criminal Complaint Filed Against Facebook After Girl's Death · · Score: 1

    A contract, a real life contract, needs a real signature on a real piece of paper Everything else is just bullshit.

    You are not a lawyer.

  17. Re:Government efficiency on Spain's New S-80 Class Submarines Sink, But Won't Float · · Score: 1

    A "private extension of the Federal Reserve?" So banks are a private extension of a private institution and therefore one-step away from government?

    Exactly. And like most private institutions, the Federal Reserve was made by an Act of Congress, members of its Board of Governors are appointed by the President of the United States and approved by the Senate to serve for a legally set term, it has legal authority over other institutions, and the vast majority of its profits go directly to the US Treasury.

    No government influence there, no sir!

  18. Re:Government efficiency on Spain's New S-80 Class Submarines Sink, But Won't Float · · Score: 1

    Private company gets contract from government and screws up. ... This is just the private sector looting public funds...

    So a state-owned company screws up a government contract, and somehow that's an example of "free enterprise capitalism".

  19. Re:One teensy detail on Why We Should Build a Supercomputer Replica of the Human Brain · · Score: 1

    it's like trying to randomly arrange bricks in the hopes that you eventually end up with a house.

    He's trying to deliberately copy an existing structure, that's the opposite of "randomly arranging" things.

  20. Re:One teensy detail on Why We Should Build a Supercomputer Replica of the Human Brain · · Score: 1

    If you don't have a good definition of what you're trying to replicate, you can't replicate it.

    Robert Beverly MacKenzie's mocking rebuttal a certain theory proposed by Charles Darwin: "In the theory with which we have to deal, Absolute Ignorance is the artificer; so that we may enunciate as the fundamental principle of the whole system, that, in order to make a perfect and beautiful machine, it is not requisite to know how to make it."

    And that's exactly right.

  21. Re:This is disgusting!! on Supreme Court Rules For Monsanto In Patent Case · · Score: 1

    The problem is you have to plant plants outside, and they can't move, and they're exposed to wind for pollination purposes.

    If you're using the resulting seed as food, it doesn't make a difference - a seed made when a non-GMO plant is fertilized by GMO pollen it still counts as a non-GMO food product.

    If you're using those seeds for seed (i.e. planting them), then you either control the breeding yourself (like plant breeders have been doing for a long time) or you take what you get. The results might include dwarf plants, sterile seed, odd colors, under-productive plants, etc. - and that's just normal breeding, not including breeding with with wild plants, natural mutations, breeding with other conventionally-bred varieties, or the effects of hybridization.

    My main question: If all of these issues weren't a problem with conventionally bred plants, including patented ones, why is it suddenly such an issue when GMOs are involved?

  22. Re:The farmer's recourse is to sue to sell on Supreme Court Rules For Monsanto In Patent Case · · Score: 1

    You're putting words in my mouth that are the opposite of what I said (hint: what does "not sold under license" and "not...require a license" entail?).

    I certainly don't mean to do that - if I'm still off-base by all means feel free to be more verbose. But you do realize that the vast majority of things covered by IP rights don't have licenses attached to them? Are you suggesting that selling every book, smart phone, and plastic toy should involve a signed contract? And that if I copy something without signing a contact first then that's fine? Under that system (if it worked) you wouldn't need IP, just contract law.

    A pop-tart ... All of the little devices and microchips and even the design of an Apple iPhone ... A Game of Thrones novel ... willing to buy it in that condition.

    Yes - as long as you don't claim authorship, represent altered versions as unaltered, or make copies of things that other people have an exclusive right to copy.

    Monsanto is getting away with suing me for...

    ...violating their rights? See US Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 and subsequent legislation.

  23. Re:This is disgusting!! on Supreme Court Rules For Monsanto In Patent Case · · Score: 1

    If your dog trespasses on his land, you are, indeed, responsible for what it does.

    Only if it does damage (or one of a few other actionable things), otherwise there's nothing to be responsible for. And I don't think you can make the case that a dog that has been let out in order to randomly get pregnant getting randomly pregnant has been 'damaged'.

    The question is whether it happened on his land or not.

    I don't think that would make a difference, but you're missing the point. He wants his dog to get pregnant, but wants me to bear the responsibility of controlling the breeding, even if e.g. I don't know his dog exists. That's absurd - he wants the benefit of purebred puppies while imposing the cost of arranging it on the rest of us.

    There simply isn't a right to be free of pollen from other peoples' plants.

  24. Re:The farmer's recourse is to sue to sell on Supreme Court Rules For Monsanto In Patent Case · · Score: 1

    the grain elevator owner should not be allowed to stipulate what the soybeans are to be used for.

    They don't. They just label things so that other people can avoid problems like this - the same way software often has copyright warnings or is marked as being freeware or open source.

    Nobody should be able to tell him what to do with his own property that was not sold under license or require a license to use or possess.

    Then you're against all IP - patents, copyright, trademark, trade secrets, ... ?

  25. Re:This is disgusting!! on Supreme Court Rules For Monsanto In Patent Case · · Score: 1

    They also attack anyone that provides seed saving services...

    ...when they help someone violate their patents.

    So even if someone wanted to do things the old fashioned way, they would have trouble finding anyone to process their seeds.

    I've never known anyone to have that problem.

    It helps to watch the entire movie if you are going to cite from it.

    It also helps to realize that the movie is deliberately biased.