What prevents the "planes as missiles" plan from working now is not bans on silly objects, but the very same thing that foiled the fourth plane on 9-11 - the passengers. Bans on knives would not have stopped boxcutters, which appeared to be used. Since people were not worrying about "planes as missiles" but the more standard hijacking scenarios, the terrorists would have used hostages to gain access to the cockpit.
I would be surprised if the "planes as missiles" plan is ever attempted again, let alone executed successfully.
it is the fact that this article is irrelevant to the theme of slashdot. Virtually all slashdot politics articles deal with laws regarding things like the internet, videogames, copyright, online privacy, etc. This is why I come here. It is not nor should not be a general news site.
prevented. There was no policy that could have been adopted that would have prevented 9-11 that was possible politically on 9-10 - irregardless of which president advocated the policy changes.
This is a website about technology, not politics (except when directly relevant to technology, of course).
Second, can we quit with the childish "hindsight is 20-20" crap. Yes, Bush missed signs. Yes, Clinton missed signs. So did damned near everyone else. Picking out the needle in the haystack AFTER the fact is meaningless, however. Their is even a technical term for this psychological error many people make - hindsight bias. It is human nature to think "I woulda seen it coming if I were in your shoes" - when in fact, when tested, you would fail as often as anyone else.
There is no difference in the end result, only the process. Indeed, in several cases, the same gene has been inserted by both the scientist and idiot farmer method. In most cases, the former is far more effective, controlled, and understood.
And please quit anthropomorphizing "nature". It does not do things, have feelings, or give a rat's ass about you or anyone else.
Japan is just as protectionist as the US. Take a look at the steel tariffs or sugar tariffs the US imposes on other countries to protect their own domestic markets for these or substitute products.
I have lived in Japan. It is FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR more protectionist than the US, especially with respect to agriculture (I once read that 60% of a farmer's income in Japan is subsidy, while it is less than half that in the US). Japanese pay ridiculous prices for food as a result.
You cast your FUD in a light that suggests that genetically modified crops are obviously harmless.
The odds of significant harm are small. However, my point is not that there is no possibility of harm, but rather that the chance of harm is no greater than the traditional method of GMing by random chance and idiot farmer.
You seem really confused by this basic concept of international politics. Yes, Japan could tell us to FUCK OFF, in which case we respond by telling them to FUCK OFF, and then the poor Japanese have to pay triple for beef and I have to buy shitty Ford or GM cars.
Avoiding ose-lose situations like this is one of the major reasons we have treaties.
I dont want GMOs in my food. I dont trust it because I dont think scientists or anyone really knows what harmful effects their could be, and perhaps, there are things it is doing but we just arent associating it with GMOs.
Every last drop of food you have ever eaten or could eat is GM. There are two basic ways out going about this. The first is the old method, where farmers who had practically zero knowledge of what was going on GM'd food crops into desirable state (Ohhhh! That one looks big and juicy! Let's breed that one!). The second method involves scientists, who at least have half a clue as to what they are doing. I have no idea on earth why you would prefer the former over the latter, and any way you cut it, such an opinion is unscientific and has no role in politics. If you still insist on being ignorant, at least only harm yourself.
They found that the rate of food related illnesses since GMOs were introduced in 1994 in the USA, have increased 10 fold, but in sweden where they are banned, the rates stayed the same. Seems suspicious to me.
Citation, please. That sounds like pure baloney. Btw, I am a scientist. When I ask for a citation, I mean the orginal research paper. Something of that magnitude would surely be in something like Science or Nature.
GMOs are artificial foods
"Artificial" is a non-scientific word with no more meaning than "Kosher".
programmed at the genetic level
Every living thing is programmed at a genetic level.
Who knows, maybe there is a reason why nature programs genes in certian ways, that are so subtle that we do not understand them, but when we interfere, may have very harmful effects on us.
Let's keep religion out of this. I do not care about the opinions or reasonings of your Gaeia goddess. National policies must be based on science.
I think, like other artificial things in food, people should be able to enjoy this GMO foods and the possible risk that it entials. But the mere nature of GMOs is a threat to the very idea of choice, due to their ability to reproduce and cross breed with other plants where they are not wanted.
Why? Your "GM'd by idiot farmers and random chance" crops keep contaminating MY "GM'd by really freaking smart scientist" crops. Where is my right to CHOOSE, dammit?
Technology is fine for computers, but when it comes to what goes into my body, I want nature, not technology. I think we humans have evolved for thousands of years eating certian foods and are bodies are best equipped to process natural foods, and when we get away from this, our bodies find it more difficult to handle these artificial foods we are eating. It could be subtle at first but very harmful and the effects may not be attributed to GMOs. Who knows, maybe modifying the genes directly interferes with natures plan, maybe nature does things in certian ways very carefully, subtle ways we will never understand. Perhaps GMOs foods may have harmful chemical protiens in them that our bodies are not able to handle. Things are done a certian way by nature perhaps on purpose and good reason, and when we interfere at the genetic level, regarding what goes into our bodies and what we depend on for well being, I am concerned great harm can be done
Great harm could also be done by the idiot farmer GM method. Why don't we ban that, too? Why has it never happened before?
And again, please keep your religion out of a policy debate (ie, "natural", "nature's plan", etc)
If the product is found safe, their bans would be unscientific and they would potentially be in violation of various treaties.
Japan in particular is bad about banning foods at the slightest hint that there could possibly be an astronomically-unlikely problem, in order to protect their domestic markers (ie, their Social Security system). Never mind that a Japanese is a million times more likely to be killed by a stingray on the way to the store to buy the rice than they are to be killed BY the rice.
GM foods are to Europe what creationism is to America - an affront to reason, science, and honesty. At least creationism makes an interesting allegory, though. All the anti-GM food movement does is get people killed (by driving up the costs of food and reducing yields).
which is a major reason it is so hard for the US to get it off the ground. Building a train between X and Y is not very worthwhile if X and Y do not connect anywhere.
Here where I live, green electricity costs 1.6 cents/ kw-h more than regular electricity. This typically adds $5-10 to my bill each money. Carbon offsets for a typical car run around $50/year.
and go first. Unless you are one of a very small minority (generally having no children and living in one of a few select metro areas), having a car is a necessity in the US. In the future, cars will be changed, not eliminated, as a response to rising fuel costs. However, this will take years. Far fewer Brazilians have cars as compared to Americans, and for various historical reasons, have much smaller ones. Therefore, their cane crop can cover a lot of their fuel use.
Studies have shown that biofuels, with currently available technologies, can only supply a small fraction of our fuel use, even if we plant every inch of even semi-arable land in the country. Of course, technologies will improve, but for now, biofuels are still going to be a bit player in the US.
We produce all sorts of ethanol, too. We just consume, FAR FAR more oil. We also don't have a lot of rain forests to chop down to replace with cane plantations.
The "Brazillian model" is absolutely irrelevant to the US, unless you expect three quarters of people to give up their cars and for us to rip up most of the national forests and parklands to plant fuel crops.
I would say "living human being" and "living organism with substantial potential for sentience" are very relevant qualities. By 'sentience', I mean sufficient intelligence and self-awareness to deserve rights. Where we draw THAT line is another tangential debate.
What 'concerns' do infants have? You will quickly find, if you think about it, that wherever you draw this "sentience" line, either:
1: You must grant most mammals rights of citizenship
or
2: you must permit infanticide
An adult chimp is about as smart as a 2-3 year old. Which do you prefer? Citizen Bobo or allowing post-birth abortions up until age three? What about Fido? He is smarter than infants out to a year or so. Great. Now your dog can sue and collect Social Security!
As you can see, drawing the line for "personhood" at the moment that something actually achieves 'sentience' winds up being absurd. Clearly, we have rights BEFORE we are actually smart enough to earn them.
Another problem with the 'must be sentient to earn rights' logic is that it does not explain why people have rights when asleep, unconcious, in comas, etc. By no means is a guy passed out drunk in the gutter "sentient". He still has rights.
have the "same" rights - just "any" rights will do. Five year olds do not have the same rights as twenty-one-year-olds. There is nothing wrong with this.
Also, you should quit begging the question - by claiming that embryos should not have the same rights as "persons", you are presuming that they are NOT persons. Yet this is the crux of the debate.
I see nothing insane about banning the intential killing of living human beings, at any stage of their life. Please, explain what would be insane about such a commitment?
First, most people that object to stem-cell research also object to the destruction of embryos via IVF. The vast majority (95%) of embryos are frozen for later implantation/research/adoption, and will eventually become non-viable due the freeze/thaw process or simply the ravages of time. The are rarely "thrown in the trash" while still viable and never need be. In any case, the number of excess embryos has steadily been declining and in some countries has been mandated to be zero.
As this new research shows, the intentional destruction of human embryos is nothing more than laziness.
Strict Pro-life people are against IVF as well because embryos are created and destroyed in the process.
This is true. Like as has been shown with stem-cell research, there is no need to destroy one human to save or create another. Indeed, some nations (Italy, for example) have passed laws declaring that all embryos involved in IVF must be implanted - with no major problems. Success rates fell a little at first but have essentially recovered as clinics adapted to the new rules.
They're also against most forms of birth control, cloning, and the death penalty, FYI.
This does not follow. While their is a correlation between proponents of these various arguments, they are all founded on different lines of reasoning. I have never understood the religious objection to birth control - as if a bit of latex can stop the Will of God. Few people at all understand what cloning is, and people on both sides of the aisle are irrationally opposed to it. The death penalty is an entirely different debate - it is not about what circumstances one gains one's rights - rather, it is about how one can throw them away.
The reason you don't see as much hostility toward birth control and IVF is that they generally place a higher priority on fighting abortion. Not only that, but some pro-lifers are stricter than others, just as some pro-choicers are stricter than others.
Or, perhaps they are just smart enough to choose battles where they stand a chance.
Denmark is a small place with particularly good wind resources - hence wind is being used quite a bit there. You cannot compare Denmark with the entire USA, whose wind resources vary widely. We do have SOME good places, but not everywhere. Worse yet, most of our good resources are far from population centers.
It has a large, flat body of ocean sitting off its shores, which is practically and more importantly, politically, a great place to put wind farms. There are few places in the US that are similar. Our great wind resources are in places such as west Texas or North Dakota - far from where the energy is needed. Or another place is the Great Lakes - except that they are over a hundred meters deep (as opposed to 10-15 meters for the waters off Denmark).
Wind WILL be part of the solution, but Denmark cannot be taken as the typical case.
Not by safety concerns, that is for sure. For marketing concerns, perhaps.
Just think about it: From an economic point of view, would anyone in their right mind invest $400,000,000 to prevent a couple dozen small fires? Absolutely not.
This recall is a tremendous waste of money brought about by the ridiculous American tort system.
What does THAT mean? I presume something along the lines of "These naturalistic assumptions give me the answers I want to get", which is seriously begging the question.
You neither respect nor understand religion or religious people. Therefore, you have precisely zero chance of changing their mind. They are far smarter and more thoughtful than you think.
Slashdot Mirror
What prevents the "planes as missiles" plan from working now is not bans on silly objects, but the very same thing that foiled the fourth plane on 9-11 - the passengers. Bans on knives would not have stopped boxcutters, which appeared to be used. Since people were not worrying about "planes as missiles" but the more standard hijacking scenarios, the terrorists would have used hostages to gain access to the cockpit.
I would be surprised if the "planes as missiles" plan is ever attempted again, let alone executed successfully.
it is the fact that this article is irrelevant to the theme of slashdot. Virtually all slashdot politics articles deal with laws regarding things like the internet, videogames, copyright, online privacy, etc. This is why I come here. It is not nor should not be a general news site.
prevented. There was no policy that could have been adopted that would have prevented 9-11 that was possible politically on 9-10 - irregardless of which president advocated the policy changes.
This is a website about technology, not politics (except when directly relevant to technology, of course).
Second, can we quit with the childish "hindsight is 20-20" crap. Yes, Bush missed signs. Yes, Clinton missed signs. So did damned near everyone else. Picking out the needle in the haystack AFTER the fact is meaningless, however. Their is even a technical term for this psychological error many people make - hindsight bias. It is human nature to think "I woulda seen it coming if I were in your shoes" - when in fact, when tested, you would fail as often as anyone else.
on the matter, and the WTO handles disputes. Banning imports for unscientific reasons would be a violation of the agreements.
There is no difference in the end result, only the process. Indeed, in several cases, the same gene has been inserted by both the scientist and idiot farmer method. In most cases, the former is far more effective, controlled, and understood.
And please quit anthropomorphizing "nature". It does not do things, have feelings, or give a rat's ass about you or anyone else.
Japan is just as protectionist as the US. Take a look at the steel tariffs or sugar tariffs the US imposes on other countries to protect their own domestic markets for these or substitute products.
I have lived in Japan. It is FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR more protectionist than the US, especially with respect to agriculture (I once read that 60% of a farmer's income in Japan is subsidy, while it is less than half that in the US). Japanese pay ridiculous prices for food as a result.
You cast your FUD in a light that suggests that genetically modified crops are obviously harmless.
The odds of significant harm are small. However, my point is not that there is no possibility of harm, but rather that the chance of harm is no greater than the traditional method of GMing by random chance and idiot farmer.
You seem really confused by this basic concept of international politics. Yes, Japan could tell us to FUCK OFF, in which case we respond by telling them to FUCK OFF, and then the poor Japanese have to pay triple for beef and I have to buy shitty Ford or GM cars.
Avoiding ose-lose situations like this is one of the major reasons we have treaties.
I dont want GMOs in my food. I dont trust it because I dont think scientists or anyone really knows what harmful effects their could be, and perhaps, there are things it is doing but we just arent associating it with GMOs.
Every last drop of food you have ever eaten or could eat is GM. There are two basic ways out going about this. The first is the old method, where farmers who had practically zero knowledge of what was going on GM'd food crops into desirable state (Ohhhh! That one looks big and juicy! Let's breed that one!). The second method involves scientists, who at least have half a clue as to what they are doing. I have no idea on earth why you would prefer the former over the latter, and any way you cut it, such an opinion is unscientific and has no role in politics. If you still insist on being ignorant, at least only harm yourself.
They found that the rate of food related illnesses since GMOs were introduced in 1994 in the USA, have increased 10 fold, but in sweden where they are banned, the rates stayed the same. Seems suspicious to me.
Citation, please. That sounds like pure baloney. Btw, I am a scientist. When I ask for a citation, I mean the orginal research paper. Something of that magnitude would surely be in something like Science or Nature.
GMOs are artificial foods
"Artificial" is a non-scientific word with no more meaning than "Kosher".
programmed at the genetic level
Every living thing is programmed at a genetic level.
Who knows, maybe there is a reason why nature programs genes in certian ways, that are so subtle that we do not understand them, but when we interfere, may have very harmful effects on us.
Let's keep religion out of this. I do not care about the opinions or reasonings of your Gaeia goddess. National policies must be based on science.
I think, like other artificial things in food, people should be able to enjoy this GMO foods and the possible risk that it entials. But the mere nature of GMOs is a threat to the very idea of choice, due to their ability to reproduce and cross breed with other plants where they are not wanted.
Why? Your "GM'd by idiot farmers and random chance" crops keep contaminating MY "GM'd by really freaking smart scientist" crops. Where is my right to CHOOSE, dammit?
Technology is fine for computers, but when it comes to what goes into my body, I want nature, not technology. I think we humans have evolved for thousands of years eating certian foods and are bodies are best equipped to process natural foods, and when we get away from this, our bodies find it more difficult to handle these artificial foods we are eating. It could be subtle at first but very harmful and the effects may not be attributed to GMOs. Who knows, maybe modifying the genes directly interferes with natures plan, maybe nature does things in certian ways very carefully, subtle ways we will never understand. Perhaps GMOs foods may have harmful chemical protiens in them that our bodies are not able to handle. Things are done a certian way by nature perhaps on purpose and good reason, and when we interfere at the genetic level, regarding what goes into our bodies and what we depend on for well being, I am concerned great harm can be done
Great harm could also be done by the idiot farmer GM method. Why don't we ban that, too? Why has it never happened before?
And again, please keep your religion out of a policy debate (ie, "natural", "nature's plan", etc)
If the product is found safe, their bans would be unscientific and they would potentially be in violation of various treaties.
Japan in particular is bad about banning foods at the slightest hint that there could possibly be an astronomically-unlikely problem, in order to protect their domestic markers (ie, their Social Security system). Never mind that a Japanese is a million times more likely to be killed by a stingray on the way to the store to buy the rice than they are to be killed BY the rice.
GM foods are to Europe what creationism is to America - an affront to reason, science, and honesty. At least creationism makes an interesting allegory, though. All the anti-GM food movement does is get people killed (by driving up the costs of food and reducing yields).
which is a major reason it is so hard for the US to get it off the ground. Building a train between X and Y is not very worthwhile if X and Y do not connect anywhere.
Here where I live, green electricity costs 1.6 cents/ kw-h more than regular electricity. This typically adds $5-10 to my bill each money. Carbon offsets for a typical car run around $50/year.
Worst cast, $170/year for me.
Now get off your ass and quit polluting.
and go first. Unless you are one of a very small minority (generally having no children and living in one of a few select metro areas), having a car is a necessity in the US. In the future, cars will be changed, not eliminated, as a response to rising fuel costs. However, this will take years. Far fewer Brazilians have cars as compared to Americans, and for various historical reasons, have much smaller ones. Therefore, their cane crop can cover a lot of their fuel use.
Studies have shown that biofuels, with currently available technologies, can only supply a small fraction of our fuel use, even if we plant every inch of even semi-arable land in the country. Of course, technologies will improve, but for now, biofuels are still going to be a bit player in the US.
We produce all sorts of ethanol, too. We just consume, FAR FAR more oil. We also don't have a lot of rain forests to chop down to replace with cane plantations.
The "Brazillian model" is absolutely irrelevant to the US, unless you expect three quarters of people to give up their cars and for us to rip up most of the national forests and parklands to plant fuel crops.
I would say "living human being" and "living organism with substantial potential for sentience" are very relevant qualities. By 'sentience', I mean sufficient intelligence and self-awareness to deserve rights. Where we draw THAT line is another tangential debate.
What 'concerns' do infants have? You will quickly find, if you think about it, that wherever you draw this "sentience" line, either:
1: You must grant most mammals rights of citizenship
or
2: you must permit infanticide
An adult chimp is about as smart as a 2-3 year old. Which do you prefer? Citizen Bobo or allowing post-birth abortions up until age three? What about Fido? He is smarter than infants out to a year or so. Great. Now your dog can sue and collect Social Security!
As you can see, drawing the line for "personhood" at the moment that something actually achieves 'sentience' winds up being absurd. Clearly, we have rights BEFORE we are actually smart enough to earn them.
Another problem with the 'must be sentient to earn rights' logic is that it does not explain why people have rights when asleep, unconcious, in comas, etc. By no means is a guy passed out drunk in the gutter "sentient". He still has rights.
have the "same" rights - just "any" rights will do. Five year olds do not have the same rights as twenty-one-year-olds. There is nothing wrong with this.
Also, you should quit begging the question - by claiming that embryos should not have the same rights as "persons", you are presuming that they are NOT persons. Yet this is the crux of the debate.
I see nothing insane about banning the intential killing of living human beings, at any stage of their life. Please, explain what would be insane about such a commitment?
First, most people that object to stem-cell research also object to the destruction of embryos via IVF. The vast majority (95%) of embryos are frozen for later implantation/research/adoption, and will eventually become non-viable due the freeze/thaw process or simply the ravages of time. The are rarely "thrown in the trash" while still viable and never need be. In any case, the number of excess embryos has steadily been declining and in some countries has been mandated to be zero.
As this new research shows, the intentional destruction of human embryos is nothing more than laziness.
Strict Pro-life people are against IVF as well because embryos are created and destroyed in the process.
This is true. Like as has been shown with stem-cell research, there is no need to destroy one human to save or create another. Indeed, some nations (Italy, for example) have passed laws declaring that all embryos involved in IVF must be implanted - with no major problems. Success rates fell a little at first but have essentially recovered as clinics adapted to the new rules.
They're also against most forms of birth control, cloning, and the death penalty, FYI.
This does not follow. While their is a correlation between proponents of these various arguments, they are all founded on different lines of reasoning. I have never understood the religious objection to birth control - as if a bit of latex can stop the Will of God. Few people at all understand what cloning is, and people on both sides of the aisle are irrationally opposed to it. The death penalty is an entirely different debate - it is not about what circumstances one gains one's rights - rather, it is about how one can throw them away.
The reason you don't see as much hostility toward birth control and IVF is that they generally place a higher priority on fighting abortion. Not only that, but some pro-lifers are stricter than others, just as some pro-choicers are stricter than others.
Or, perhaps they are just smart enough to choose battles where they stand a chance.
Just go look up any anime series you like. You will be lucky to find an entry that is NOT obviously a pirate copy.
The "factory-sealed import region-free version" with English and Chinese subtitles selling for a quarter of retail? Yeah right.
I can't figure out why anyone would buy this stuff. If you are gonna steal, just download it off torrents.
Denmark is a small place with particularly good wind resources - hence wind is being used quite a bit there. You cannot compare Denmark with the entire USA, whose wind resources vary widely. We do have SOME good places, but not everywhere. Worse yet, most of our good resources are far from population centers.
hundred thousand Americans each year, so perhaps rising food prices would be a good thing.
It has a large, flat body of ocean sitting off its shores, which is practically and more importantly, politically, a great place to put wind farms. There are few places in the US that are similar. Our great wind resources are in places such as west Texas or North Dakota - far from where the energy is needed. Or another place is the Great Lakes - except that they are over a hundred meters deep (as opposed to 10-15 meters for the waters off Denmark).
Wind WILL be part of the solution, but Denmark cannot be taken as the typical case.
Not by safety concerns, that is for sure. For marketing concerns, perhaps.
Just think about it: From an economic point of view, would anyone in their right mind invest $400,000,000 to prevent a couple dozen small fires? Absolutely not.
This recall is a tremendous waste of money brought about by the ridiculous American tort system.
one more time, I will smack someone. Go ahead and do it yourself, and prove that it exists.
What does THAT mean? I presume something along the lines of "These naturalistic assumptions give me the answers I want to get", which is seriously begging the question.
You neither respect nor understand religion or religious people. Therefore, you have precisely zero chance of changing their mind. They are far smarter and more thoughtful than you think.