Oh, no... they certainly didn't! The terminator fuckup is in the pollen,...
I was clearly comparing the rough complexity of various tasks, not making a direct analogy. Somewhat like your analogy: "the plant actually ejaculates".
... will contaminate neighboring crops - terminating them...
Some people are worried about that, but since nobody is planning on using them in the near future there's time to do more research and get better answers.
... and introducing a patented technology for which Monsanto can sue.
But of course mere contamination isn't enough to get someone sued...
Monsanto always wins and controls food production. That's exactly why it was done first.
And you know this how - corporate documents, telepathy, or do you "just know it"?
Who's talking about competition? African producers don't have enough basic food to worry about export.
Without the subsidies prices would be higher, so it would be more worthwhile investing in staple crop production outside of the first world, and there would be a reason to produce more than necessary for local consumption.
I present to you the terminator seeds, where the reworking of reproductive metabolism has been done successfully.
That's not redoing the entire reproductive system, it's just knocking out a gene. Giving a plant the genetic equivalent of a vasectomy is simply easier than adding on a whole new organ, which is basically what you'd need to do to get something to start hosting nitrogen-fixing bacteria. And that's exactly why it was done first.
I don't care about the herbicide resistance per se, just the fact that any such product was no doubt heavily sprayed with herbicides.
No more so than any other non-organic crop. In fact, the final product sometimes has significantly less herbicide - if you can spray bigger dose of short-lived glyphosate because of a crop's resistance, you can avoid using several smaller doses of harsher stuff that sticks around long enough for you to eat it.
I also never want to buy a GMO product that contains suicide genes.
Well you can't buy them even if you tried - no commercial crop has ever had 'terminator genes' in them.
And I never want to buy a GMO product that is patented by any company that is willing to sue a farmer for patent infringement, even if the product is otherwise winning.
I can understand not liking patents and want to reform the legal system, but how do you expect them to even make back the money they spent on research? Keep in mind that the copyright equivalent isn't kids pirating some songs, it's someone selling whole libraries of copied DVDs for their own financial gain.
capitalists do not allow for redistribution of goods (they prefer destroying food) so the USA is fat and Africa is dying of starvation
Western governments subsidize crops produced in their own countries and African producers can't compete because of those subsidies - that's not capitalism.
Also the GM crops don't have significantly higher yields for this "argument" to hold water or even grain.
The first generation of commercial GM crops targeted lowering costs by reducing herbicide/pesticide use, not increasing yields, because that was the simplest, easiest thing to try. Water- and nitrogen-efficient crops are in development now that the technology is more mature, the regulatory environment is stable, and more companies are working on the problem.
The sole purpose of GMO now on the market is to control food production or we would see abundance of drought and frost resistant, nitrogen fixing crops.
Right, because reworking large parts of a plant's metabolism is exactly as difficult as adding a gene for a single protein. *eye roll*
Well, if they've got millions of members, then each member has to do one hour a year to add it all up to millions of hours per year, so that's hardly worth talking about.
In my experience they're one of the most service-oriented groups I've come across - there's a reason that there are strong ties with the Boy Scouts, are such a large part of many disaster relief efforts, and offer so many services to members. If you want a more reasonable downside to that, point out the LDS involvement is one of the main reasons the the Scouts are still so harsh on gays and atheists, that volunteer work and in-group services often used as recruiting tools and to make it hard to leave, and their massive involvement with California's Proposition 8.
I don't know of very many similarities between scientology, a con game started by a science fiction writer, and the Church of Latter Day Saints...
They were both started by charismatic con men and are harsh on ex-members? In my opinion the LDS church has done better things with the community and beliefs that resulted from those manipulations, but that doesn't alter the fact that both were founded based on a deliberate fiction, and both are willing to impose on others.
Well, I live in the US. I like the ideals that my country was founded on, and the people and culture aren't much better or worse than what you'd find in any other first-world country. But the government - those buggers are so corrupted by power that they'd make the average third-world dictator blush.
So hate on the US government all you want, just realize that most US citizens don't like them either.
Where does this "heat" come from? Why not just harness it directly from there? You know, solar...
Just some ideas: you wouldn't need to catch the rays in anything special (cells or mirrors) because the already existing landscape does it for you, and a simple big tube might be pretty cheap in comparison.
...neurological research showing that humans tend greatly towards the altruistic.... People are inherently violent...
I think you misunderstand the results of this kind of research - people have an inherent capacity for both kinds of behavior. Most people will be fairly altruistic if they feel they can get their needs met in cooperative ways, but will respond aggressively if they're pushed. Sometimes you have to work together, sometimes you have to fight.
ice cores, dendrochronology, carbon dating, isotopic ratios, and other things
Yep, lots of different kinds of evidence. And all of those tests are done from things that happen to be dug out of the earth...
I guess you could find evidence of previous climates from the genetics or geographical distribution of extant populations, but I can't think of any widely used evidence of previous climates that doesn't have 'geo-' somewhere in the title of its field.
Well, it's a "thermal exhaust port", possibly for plasma. In which case the shaft would have to be magnetized to keep the plasma from contacting the sides. And a "proton torpedo" sounds electrically charged, possibly so that just like like plasma they'll follow magnetic guides. Sort of like they're specifically made to be fired down plasma conduits...
Moderate inflation is good if you pay wages, or even if you just don't like massive strikes all the time. In a bad year with 5% inflation you can give a 4% raise and people will just be unhappy, with 0% you'd end up forcing a 1% pay cut, which can easily lead to rioting.
And that's the problem - one government department owes it to another department, with the result being that there's no actual money there, just numbers on paper.
Say your family is broke, but you want to pretend that you're not. So write a check to your wife for a million dollars and have her keep it in a safety deposit box. Then you can go around saying "We have a lot of money saved in a retirement account".
rule that she has no privacy rights on public property even when compelled to be there [reasonable maybe - ever been to court by summons?]
Sure. But did anyone suggest that because I was in the courthouse that I'd chosen to give up some of my rights? No.
she's actually making the choice to go to THIS SCHOOL that is outside of her actual zone because they have something she WANTS. You get that right?
I get it, I just think that it's irrelevant for several reasons:
Instead of privacy issues, pretend that she was being forced to convert to Islam in order to attend a better public school. She can still go to the sucky one and stay Jewish, but since she wants to get into college it's worth it to her. And by your logic her right to freedom of religion isn't violated at all, because she had other options and WANTS this one.
She may be making a choice, but it's a forced choice out of a limited set of options. If someone put a gun to her head and ordered her to have sex, but she got to choose who to do it with, it's still rape.
And above all, if this school can do it, all of them can do it. You can't suddenly find a Constitutional violation when the last school in the country starts mandating that students carry cards.
My comments have been to answer a very specific question about the legal system:
someone please explain what expectation of privacy a child should have on public property.
Normally the answer would be "not much" based on the fact that she is there because she has freely chosen to be there and knew ahead of time that she was visible to the public. The problem is that she's legally compelled to get an education - even if she has other options that would fulfill that obligation, she's still there primarily because of a government mandate, not her own choice. To make it even worse, she's not just being told that she's given up her privacy, but that she much actively assist people in invading her privacy.
Now her parents are irrelevant for two reasons. The first is that having other options in general is irrelevant - if a group of men were told that they could go to college or get drafted you wouldn't say that both the ones on the front lines and the ones in class were there completely of their own free will. Secondly options that require other people to work with her simply don't count - someone who can't find a willing sex partner isn't a virgin by choice.
As for the idea of going to another school, she either has privacy rights or she doesn't, and the results would almost certainly have to apply to all public schools. (Well at least until someone changes a law, or makes a long and complex legal argument about why some schools need to be treated differently than others. I think that both would fail, but that would be a dissertation-length Slashdot post...)
I probably should have directly stated that I'm making a general case that she has the right to opt out of this situation - the fact that the specific person in question has options at this specific time isn't relevant, because they might not always be available. If her options can be taken away (or not given in the first place) - parents are less supportive, she's not accepted to (or gets expelled from) other schools - then it's only by chance that she has those options, and when dealing with basic rights you can't count contingent options when determining legal compulsion. In other words if any student (in a normal situation) can end up without options, then they are compelled, and that's the proper situation to look at to determine if something is voluntary.
Sorry if that's too rambling, but it's quite late here and I know we're misunderstanding each other somewhere, but I don't know exactly where.
Now, if you choose not to go to your local school then big brother will insist that you be home schooled or go to a private school. If you choose not to go for that then you may find yourself in a forced school situation when DCS decides that your parents aren't looking after your educational needs (even if they are trying). It just gets worse from there. But in the end, yes, it's a choice.
So you can be fined, arrested, forced to move, and even locked in a secure facility if you don't do something, but you aren't legally compelled to do it?
Boltzmann was one of those I was indirectly addressing. You missed that, eh? Did you even read the original articles?
I only had to read enough to see that his work was being misrepresented. Am I required to read every creationist/UFO/electric universe/William Lane Craig screed all the way to the end, or can I stop after I find a few painful distortions of other people's work?
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, no... they certainly didn't! The terminator fuckup is in the pollen, ...
I was clearly comparing the rough complexity of various tasks, not making a direct analogy. Somewhat like your analogy: "the plant actually ejaculates".
Some people are worried about that, but since nobody is planning on using them in the near future there's time to do more research and get better answers.
But of course mere contamination isn't enough to get someone sued
Monsanto always wins and controls food production. That's exactly why it was done first.
And you know this how - corporate documents, telepathy, or do you "just know it"?
Who's talking about competition? African producers don't have enough basic food to worry about export.
Without the subsidies prices would be higher, so it would be more worthwhile investing in staple crop production outside of the first world, and there would be a reason to produce more than necessary for local consumption.
I present to you the terminator seeds, where the reworking of reproductive metabolism has been done successfully.
That's not redoing the entire reproductive system, it's just knocking out a gene. Giving a plant the genetic equivalent of a vasectomy is simply easier than adding on a whole new organ, which is basically what you'd need to do to get something to start hosting nitrogen-fixing bacteria. And that's exactly why it was done first.
You're both wrong. The notion that western governments allow for food to be destroyed willy nilly has been taken care of.
Thank goodness that I was arguing against that notion - wait, we agree on this, so why do you think I'm wrong?
Ah, I get it. You can't argue against the non-controversial point I made, so you're strawmaning me.
Can't we do both?
I don't care about the herbicide resistance per se, just the fact that any such product was no doubt heavily sprayed with herbicides.
No more so than any other non-organic crop. In fact, the final product sometimes has significantly less herbicide - if you can spray bigger dose of short-lived glyphosate because of a crop's resistance, you can avoid using several smaller doses of harsher stuff that sticks around long enough for you to eat it.
I also never want to buy a GMO product that contains suicide genes.
Well you can't buy them even if you tried - no commercial crop has ever had 'terminator genes' in them.
And I never want to buy a GMO product that is patented by any company that is willing to sue a farmer for patent infringement, even if the product is otherwise winning.
I can understand not liking patents and want to reform the legal system, but how do you expect them to even make back the money they spent on research? Keep in mind that the copyright equivalent isn't kids pirating some songs, it's someone selling whole libraries of copied DVDs for their own financial gain.
capitalists do not allow for redistribution of goods (they prefer destroying food) so the USA is fat and Africa is dying of starvation
Western governments subsidize crops produced in their own countries and African producers can't compete because of those subsidies - that's not capitalism.
Also the GM crops don't have significantly higher yields for this "argument" to hold water or even grain.
The first generation of commercial GM crops targeted lowering costs by reducing herbicide/pesticide use, not increasing yields, because that was the simplest, easiest thing to try. Water- and nitrogen-efficient crops are in development now that the technology is more mature, the regulatory environment is stable, and more companies are working on the problem.
The sole purpose of GMO now on the market is to control food production or we would see abundance of drought and frost resistant, nitrogen fixing crops.
Right, because reworking large parts of a plant's metabolism is exactly as difficult as adding a gene for a single protein. *eye roll*
Well, if they've got millions of members, then each member has to do one hour a year to add it all up to millions of hours per year, so that's hardly worth talking about.
In my experience they're one of the most service-oriented groups I've come across - there's a reason that there are strong ties with the Boy Scouts, are such a large part of many disaster relief efforts, and offer so many services to members. If you want a more reasonable downside to that, point out the LDS involvement is one of the main reasons the the Scouts are still so harsh on gays and atheists, that volunteer work and in-group services often used as recruiting tools and to make it hard to leave, and their massive involvement with California's Proposition 8.
I don't know of very many similarities between scientology, a con game started by a science fiction writer, and the Church of Latter Day Saints...
They were both started by charismatic con men and are harsh on ex-members? In my opinion the LDS church has done better things with the community and beliefs that resulted from those manipulations, but that doesn't alter the fact that both were founded based on a deliberate fiction, and both are willing to impose on others.
Well, I live in the US. I like the ideals that my country was founded on, and the people and culture aren't much better or worse than what you'd find in any other first-world country. But the government - those buggers are so corrupted by power that they'd make the average third-world dictator blush.
So hate on the US government all you want, just realize that most US citizens don't like them either.
Where does this "heat" come from? Why not just harness it directly from there? You know, solar...
Just some ideas: you wouldn't need to catch the rays in anything special (cells or mirrors) because the already existing landscape does it for you, and a simple big tube might be pretty cheap in comparison.
But we already do that in the ocean and it does work (even if it isn't that impressive).
I think you misunderstand the results of this kind of research - people have an inherent capacity for both kinds of behavior. Most people will be fairly altruistic if they feel they can get their needs met in cooperative ways, but will respond aggressively if they're pushed. Sometimes you have to work together, sometimes you have to fight.
mishandling relatively short, small diameter, objects reminds you of your favourite pastime ............ just ewwww
If you haven't played with a clit, you're missing out.
Don't you have a port just as you described in your "command center" or "office" just like the Emperor?
If that command center was aboard one of my country's most powerful warships, in a way - yes, it would have to exhaust heat from two nuclear reactors.
ice cores, dendrochronology, carbon dating, isotopic ratios, and other things
Yep, lots of different kinds of evidence. And all of those tests are done from things that happen to be dug out of the earth...
I guess you could find evidence of previous climates from the genetics or geographical distribution of extant populations, but I can't think of any widely used evidence of previous climates that doesn't have 'geo-' somewhere in the title of its field.
Well, it's a "thermal exhaust port", possibly for plasma. In which case the shaft would have to be magnetized to keep the plasma from contacting the sides. And a "proton torpedo" sounds electrically charged, possibly so that just like like plasma they'll follow magnetic guides. Sort of like they're specifically made to be fired down plasma conduits...
Eight inches to two meters - about an order of magnitude...
Forget about the womp-rats, it's the womp-cats and womp-dogs you really have to worry about.
Especially if they start living together.
Sooo, how many meters long are the medium-sized animals on your planet? And about the large ones...
Moderate inflation is good if you pay wages, or even if you just don't like massive strikes all the time. In a bad year with 5% inflation you can give a 4% raise and people will just be unhappy, with 0% you'd end up forcing a 1% pay cut, which can easily lead to rioting.
Do you honestly think a company will waste profits on its employees without being forced to?
Why do they give you any money at all? The answer should be obvious, but it's really the same as your question.
There is. It's invested completely in T bills.
And that's the problem - one government department owes it to another department, with the result being that there's no actual money there, just numbers on paper.
Say your family is broke, but you want to pretend that you're not. So write a check to your wife for a million dollars and have her keep it in a safety deposit box. Then you can go around saying "We have a lot of money saved in a retirement account".
rule that she has no privacy rights on public property even when compelled to be there [reasonable maybe - ever been to court by summons?]
Sure. But did anyone suggest that because I was in the courthouse that I'd chosen to give up some of my rights? No.
she's actually making the choice to go to THIS SCHOOL that is outside of her actual zone because they have something she WANTS. You get that right?
I get it, I just think that it's irrelevant for several reasons:
Instead of privacy issues, pretend that she was being forced to convert to Islam in order to attend a better public school. She can still go to the sucky one and stay Jewish, but since she wants to get into college it's worth it to her. And by your logic her right to freedom of religion isn't violated at all, because she had other options and WANTS this one.
She may be making a choice, but it's a forced choice out of a limited set of options. If someone put a gun to her head and ordered her to have sex, but she got to choose who to do it with, it's still rape.
And above all, if this school can do it, all of them can do it. You can't suddenly find a Constitutional violation when the last school in the country starts mandating that students carry cards.
My comments have been to answer a very specific question about the legal system:
Normally the answer would be "not much" based on the fact that she is there because she has freely chosen to be there and knew ahead of time that she was visible to the public. The problem is that she's legally compelled to get an education - even if she has other options that would fulfill that obligation, she's still there primarily because of a government mandate, not her own choice. To make it even worse, she's not just being told that she's given up her privacy, but that she much actively assist people in invading her privacy.
Now her parents are irrelevant for two reasons. The first is that having other options in general is irrelevant - if a group of men were told that they could go to college or get drafted you wouldn't say that both the ones on the front lines and the ones in class were there completely of their own free will. Secondly options that require other people to work with her simply don't count - someone who can't find a willing sex partner isn't a virgin by choice.
As for the idea of going to another school, she either has privacy rights or she doesn't, and the results would almost certainly have to apply to all public schools. (Well at least until someone changes a law, or makes a long and complex legal argument about why some schools need to be treated differently than others. I think that both would fail, but that would be a dissertation-length Slashdot post...)
I probably should have directly stated that I'm making a general case that she has the right to opt out of this situation - the fact that the specific person in question has options at this specific time isn't relevant, because they might not always be available. If her options can be taken away (or not given in the first place) - parents are less supportive, she's not accepted to (or gets expelled from) other schools - then it's only by chance that she has those options, and when dealing with basic rights you can't count contingent options when determining legal compulsion. In other words if any student (in a normal situation) can end up without options, then they are compelled, and that's the proper situation to look at to determine if something is voluntary.
Sorry if that's too rambling, but it's quite late here and I know we're misunderstanding each other somewhere, but I don't know exactly where.
Now, if you choose not to go to your local school then big brother will insist that you be home schooled or go to a private school. If you choose not to go for that then you may find yourself in a forced school situation when DCS decides that your parents aren't looking after your educational needs (even if they are trying). It just gets worse from there. But in the end, yes, it's a choice.
So you can be fined, arrested, forced to move, and even locked in a secure facility if you don't do something, but you aren't legally compelled to do it?
Boltzmann was one of those I was indirectly addressing. You missed that, eh? Did you even read the original articles?
I only had to read enough to see that his work was being misrepresented. Am I required to read every creationist/UFO/electric universe/William Lane Craig screed all the way to the end, or can I stop after I find a few painful distortions of other people's work?