You specifically brought up the argument of Monsanto suing farmers for contamination. Don't try to pretend you don't care about it when you're shown it's bullshit.
What happens if the Roundup Resistance trait jumps outside of the intended field? Now it's in a place where RoundUp isn't being used. So what advantage does this rogue plant have now? None, there's no selection pressure for this particular trait outside of farm fields where Roundup is used. This is a ridiculous argument. What's so dangerous about that? I'd be fascinated if you could present a plausible scenario where it mattered. Why aren't you concerned with naturally developed Roundup resistance spreading too? Why single out only engineered resistance? Because it came from a lab? If you now say you're arguing about the use of Roundup and other herbicides in general, you have shifted the goalpost again and now you're not even talk about GMO technology anymore.
You really start to show your ignorance of the subject by regurgitating long-debunked anti-GMO talking points. Can you actually cite a case of Monsanto suing someone for accidental contamination? Of course not, because it's a myth. Cases are public record, and when you actually look at cases like Schmieser and Bowman to see what actually happened, it's obvious there was no accidental contamination there, despite the antis continuing to trot that myth out over and over with the relevant details conveniently left out.
It doesn't do your cause any good, if indeed the anti-GMO cause is yours, to continue to repeat easily debunked bullshit. If you have to use the same sorry lies over and over, you should probably rethink the validity of your position as a whole.
I was being a little sarcastic, it's ridiculous to compare geneticists to backyard mechanics. Of course they know what they're doing, the nature of genes and DNA is such that if they didn't none of this shit would work. It's not the kind of thing that you learn over a weekend. It's highly specialized knowledge and training, which is why so few laypeople understand the details of, hence the fear of what they don't understand.
I don't know what you're level of understanding of genetics and biology is, but I think you (and lots of others also) greatly overestimate the worldwide calamity danger potential of these plants we're altering. Changing one or two genes in an organism is very, very, very unlikely to cause them to go batshit and take over the world. As in, so unlikely that it's impossible. Making a plant resistant to Roundup is gonna do just that; there's no Roundup in "nature" so what advantage would it have against it's competition? The same holds true for most other traits we're engineering.
The plants we grow as crops for our food are not natural plants; they've been bred for a long time for us to be able to use them as we intend, not to survive in the wild. I'd say that most of our food crops would not survive outside of the artificial environment of the farm. The idea of these plants out competing and taking over the world, frankly I find a little ridiculous.
they make plants that produce chemicals to kill pests, with possibly unknown health effects (although at this point these effects have been studied pretty thoroughly)
The effects and method of action of BT genes and their subsequent Cry proteins are well known, understood, and regularly used even in organic agriculture. All plants naturally produce their own chemicals/pesticides, otherwise pests would just be eating the shit out of them and they'd go extinct. Adding one more already naturally occurring pesticide that is demonstrably unharmful to humans is really no sweat.
they make plants that are resistant to herbicides, which promotes the use of these herbicides, which promotes the development of superweeds
Herbicides such as glyphosate were in use long before genetic technology came along, and for good reason: it's relatively benign compared to other more harsh and toxic herbicides that it replaced, and it was much more successful because it was broad spectrum and could kill a wide variety of pest plants rather than having to use two or three different herbicides to accomplish the same. It's for all these reasons that it was chosen as the target for resistance engineering, not the other way around. The idea of "superweeds" is a little ridiculous because at worst, weeds become resistant to glyphosate and we're simply right back where we started before. It's not like these weeds are suddenly going to be super hardy and resistant to everything and begin taking over the world. They'll simply be resistant to glyphosate.
they patent everything and engage in licensing schemes that are really harmful to small farmers.
When you're spending hundreds of thousands to millions on R&D, you kinda want to protect your investment. Plant patents have been around a lot longer than GMO technology anyway. Farmers are falling over each other trying to buy GMO seeds, and no one is forcing them to sign contracts that they don't want to. Anyone is free to go and buy non-GMO seeds wherever they like. Farmers aren't doing this, of course, because the GMO traits allow them to get better yields with fewer inputs, thus making better profits. GMO crops hurting small farmers is laughable to the farmers using them. Unless you think farmers are stupid hicks who don't know how to math.
but merely by making it more resistant to pesticide, so that they can smother it,
I'm sure this is a waste of time replying to an ignorant Anonymous Coward, but do you have any idea what level of spray actually hits fields on a per acre or even per square foot basis? I bet if you ran the actual numbers, you'd be dumbfounded at just how little an amount something like Roundup is required to have the desired affect. We're literally talking about oz. per acre, diluted into gallons of water. It'd be quite a stretch to call that "smothering".
Also glyphosate as a chemical is now off patent and anyone can make and sell it.
There's no GURT technology currently on the market. And no, there's no reputable science saying that somehow transgenic technology is unsafe for bees or anything else. There's not even a proposed mechanism on how this could possibly be.
Knowing the genome is pretty much irrelevant to selective breeding since SB is based on phenotypical traits, not genomic ones. If you have the genome, why would just completely ignore that information and continue to do things the slow, random way when you could alter exactly the genes you want in exactly the way you want to without affecting the rest and getting lots of unintended consequences? No, you don't have to splice genes to make improvements in the same way you don't have to use a computer to calculate a spreadsheet because you can do the same thing with pen and paper. It just doesn't make sense to continue doing things the old way when we have understood, proven methods of doing things better. The general population is pretty ignorant when it comes to genetics, but geneticists do kinda know what they are doing...
This article from 2 years ago and its accompanying chart make a good case that we'd have fusion already if we as a civilization seriously funded it. As you can see on the chart, actual funding towards fusion research has been laughable and of course, here we are still "30 years away".
BT soyabeans, which causes all manner of illnesses in humans and animals
Myth #2. BT toxic is completely inactive in mammalian guts due to the acidic environment and lack of appropriate receptors to latch onto. Cry proteins are digested like any others.
Maybe next time, have the first clue what you're talking about before you spout oft-repeated bullshit.
Computers didn't exist in 1789 either, so kindly get off the computer and from now on please make all your freedom of speech Slashdot comments available on paper only, or accept the freedom of speech limitations that the government deems acceptable in current technology.
Have you priced out autopilot airliners, military hardened equipment, medical implants, or other mission critical has-to-work hardware? That level of certainty usually comes with a price tag far, far beyond the commercially available version. So now only rich people can afford guns.
In the martial arts communities, videos of gun disarm techniques are always taken with a grain of salt and it is usually understood that when trying to grapple a gun away from someone, there's probably still a good 50/50 chance you're going to get shot trying to take someone's gun away from them even for a trained self-defense professional. So I don't think most people have to worry about having their guns grabbed out of their hands and turned against them. This is also a terrible, terrible idea for the 95 lb woman who carries a gun as an equalizer to keep from getting raped by the 200 lb guy who manages to take away the smart gun from her because it wouldn't authenticate in time/improper grip to enable firing/RF interference/etc.
William Blackstone might want to have a word with you. Should we really be worried about rounding up a whole bunch of "bad guys" to keep them from doing bad things because of the chance that a few of them might be innocent? Think of the children!
That's probably because gun education has typically been removed from schools. It used to be schools had gun clubs and kids were regularly seen carrying their rifles around campus. These were people that were taught how to properly use and respect a gun. Now, public gun education pretty much amounts to "abstinence only!" sex-ed. How's that working out for us?
New Jersey since 2002 has been waiting for smart guns to be available so their law can kick in and make them mandatory for all guns sold there. Police, of course, will be exempt from this law. Imagine that.
Furthermore, Steinways are inconsistent in quality; since they are made by hand, you can get two Steinways that are not of the same standard, which is frustrating when you are trying to buy one.
This is a feature, not a bug. The quality is always the same, but differences in the wood as it is shaped through the manufacturing process lend each instrument its own character as opposed to the more consistent but cookie-cutter instruments coming out of other factories.
Steinway instruments fresh out of the factory are designed to be only a starting point. The selling feature of the Steinway design is that it is so very customizable to the preferences of the player. A low tension scale design coupled with a unique hammer construction and asymmetrically tapered diaphragmatic soundboard give the voicing of a Steinway a very large potential tonal palette. It is typically up to the dealer selling the instrument to have technicians that will spend a few (or more) hours tweaking the piano to your final preference. Other instruments are more consistent from unit to unit, but sacrifice that flexibility as a result. It's relatively easy to make a Steinway bright and loud like a Yamaha by shaping and lacquering the shit out of the hammers, but it's quite difficult to take a high tension scale Yamaha and make it dark and moody while still having good dynamic control.
I generally agree with the rest of your comments though.
Yamaha pianos that are comparable in design and construction method to Steinway pianos are significantly more expensive, particularly in the concert grand range.
For someone to say that a Steinway piano which is a low tension scale design is indistinguishable from a less expensive piano such as the Yamaha, a high tension scale design, tells me that someone doesn't play or listen to piano very often. The scale designs make for very different tonalities, volumes, and sustain lengths. The high end piano artists market for Steinway pianos also tells a very different story, considering that Steinway doesn't give their pianos away for free, whereas Yamaha does so regularly purely to gain marketshare, yet the vast majority of touring concert piano players prefer Steinway pianos.
There are cheaper concert grands, but hardly anyone plays them. Steinway tracks all major concert halls and their performances the world over to see what pianos are being played and how often. Each year the number of major concert hall performances fluctuates between about 95-98% performed on a Steinway, with 2-5% performed on something else.
As per good ol' Wikipedia:
"PEAR employed random event generators (REGs), to explore the ability of test subjects to use telekinesis to influence the random output distribution of these devices to conform to their pre-recorded intentions to produce higher numbers, lower numbers, or nominal baselines.[5] Most of these experiments utilized a microelectronic REG, but experiments were also conducted with a mechanical device which dropped balls down a peg-covered board.[6] PEAR also conducted exercises involving groups of volunteers which, they claimed, produced more pronounced results.[7][8] In all cases, the observed effects were very small (about one tenth of one percent), but over extensive databases they compounded to statistically significant deviations from chance behavior.[9] The baseline for chance behavior used did not vary as statistically appropriate (baseline bind). Two PEAR researchers attributed this baseline bind to the motivation of the operators to achieve a good baseline.[10] It has been noted that a single test subject (presumed to be a member of PEAR’s staff) participated in 15% of PEAR’s trials, and was responsible for half of the total observed effect.[9] PEAR’s results have been criticized for deficient reproducibility. In one instance two German organizations failed to reproduce PEAR’s results, while PEAR similarly failed to reproduce their own results.[10] An attempt by York University’s Stan Jeffers also failed to replicate PEAR’s results.[9] PEAR’s activities have also been criticized for their lack of scientific rigor, poor methodology, and misuse of statistics.[9][11][12]"
I'd say that "proved" is a might bit strong and premature here...
Someone that is waving their arms in response to the fire has obviously already detected and is aware of the fire. At that point, it doesn't really matter if your fire alarm shuts off since the person is already alarmed...
Slashdot Mirror
You specifically brought up the argument of Monsanto suing farmers for contamination. Don't try to pretend you don't care about it when you're shown it's bullshit. What happens if the Roundup Resistance trait jumps outside of the intended field? Now it's in a place where RoundUp isn't being used. So what advantage does this rogue plant have now? None, there's no selection pressure for this particular trait outside of farm fields where Roundup is used. This is a ridiculous argument. What's so dangerous about that? I'd be fascinated if you could present a plausible scenario where it mattered. Why aren't you concerned with naturally developed Roundup resistance spreading too? Why single out only engineered resistance? Because it came from a lab? If you now say you're arguing about the use of Roundup and other herbicides in general, you have shifted the goalpost again and now you're not even talk about GMO technology anymore.
You really start to show your ignorance of the subject by regurgitating long-debunked anti-GMO talking points. Can you actually cite a case of Monsanto suing someone for accidental contamination? Of course not, because it's a myth. Cases are public record, and when you actually look at cases like Schmieser and Bowman to see what actually happened, it's obvious there was no accidental contamination there, despite the antis continuing to trot that myth out over and over with the relevant details conveniently left out. It doesn't do your cause any good, if indeed the anti-GMO cause is yours, to continue to repeat easily debunked bullshit. If you have to use the same sorry lies over and over, you should probably rethink the validity of your position as a whole.
I was being a little sarcastic, it's ridiculous to compare geneticists to backyard mechanics. Of course they know what they're doing, the nature of genes and DNA is such that if they didn't none of this shit would work. It's not the kind of thing that you learn over a weekend. It's highly specialized knowledge and training, which is why so few laypeople understand the details of, hence the fear of what they don't understand. I don't know what you're level of understanding of genetics and biology is, but I think you (and lots of others also) greatly overestimate the worldwide calamity danger potential of these plants we're altering. Changing one or two genes in an organism is very, very, very unlikely to cause them to go batshit and take over the world. As in, so unlikely that it's impossible. Making a plant resistant to Roundup is gonna do just that; there's no Roundup in "nature" so what advantage would it have against it's competition? The same holds true for most other traits we're engineering. The plants we grow as crops for our food are not natural plants; they've been bred for a long time for us to be able to use them as we intend, not to survive in the wild. I'd say that most of our food crops would not survive outside of the artificial environment of the farm. The idea of these plants out competing and taking over the world, frankly I find a little ridiculous.
The effects and method of action of BT genes and their subsequent Cry proteins are well known, understood, and regularly used even in organic agriculture. All plants naturally produce their own chemicals/pesticides, otherwise pests would just be eating the shit out of them and they'd go extinct. Adding one more already naturally occurring pesticide that is demonstrably unharmful to humans is really no sweat.
Herbicides such as glyphosate were in use long before genetic technology came along, and for good reason: it's relatively benign compared to other more harsh and toxic herbicides that it replaced, and it was much more successful because it was broad spectrum and could kill a wide variety of pest plants rather than having to use two or three different herbicides to accomplish the same. It's for all these reasons that it was chosen as the target for resistance engineering, not the other way around. The idea of "superweeds" is a little ridiculous because at worst, weeds become resistant to glyphosate and we're simply right back where we started before. It's not like these weeds are suddenly going to be super hardy and resistant to everything and begin taking over the world. They'll simply be resistant to glyphosate.
When you're spending hundreds of thousands to millions on R&D, you kinda want to protect your investment. Plant patents have been around a lot longer than GMO technology anyway. Farmers are falling over each other trying to buy GMO seeds, and no one is forcing them to sign contracts that they don't want to. Anyone is free to go and buy non-GMO seeds wherever they like. Farmers aren't doing this, of course, because the GMO traits allow them to get better yields with fewer inputs, thus making better profits. GMO crops hurting small farmers is laughable to the farmers using them. Unless you think farmers are stupid hicks who don't know how to math.
I'm sure this is a waste of time replying to an ignorant Anonymous Coward, but do you have any idea what level of spray actually hits fields on a per acre or even per square foot basis? I bet if you ran the actual numbers, you'd be dumbfounded at just how little an amount something like Roundup is required to have the desired affect. We're literally talking about oz. per acre, diluted into gallons of water. It'd be quite a stretch to call that "smothering".
Also glyphosate as a chemical is now off patent and anyone can make and sell it.
There's no GURT technology currently on the market. And no, there's no reputable science saying that somehow transgenic technology is unsafe for bees or anything else. There's not even a proposed mechanism on how this could possibly be.
Teosinte
Knowing the genome is pretty much irrelevant to selective breeding since SB is based on phenotypical traits, not genomic ones. If you have the genome, why would just completely ignore that information and continue to do things the slow, random way when you could alter exactly the genes you want in exactly the way you want to without affecting the rest and getting lots of unintended consequences? No, you don't have to splice genes to make improvements in the same way you don't have to use a computer to calculate a spreadsheet because you can do the same thing with pen and paper. It just doesn't make sense to continue doing things the old way when we have understood, proven methods of doing things better. The general population is pretty ignorant when it comes to genetics, but geneticists do kinda know what they are doing...
Let's stop all funding and research on everything that isn't economically feasible right now!
This article from 2 years ago and its accompanying chart make a good case that we'd have fusion already if we as a civilization seriously funded it. As you can see on the chart, actual funding towards fusion research has been laughable and of course, here we are still "30 years away".
That'd be a hoot: they'd open the box only to find a dead cat inside, answering that question...
A myth. Show us where you can buy these, please.
Myth #2. BT toxic is completely inactive in mammalian guts due to the acidic environment and lack of appropriate receptors to latch onto. Cry proteins are digested like any others.
Maybe next time, have the first clue what you're talking about before you spout oft-repeated bullshit.
Computers didn't exist in 1789 either, so kindly get off the computer and from now on please make all your freedom of speech Slashdot comments available on paper only, or accept the freedom of speech limitations that the government deems acceptable in current technology.
In the martial arts communities, videos of gun disarm techniques are always taken with a grain of salt and it is usually understood that when trying to grapple a gun away from someone, there's probably still a good 50/50 chance you're going to get shot trying to take someone's gun away from them even for a trained self-defense professional. So I don't think most people have to worry about having their guns grabbed out of their hands and turned against them. This is also a terrible, terrible idea for the 95 lb woman who carries a gun as an equalizer to keep from getting raped by the 200 lb guy who manages to take away the smart gun from her because it wouldn't authenticate in time/improper grip to enable firing/RF interference/etc.
William Blackstone might want to have a word with you. Should we really be worried about rounding up a whole bunch of "bad guys" to keep them from doing bad things because of the chance that a few of them might be innocent? Think of the children!
That's probably because gun education has typically been removed from schools. It used to be schools had gun clubs and kids were regularly seen carrying their rifles around campus. These were people that were taught how to properly use and respect a gun. Now, public gun education pretty much amounts to "abstinence only!" sex-ed. How's that working out for us?
New Jersey since 2002 has been waiting for smart guns to be available so their law can kick in and make them mandatory for all guns sold there. Police, of course, will be exempt from this law. Imagine that.
Because now we get to live in a world that's minus one piece of shit baby rapist/killer.
Ahhh, that makes a lot more sense now. :)
He said above 16Khz. That's 16,000 Hz. The article you're linking to is showing subs trying to produce very low frequencies.
This is a feature, not a bug. The quality is always the same, but differences in the wood as it is shaped through the manufacturing process lend each instrument its own character as opposed to the more consistent but cookie-cutter instruments coming out of other factories.
Steinway instruments fresh out of the factory are designed to be only a starting point. The selling feature of the Steinway design is that it is so very customizable to the preferences of the player. A low tension scale design coupled with a unique hammer construction and asymmetrically tapered diaphragmatic soundboard give the voicing of a Steinway a very large potential tonal palette. It is typically up to the dealer selling the instrument to have technicians that will spend a few (or more) hours tweaking the piano to your final preference. Other instruments are more consistent from unit to unit, but sacrifice that flexibility as a result. It's relatively easy to make a Steinway bright and loud like a Yamaha by shaping and lacquering the shit out of the hammers, but it's quite difficult to take a high tension scale Yamaha and make it dark and moody while still having good dynamic control.
I generally agree with the rest of your comments though.
For someone to say that a Steinway piano which is a low tension scale design is indistinguishable from a less expensive piano such as the Yamaha, a high tension scale design, tells me that someone doesn't play or listen to piano very often. The scale designs make for very different tonalities, volumes, and sustain lengths. The high end piano artists market for Steinway pianos also tells a very different story, considering that Steinway doesn't give their pianos away for free, whereas Yamaha does so regularly purely to gain marketshare, yet the vast majority of touring concert piano players prefer Steinway pianos.
There are cheaper concert grands, but hardly anyone plays them. Steinway tracks all major concert halls and their performances the world over to see what pianos are being played and how often. Each year the number of major concert hall performances fluctuates between about 95-98% performed on a Steinway, with 2-5% performed on something else.
As per good ol' Wikipedia: "PEAR employed random event generators (REGs), to explore the ability of test subjects to use telekinesis to influence the random output distribution of these devices to conform to their pre-recorded intentions to produce higher numbers, lower numbers, or nominal baselines.[5] Most of these experiments utilized a microelectronic REG, but experiments were also conducted with a mechanical device which dropped balls down a peg-covered board.[6] PEAR also conducted exercises involving groups of volunteers which, they claimed, produced more pronounced results.[7][8] In all cases, the observed effects were very small (about one tenth of one percent), but over extensive databases they compounded to statistically significant deviations from chance behavior.[9] The baseline for chance behavior used did not vary as statistically appropriate (baseline bind). Two PEAR researchers attributed this baseline bind to the motivation of the operators to achieve a good baseline.[10] It has been noted that a single test subject (presumed to be a member of PEAR’s staff) participated in 15% of PEAR’s trials, and was responsible for half of the total observed effect.[9] PEAR’s results have been criticized for deficient reproducibility. In one instance two German organizations failed to reproduce PEAR’s results, while PEAR similarly failed to reproduce their own results.[10] An attempt by York University’s Stan Jeffers also failed to replicate PEAR’s results.[9] PEAR’s activities have also been criticized for their lack of scientific rigor, poor methodology, and misuse of statistics.[9][11][12]" I'd say that "proved" is a might bit strong and premature here...
Someone that is waving their arms in response to the fire has obviously already detected and is aware of the fire. At that point, it doesn't really matter if your fire alarm shuts off since the person is already alarmed...