1. Antibiotic resistance in GM plants is intentional, an artifact of the manufacturing process (see parent for reference).
But it doesnt have to be. There are alternatives such as herbicides, and other selective markers. There is also proven technology that allows for the antibiotic resistance to be bred out after the inital 'manufacturing process'
2. When bacteria eat DNA, they can incorporate it, mutating without dividing; this is called transformation:
Well, eat is the wrong word, but yes otherwise perfectly true, if not extreemly unlikely in uncontrolled environments
3. DNA from food can linger in the intestines a while.
I hope you dont eat much food with DNA in it then, becasue you could end up with fish/carrot etc genes in the bacteria living in your gut.
Not being personal, but i have got to respond to some popular misconceptions. And yes i read those articles out of interest and would like to point out that they are full of lots of perfectly true facts, but with no appreciation of the context they should be taken in. And are very biased, not to mention just wrong in some places too.
Just for starters, GM techniques:
- often place plant DNA in animals and vice-versa. Dangerous? Who knows?
DNA is DNA. The difference between a human and a cabbage is minimal. You may not like the idea of a fish gene in your strawberries, but that doesnt make it dangerous. It does however give the opportunity to move a specific and well characterised trait from one organism to another. No amount of breeding will make a frost tolerent strawberry because there is no natural trait *in strawberries*, but fish do... personally i think thats kind of cool
- involve the insertion of promoter sequences, which stimulate the expression of the desired sequence. What else do they stimulate? Again, no one really knows.
If it did something bad in the plant, then that plant wouldnt be desirable, and so it wouldnt be grown, sold, eaten etc. This is just FUD.
- also involve the insertion of a gene for antibiotic resistance, to help isolate those cells in which the gene transfer "takes". Dangerous? Hell yes! Horizontal gene transfer (between macro-organism and bacteria) is documented fact.
Oh boy, FUD, FUD, FUD, F U D, FUD. Not to mention just plain wrong and a popular mistruth recited by anti-GM bodies. Yes antibiotic resistance genes (and herbicide) are used, but has anyone bothered to check what those are used for? NOTHING. And in case you didnt stop to think, where did the resistance genes come from? From the environment. They are already out there. Pick up a handfull of soil and see how much antibiotic resistance genes there are out there *naturally* (i did this as a 1st year prac).
And why oh why would a bacterium even have any selective pressure to pick up a resistance gene from a plant (very difficult) when it can pop down to the local hospital and procreate with a nice slutty staph or E coli that is *actively* trying to spread its "geans of mass destruction".
Now for seconds, organic farming:
Uses the same bacterial toxin (Bt) on the surface of plants as the GM plants do. And did you know that Bt is closly related to anthrax! (just like a human is to a monkey)
Uses heavy metals in large quantities to control pests that do not bio-degrade and are toxic. (Mercury, copper, etc)
Dont test *any* new variety, breed, wild plant etc for health effects. A lot of the fashionable new plants have very high alkaloids and other toxins (cyanide-like etc), yet they are 'natural' and therefore outside the regulatory system. Peanuts would never be certified for consumption because too many people are allergic
Will *irraditate*/poision/mutate plants to produce desirable traits that are not characterised and completely unknown!
And (traditional, if not also organic) is in many cases quite inefficient, using more resources, spraying more toxic chemicals, with less yields than what can be achieved with a disease resistant/herbicide resistant/enhanced GM crop.
OK, long post, but take this message away, GM isnt bad because it is GM, and organic and natural doesnt mean it is 100% safe. No you shouldnt *have* to eat GM if you dont want too, but dont stop anyone from benefiting just because you read something on the internet saying it is wrong.
And if horizontal gene transfer is so natural and well documented, wouldnt that make GM crops practically organic? think about it.
It may not fly, but how about we redesigntate 1g of antimater from being equivelent to 23 space shuttle fuel tanks, to just "1 can of whoop-ass".
Do we need a poll? "How much energy is in 1g of antimatter" a) 23 SSFT b) 1 can of whoop ass c) 40 MTons of TNT d) It is exactly.... Joules e) ummmm...
Well if we take highly reliable sources (from other posts) that one SSFT = 0.233x10^14 joules and one kiloton of TNT = 4.6x10^12 joules, and Hiroshima bomb = 12 kilotons of TNT
We get that one SSFT is roughly a half a Hiroshima Bomb (HHB). So 1g of antimater is 23 HHBs, so lets just call it 12 Hiroshima's.
12*12=144 Kilotons, about the yield of a cold war ICBM warhead...
My understanding of nuetron bombs is that they are basically fusion devices with the outer reflector removed
They are fission initiated fusion bombs without a tamper, so that the neutrons do get out and about.
I havnt seen it stated, but it would follow that these fusion neutron bombs would have less kiloton (megaton?!) yield as there is no uranium tamper to fast fission.
Tanks are resilant to the concussion and heat effects of a nuclear bomb, but nuetrons can penetrate heavy armor easily.
And of course some bright spark decides to make the tank armor out of depleted uranium (M1?). Hmmm... set off a neutron bomb in a circle of DU armored tanks and you have one hell of a tamper to go with your 'clean' fusion bomb.
well yes, i certainly use his name to get his attention, but i find that he often just listens to the last word/syllable of the command and hopes for the best.
ie. "come up" (onto the couch) has the same effect as "you are not allowed to come up". Well after all he *is* a dog and dosent really understand me:)
Hey that the second dog I've heard thats called Mishka. and that dog was no mouse. My pups called macchiato- short, black and little bit of white:)
my dog kept looking at her with a really uncomfortable look on her face like "But I don't go inside!"
I know that look! occasionally the trigger phrase will be used and he looks at me just like that. A quick reasurment that it wasnt directed at him and he's ok.
otherwise its assume the position- snif around, tail up, hips down, noooo noooooot onnnnnnnn theeeeeeee ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuug
I havnt read that one, but liked 'puppies for dummies'-when i really was a dummy when it came to dogs! Although the author appears to like crate training, she has lots of other good ideas that i used to success.
I am not sure i would let my pup be free to do anything without my permission though. No he dosent sleep on my bed, but can ask and is usually allowed up when my alarm clock goes off. Same for the couch. He'll sit there grumbling at it for ages so i can give him permission, but he usually wont go up by himself.
He's started getting the habit of stealing things from the office/laundry basket and playing with them (to bits), but with the wimpiest of faces will sometimes bring things too me as if to ask, "can i play with this?", to which i normally respond to by telling the sock off. (yes, tell the sock off, not the dog, socks are bad, puppies are innocent, and they think twice about an object that you get angry at because it isnt safe, and they understand that-sometimes)
I think i got off topic, but oh subm...
Re:Well said! Here are a few other tips
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Upgrade Your Dog
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I felt like an idiot telling mac to 'go pee', and after 2 weeks of taking him out in winter at 3am and telling him to 'be quick' and telling him so, that is what stuck (with him and me)
Now i can just walk up to some grass (preferably) and tell him to 'be quick' and away he goes. 'Any more' works for number twos!
May i add, don't let the thing out of your sight till he is house broken. Take him everywhere and especially take him outside *every* hour or two (and yes probably 3-4hrs at night/when you sleep)
That gives you lots of opportunities to reward and to stop any mistakes while in the act. No point in correcting a puddle you find, but startle him in the act, take him to where he should go, and then reward will mean he wont go *there* again. 2 feet to the left perhaps, but not *there*. My puppy did my house room by room, corner by corner, till we established the only right place was the laundry or *outside*.
And get an enzyme based cleaner for pets. Most products cover the smell, but these are meant to get rid of the smell. Rose scented urine is still a good place to go if you are a dog.
And the *best* thing i taught my dog was to pee on command. Now he can be told go before that long car trip, just like the girlfriend... I did this by telling him to 'be quick' every time we went. reward, repeat. Be carful what you choose and dont say it while fido is on top of the bed, and you are telling the bipedal pet to 'hurry up'
Well, fair enough. But they sure as hell as better work on the *deployment* of parawings then.
I imagine there are *lots* of possible failure modes of re-entry. And we have seen a few of them recently. Dealing with heat, breaches in exterior, turbulance causing craft to wobble (?), atmospheric conditions, depth of atmosphere, metric conversions... and so on. It is amazing that things get up there, and (mostly) back down again (when wanted).
After all, as has been said, it *is* rocket science.
I got what paughsw was saying, so i decided to look it up.
If we take the ability to stop a chip from *getting hot* as being more important that *getting the chip as cold as possible* then parent definately has a very good point.
LN2 only needs 200 KJ/Kg to boil, whereas propane moves 428Kj/Kg. Twice as much should impress any of us.
As has been said, you could put the chip is space at -270 celcius, but then it is very hard to get rid of any heat that is made. Most space suits/stations/vehicles need to try *very hard* to get rid of heat (or at least move it) rather than what would intuitively seem to be a place where you need to heat things up.
But i'll give you that propane is a little flammable. Perhaps we should just use the LN2 to displace all the oxygen from a room, then use as much propane as you want. oh wait...
Forget rocket ship, you need a *boat* 16m wide to get the mirror to the antarctic. OK the ice-breakers are around 20m wide (beam), but you still need a door 16m wide to get it in the boat.
And as for plane? a C-141 holds only 3.1m so that really isnt an option unless it *is* a segmented mirror-and transported as segmented.
Think about it, 16m is around 6 lanes of a highway wide, or 4-5 storeys high. That is a *big* hunk of glass.
It would take you 1.8 seconds to hit the ground if you fell off the top of it!
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But it doesnt have to be. There are alternatives such as herbicides, and other selective markers. There is also proven technology that allows for the antibiotic resistance to be bred out after the inital 'manufacturing process'
2. When bacteria eat DNA, they can incorporate it, mutating without dividing; this is called transformation :
Well, eat is the wrong word, but yes otherwise perfectly true, if not extreemly unlikely in uncontrolled environments
3. DNA from food can linger in the intestines a while.
I hope you dont eat much food with DNA in it then, becasue you could end up with fish/carrot etc genes in the bacteria living in your gut.
Just for starters, GM techniques: - often place plant DNA in animals and vice-versa. Dangerous? Who knows?
DNA is DNA. The difference between a human and a cabbage is minimal. You may not like the idea of a fish gene in your strawberries, but that doesnt make it dangerous. It does however give the opportunity to move a specific and well characterised trait from one organism to another. No amount of breeding will make a frost tolerent strawberry because there is no natural trait *in strawberries*, but fish do... personally i think thats kind of cool
- involve the insertion of promoter sequences, which stimulate the expression of the desired sequence. What else do they stimulate? Again, no one really knows.
If it did something bad in the plant, then that plant wouldnt be desirable, and so it wouldnt be grown, sold, eaten etc. This is just FUD.
- also involve the insertion of a gene for antibiotic resistance, to help isolate those cells in which the gene transfer "takes". Dangerous? Hell yes! Horizontal gene transfer (between macro-organism and bacteria) is documented fact.
Oh boy, FUD, FUD, FUD, F U D, FUD. Not to mention just plain wrong and a popular mistruth recited by anti-GM bodies. Yes antibiotic resistance genes (and herbicide) are used, but has anyone bothered to check what those are used for? NOTHING. And in case you didnt stop to think, where did the resistance genes come from? From the environment. They are already out there. Pick up a handfull of soil and see how much antibiotic resistance genes there are out there *naturally* (i did this as a 1st year prac).
And why oh why would a bacterium even have any selective pressure to pick up a resistance gene from a plant (very difficult) when it can pop down to the local hospital and procreate with a nice slutty staph or E coli that is *actively* trying to spread its "geans of mass destruction".
Now for seconds, organic farming:
Uses the same bacterial toxin (Bt) on the surface of plants as the GM plants do. And did you know that Bt is closly related to anthrax! (just like a human is to a monkey)
Uses heavy metals in large quantities to control pests that do not bio-degrade and are toxic. (Mercury, copper, etc)
Dont test *any* new variety, breed, wild plant etc for health effects. A lot of the fashionable new plants have very high alkaloids and other toxins (cyanide-like etc), yet they are 'natural' and therefore outside the regulatory system. Peanuts would never be certified for consumption because too many people are allergic
Will *irraditate*/poision/mutate plants to produce desirable traits that are not characterised and completely unknown!
And (traditional, if not also organic) is in many cases quite inefficient, using more resources, spraying more toxic chemicals, with less yields than what can be achieved with a disease resistant/herbicide resistant/enhanced GM crop.
OK, long post, but take this message away, GM isnt bad because it is GM, and organic and natural doesnt mean it is 100% safe. No you shouldnt *have* to eat GM if you dont want too, but dont stop anyone from benefiting just because you read something on the internet saying it is wrong.
And if horizontal gene transfer is so natural and well documented, wouldnt that make GM crops practically organic? think about it.
It may not fly, but how about we redesigntate 1g of antimater from being equivelent to 23 space shuttle fuel tanks, to just "1 can of whoop-ass".
Do we need a poll?
"How much energy is in 1g of antimatter"
a) 23 SSFT
b) 1 can of whoop ass
c) 40 MTons of TNT
d) It is exactly.... Joules
e) ummmm...
5x10^15 Joules at 10^10 Watts... hell thats a little sun sitting on the floor for a month !
did anyone else read that as "i have a goatse..." and get conflicting images with "clean shaven..."
i think i need to get out more...
Well if we take highly reliable sources (from other posts) that
one SSFT = 0.233x10^14 joules and
one kiloton of TNT = 4.6x10^12 joules,
and Hiroshima bomb = 12 kilotons of TNT
We get that one SSFT is roughly a half a Hiroshima Bomb (HHB). So 1g of antimater is 23 HHBs, so lets just call it 12 Hiroshima's.
12*12=144 Kilotons, about the yield of a cold war ICBM warhead...
There is 58 megatons of books there we could drop on 'the enemy'.
So, roughly speaking 1.5g of antimater, is equivelent to just dropping the entire contents of the Library of Congress, on a 1cm-odd square...
How am i going to put an antitinfoil hat on my head?
well yes, i certainly use his name to get his attention, but i find that he often just listens to the last word/syllable of the command and hopes for the best.
:)
ie. "come up" (onto the couch) has the same effect as "you are not allowed to come up". Well after all he *is* a dog and dosent really understand me
Hey that the second dog I've heard thats called Mishka. and that dog was no mouse. My pups called macchiato- short, black and little bit of white :)
my dog kept looking at her with a really uncomfortable look on her face like "But I don't go inside!"
I know that look! occasionally the trigger phrase will be used and he looks at me just like that. A quick reasurment that it wasnt directed at him and he's ok.
otherwise its assume the position- snif around, tail up, hips down, noooo noooooot onnnnnnnn theeeeeeee ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuug
carpet, grass, its all the same really...
I havnt read that one, but liked 'puppies for dummies'-when i really was a dummy when it came to dogs! Although the author appears to like crate training, she has lots of other good ideas that i used to success.
I am not sure i would let my pup be free to do anything without my permission though. No he dosent sleep on my bed, but can ask and is usually allowed up when my alarm clock goes off. Same for the couch. He'll sit there grumbling at it for ages so i can give him permission, but he usually wont go up by himself.
He's started getting the habit of stealing things from the office/laundry basket and playing with them (to bits), but with the wimpiest of faces will sometimes bring things too me as if to ask, "can i play with this?", to which i normally respond to by telling the sock off. (yes, tell the sock off, not the dog, socks are bad, puppies are innocent, and they think twice about an object that you get angry at because it isnt safe, and they understand that-sometimes)
I think i got off topic, but oh subm...
I felt like an idiot telling mac to 'go pee', and after 2 weeks of taking him out in winter at 3am and telling him to 'be quick' and telling him so, that is what stuck (with him and me)
Now i can just walk up to some grass (preferably) and tell him to 'be quick' and away he goes. 'Any more' works for number twos!
Agreed!!!
May i add, don't let the thing out of your sight till he is house broken. Take him everywhere and especially take him outside *every* hour or two (and yes probably 3-4hrs at night/when you sleep)
That gives you lots of opportunities to reward and to stop any mistakes while in the act. No point in correcting a puddle you find, but startle him in the act, take him to where he should go, and then reward will mean he wont go *there* again. 2 feet to the left perhaps, but not *there*. My puppy did my house room by room, corner by corner, till we established the only right place was the laundry or *outside*.
And get an enzyme based cleaner for pets. Most products cover the smell, but these are meant to get rid of the smell. Rose scented urine is still a good place to go if you are a dog.
And the *best* thing i taught my dog was to pee on command. Now he can be told go before that long car trip, just like the girlfriend... I did this by telling him to 'be quick' every time we went. reward, repeat. Be carful what you choose and dont say it while fido is on top of the bed, and you are telling the bipedal pet to 'hurry up'
Well, fair enough. But they sure as hell as better work on the *deployment* of parawings then.
I imagine there are *lots* of possible failure modes of re-entry. And we have seen a few of them recently. Dealing with heat, breaches in exterior, turbulance causing craft to wobble (?), atmospheric conditions, depth of atmosphere, metric conversions... and so on. It is amazing that things get up there, and (mostly) back down again (when wanted).
After all, as has been said, it *is* rocket science.
umm something like that has
"Recovery of the crew module would be effected by means of a gliding parachute (parawing)." -from the wiki.
And we know how well parawings work....
I got what paughsw was saying, so i decided to look it up.
If we take the ability to stop a chip from *getting hot* as being more important that *getting the chip as cold as possible* then parent definately has a very good point.
LN2 only needs 200 KJ/Kg to boil, whereas propane moves 428Kj/Kg. Twice as much should impress any of us.
As has been said, you could put the chip is space at -270 celcius, but then it is very hard to get rid of any heat that is made. Most space suits/stations/vehicles need to try *very hard* to get rid of heat (or at least move it) rather than what would intuitively seem to be a place where you need to heat things up.
But i'll give you that propane is a little flammable. Perhaps we should just use the LN2 to displace all the oxygen from a room, then use as much propane as you want. oh wait...
And what system would *they* get to run on it?
Forget rocket ship, you need a *boat* 16m wide to get the mirror to the antarctic. OK the ice-breakers are around 20m wide (beam), but you still need a door 16m wide to get it in the boat.
And as for plane? a C-141 holds only 3.1m so that really isnt an option unless it *is* a segmented mirror-and transported as segmented.
Think about it, 16m is around 6 lanes of a highway wide, or 4-5 storeys high. That is a *big* hunk of glass.
It would take you 1.8 seconds to hit the ground if you fell off the top of it!
"Why build one, when you can have two for twice the price?"
How about some big air bags like the MERs.
Sounds like a piece of advice taken from my grandfather...
"They can't steal anything with both hands over their ears"
IANAA (I am not an american), but i want the $8000 that the Pentagon has lost.
At least one of the Beagles found life...