GMOs are given genetic traits that make them bigger, require less water or make them hardier against certain chemicals or pests. None of these things are inherently toxic.
Monsanto's Bt corn is registered with the US government as a pesticide. Not the crap they spray on it -- the corn ITSELF is a pesticide. If you think that's "not inherently toxic", I suggest you go look up the definition of pesticide. The entire POINT of that particular variant of GMO corn is that it was modified to produce toxins.
So explain to me why it's legal for Monsanto to sue a farmer because the guy that farmer bought (or, in the case of Schmeiser, unintentionally received) the seed from violated an agreement he had with Monsanto? In what other industry can you do that? That's like Microsoft suing you because the PC you bought from Dell had a pirated copy of Windows on it. Even if you know it's pirated because it's throwing up registration windows, YOU aren't the one who installed it, you bought the thing legally, so why is it your problem?
Schmeiser WAS a terrible precedent though. The guy didn't buy the seeds, they contaminated his farm. He then collected and replanted them. The judge ruled that it infringed on Monsanto's IP because they require farmers to agree not to replant the seeds when they buy them. But Schmeiser never bought the seeds, he never agreed to that license, he just replanted a crop he found growing wild on his field.
Not QUITE suing for contamination, but they HAVE tried to take legal action to affirm that they can't be sued by Monsanto once their crops get contaminated: http://www.osgata.org/osgata-et-al-v-monsanto/
In the case in Canada (Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser), yeah, the guy cultivated it knowingly. But it was initially acquired through cross-contamination...meaning he never saw or agreed to the Monsanto license. Yet the court ruled that he was bound by its terms anyway.
You putting a product on my property, without my knowledge or consent, should not automatically bind me to whatever agreement you sell it under. And once it's on my property, I should have the right to do whatever I want with it -- including harvesting and re-planting the seeds, because I never agreed not to.
If there's no difference, why are some GMO crops legally considered pesticides? And why has Bt corn (already being sold) been proven to cause tumors in mice? Nobody tests this stuff. Monsanto says the FDA should; the FDA says Monsanto should. Truth is, we don't know yet if they're safe. And personally, I think I should have the right to not be used as a lab rat for such experiments.
Are you aware that some GMO crops are required to be legally registered as pesticides? Also, look up the results of testing on Bt corn -- it's on our grocery shelves, yet it's been demonstrated to cause massive tumors, at least in mice. And then there's the fact that Monsanto has recently issued statements claiming it's not their responsibility to ensure their products are safe for human consumption, claiming that's the FDA's job -- while the FDA releases statements claiming it's Monsanto's responsibility.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all GMO is bad. But I think I have a right to know when untested toxic chemicals are being put in my food. I can refuse to get a vaccine if I think the risk is greater than the reward; so why shouldn't I have the same right with GMO foods?
Nobody is calling for a ban; you can still buy them. Splenda has been shown to cause obesity; Aspartame has been linked to anal seepage; both taste like crap; and both are required to be mentioned on the label. They can't just say it contains sugar and put in splenda instead. But yet, somehow, those products still exist. Somehow there are still places where it's hard to find any products WITHOUT one of those two. Requiring that it be declared on the ingredients list isn't going to prevent them from being produced. Just because you think all GMOs are great doesn't give you the right to force me to eat them.
Well, there were also millions of dollars spent to defeat that bill by food congomerates, with very little funding supporting it. And the campaigns against it were full of such blatently fraudulent "facts" that it's frankly outrageous that none of the companies behind them were taken to court. They said labeling will add $X to your food bill, where $X was the estimated cost to produce products, in the current market, without any GMO ingredients. So first they were lying by implying that GMO labeling is the same as a GMO ban, which it clearly isn't. These companies redesign their packaging every couple months, clearly it's not that expensive to just add something to the label. Then they lied again by assuming that increased demand for non-GMO crops wouldn't reduce the cost. With all the propaganda and misinformation surrounding that vote, it's no surprise it failed -- what's surprising is how far it actually got in spite of all that.
I feel strongly against additional labeling on something that has been through our regulatory process, especially when anyone who cares can just buy "organic" labeled products. If there is a real danger in these foods, we need to fix our regulatory process.
That would be great if "organic" actually meant it did not contain any GMOs. That is not currently the case.
Right now, Monsanto claims it's not their job to ensure the food is safe for consumption, that's the FDA's job. And the FDA says it's Monsanto's job. NOBODY is properly testing this stuff, and frankly I'd like to know if, for example, the corn I'm buying is legally considered a pesticide as well as a food product. I'd like to know if it's the kind that's been shown to grow massive tumors in mice. Right now there's literally no way for me to know. I think GMOs have great potential to improve human health and food security if done right; and the potential to cause extreme, apocalyptic levels of destruction if done wrong. We're not near either extreme right now, but we're definitely on the 'wrong' end of things.
Recently graduated, currently employed for a consulting company, pretty nice job with a great salary and benefits and basically the best job you could expect straight out of college. Yes, the math SUCKS. I had to do three semesters of calculus, then I got screwed into taking linear programming (not bad) and non-euclidean geometry (pretty bad).
Are you ever going to use this stuff? Probably not. If you do, you'll look it up. If you're going to actually be using that kind of math on a daily basis they'll probably be looking for someone with a math major, if not a PhD programmer. But first recognize that there's a distinction between 'i'm going to need to know this' and 'it'll help me to sit through this'. Just because you aren't calculating multi-variable integrals on a daily basis doesn't mean it won't help to know a bit about them -- just knowing that such things EXIST is a HUGE advantage, because then you can recognize places where you might need to use it and go look it up. Advanced math is also helpful just for rough estimates, so you recognize that you can't always just throw more servers at a problem and expect it to get faster; I'd say it'll help you recognize "Mythical Man-Month" type situations and such.
But I suspect you may be like me, as I had a ton of trouble with the math too. And the reason, I think, is because I'm more of an engineer than an academic, and they don't teach high-level math properly for engineering minds. They never give practical applications. If I can see how something is used, I can understand it. But if you just tell me to memorize some formulas, I'll never get it. So if you have that same issue, it might help to talk to your prof or look around in some different textbooks to see if you can find some examples of actual applications of this stuff.
2.1Ah at what, 3.8V? At 120V that's around 10A. Certainly a lot, but not unheard of. Hell my laser printer uses 8.6A at 120V. More likely though it won't be a 20 second charger, but perhaps a 5 minute charger. Still quite fast, but that would pull less than a single amp out of the wall socket.
The other possibility is they'll put some regular capacitors into the charger. Build a rapid charger with a couple of those big capacitors they put into disposable cameras, let it charge those caps at a couple mA, then when you plug your phone in it dumps them in seconds. Given how much they charge for phone chargers these days, I think they could afford to toss in a couple extra caps without raising the price too much.
it would need to store more than one picture in RAM though -- to never touch the flash memory it would need to store every picture you have not yet viewed. Of course, the bigger concern is probably that rebooting your phone would wipe every image you haven't yet seen.
This isn't a rural area; this is outside NYC. It's got reasonable population density, and perhaps more importantly it's the wealthiest region in the entire state of NJ. It's also a very small region -- they could probably blanket the entire town with a single cell tower. I highly doubt they'll have any signal strength issues unless they decide to put the receiver in their freakin basement.
They're trying to invest in basic infrastructure. We don't have any obvious use for this stuff yet...but how could we, when we it doesn't really exist yet? I mean I'm not saying it's the best use of money in the world, but you've gotta be pretty dense to not understand why they're doing it. If nobody ever spent money on seemingly useless things, we wouldn't have electricity or tv or radio or ANY remotely modern technology, even back further than those.
I'm reminded of a story of Faraday...it is said he gave a very early demonstration of electricity in London -- essentially two coils of wire, one around a magnet and one around a compass, so when the magnet moved the compass needle did too. After the demo, one of the audience members approached and said "Well that's all very interesting, but what USE is it?" to which Faraday simply replied, "Of what use is a newborn baby?"
Also I think it's worth noticing that so far investments in communications technology have never really been wasted. Telegraphs to telephones to dial-up to broadband, every time we expand it we find something to fill that space. Humans LOVE communications tech. This is fairly new tech, and while I can't think of any good use for the average person to have that much bandwidth, I'm sure someone will figure something out. Why not crank it all the way up and just see what happens? Plenty of far worse things that the government blows money on -- like bombing eight year old Pakistani kids at $60k+ each.
Oh, and I know this isn't the point, but if you offered me 500amps of electricity for my home at $35/month, I'd take it in a heartbeat. Not sure what I'd do with it, but I'm damn sure I'd have a helluva lot of fun figuring that out! Wonder how much juice you'd need to keep a gattling railgun operating...:)
OK, so we've got posts here about wiring up a webcam to a computer to do motion tracking and such...how about build a simple pedal with a momentary push button and have the conductor tap his feet on that, then connect that to, say, a 555 timer to generate an audible tone while the button is depressed which can be routed to some sort of earpiece or headphone -- or even a piezo element which the singer should be able to feel vibrate or click. Whole solution shouldn't cost more than $20, and that's at Radioshack prices. And it could be put together in an afternoon. Only downside is you'd need to have a wire running between the conductor and the singer, and it may be slightly more complicated for the conductor. Could have one of the other musicians tap his foot instead and see if that'd work, that would shorten the run of wire as well.
So they were supposed to come negotiate with us...when, exactly? While we were threatening to blow them off the face of the earth? Maybe while we were telling the world that they're Satan incarnate? And why would they? We've already proven to them that we won't uphold our end of the agreements we make, and we've also proven in Iraq that we're willing to launch an all-out war for literally no legitimate reason.
Could they have stopped this? Sure. But look at what we're doing. They finally match the weapons we were pointing against them 60 years ago, and we go drop fake bombs on them just to prove we could still kill them all with the slightest provocation. Great way to ease tensions...
I'm not saying this is entirely our fault, I'm just saying if you look at the history you sure as hell can't pretend we're entirely blameless.
Got a citation for that? Russia helped then with experimental reactors prior to signing the NPT, but never completed a full power reactor. Try reading the Wikipedia page...or correct it i guess if you can actually verify your claim.
Are you kidding me? We've broken every damn promise we've ever made to them, all with a loaded gun pointed at their head...and we're supposed to be surprised that they're not our best fucking friends?
Let's start with the question of when and how nuclear weapons were first deployed on the Korean Peninsula. It wasn't from North Korea. It was the USA under Eisenhower in the 50s. We had fighter jets armed with _nothing but_ nuclear weapons on constant alert; 20 kiloton nukes being carried around in jeeps and helicopters just south of the DMZ, all with the understanding of detonate first, ask questions later...lest they fall into enemy hands. We kept that up for decades, only withdrawing them in the early 90s -- not because we didn't think there was a threat anymore, but because we decided it was safer to keep our nukes on submarines and aircraft carriers parked just offshore. We've had them under constant threat of nuclear attack for sixty years now.
Also, worth noting that the entire UN is _STILL_ officially at war with North Korea.
Then we say they violated the 1953 armistice 221 times -- many of which they dispute. What nobody keeps track of is how many times we have. At the very least, that armistice prohibited the introduction of nuclear weapons into the Korean theater -- so we've been in constant violation for around sixty years.
Then there's the claims that North Korea violated the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. What nobody ever mentions is that a condition of that treaty was that non-nuclear signatories, in exchange for signing, would be given assistance by nuclear states in building nuclear power for peaceful uses. The USSR promised to build these reactors for NK in the 80s...and never did. So in the 90s, the USA promised to build them four LWRs in exchange for them agreeing to more IAEA inspections. We got the inspections, but never even broke ground on a single one of those reactors. Instead, when the USSR collapsed, we declared that we were taking the ICBMs we'd had aimed at Russia, and pointing them at NK. So now they've got nukes in subs, nukes in aircraft carriers, and nukes halfway across the world all ready to be fired at them at a moment's notice. This policy of keeping our nukes focused on NK has since been reasserted by Bush and Obama.
So...we've had them in our nuclear crosshairs for sixy years, and as soon as they do the same to us everybody freaks the fuck out. If you sit there bullying some kid for the first fifteen years of his life, how the hell are you gonna act surprised when he starts going to the gym and punches you in the face one day?
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GMOs are given genetic traits that make them bigger, require less water or make them hardier against certain chemicals or pests. None of these things are inherently toxic.
Monsanto's Bt corn is registered with the US government as a pesticide. Not the crap they spray on it -- the corn ITSELF is a pesticide. If you think that's "not inherently toxic", I suggest you go look up the definition of pesticide. The entire POINT of that particular variant of GMO corn is that it was modified to produce toxins.
So explain to me why it's legal for Monsanto to sue a farmer because the guy that farmer bought (or, in the case of Schmeiser, unintentionally received) the seed from violated an agreement he had with Monsanto? In what other industry can you do that? That's like Microsoft suing you because the PC you bought from Dell had a pirated copy of Windows on it. Even if you know it's pirated because it's throwing up registration windows, YOU aren't the one who installed it, you bought the thing legally, so why is it your problem?
Schmeiser WAS a terrible precedent though. The guy didn't buy the seeds, they contaminated his farm. He then collected and replanted them. The judge ruled that it infringed on Monsanto's IP because they require farmers to agree not to replant the seeds when they buy them. But Schmeiser never bought the seeds, he never agreed to that license, he just replanted a crop he found growing wild on his field.
Not QUITE suing for contamination, but they HAVE tried to take legal action to affirm that they can't be sued by Monsanto once their crops get contaminated:
http://www.osgata.org/osgata-et-al-v-monsanto/
In the case in Canada (Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser), yeah, the guy cultivated it knowingly. But it was initially acquired through cross-contamination...meaning he never saw or agreed to the Monsanto license. Yet the court ruled that he was bound by its terms anyway.
You putting a product on my property, without my knowledge or consent, should not automatically bind me to whatever agreement you sell it under. And once it's on my property, I should have the right to do whatever I want with it -- including harvesting and re-planting the seeds, because I never agreed not to.
If there's no difference, why are some GMO crops legally considered pesticides? And why has Bt corn (already being sold) been proven to cause tumors in mice? Nobody tests this stuff. Monsanto says the FDA should; the FDA says Monsanto should. Truth is, we don't know yet if they're safe. And personally, I think I should have the right to not be used as a lab rat for such experiments.
Are you aware that some GMO crops are required to be legally registered as pesticides? Also, look up the results of testing on Bt corn -- it's on our grocery shelves, yet it's been demonstrated to cause massive tumors, at least in mice. And then there's the fact that Monsanto has recently issued statements claiming it's not their responsibility to ensure their products are safe for human consumption, claiming that's the FDA's job -- while the FDA releases statements claiming it's Monsanto's responsibility.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all GMO is bad. But I think I have a right to know when untested toxic chemicals are being put in my food. I can refuse to get a vaccine if I think the risk is greater than the reward; so why shouldn't I have the same right with GMO foods?
Nobody is calling for a ban; you can still buy them. Splenda has been shown to cause obesity; Aspartame has been linked to anal seepage; both taste like crap; and both are required to be mentioned on the label. They can't just say it contains sugar and put in splenda instead. But yet, somehow, those products still exist. Somehow there are still places where it's hard to find any products WITHOUT one of those two. Requiring that it be declared on the ingredients list isn't going to prevent them from being produced. Just because you think all GMOs are great doesn't give you the right to force me to eat them.
Well, there were also millions of dollars spent to defeat that bill by food congomerates, with very little funding supporting it. And the campaigns against it were full of such blatently fraudulent "facts" that it's frankly outrageous that none of the companies behind them were taken to court. They said labeling will add $X to your food bill, where $X was the estimated cost to produce products, in the current market, without any GMO ingredients. So first they were lying by implying that GMO labeling is the same as a GMO ban, which it clearly isn't. These companies redesign their packaging every couple months, clearly it's not that expensive to just add something to the label. Then they lied again by assuming that increased demand for non-GMO crops wouldn't reduce the cost. With all the propaganda and misinformation surrounding that vote, it's no surprise it failed -- what's surprising is how far it actually got in spite of all that.
I feel strongly against additional labeling on something that has been through our regulatory process, especially when anyone who cares can just buy "organic" labeled products. If there is a real danger in these foods, we need to fix our regulatory process.
That would be great if "organic" actually meant it did not contain any GMOs. That is not currently the case.
Right now, Monsanto claims it's not their job to ensure the food is safe for consumption, that's the FDA's job. And the FDA says it's Monsanto's job. NOBODY is properly testing this stuff, and frankly I'd like to know if, for example, the corn I'm buying is legally considered a pesticide as well as a food product. I'd like to know if it's the kind that's been shown to grow massive tumors in mice. Right now there's literally no way for me to know. I think GMOs have great potential to improve human health and food security if done right; and the potential to cause extreme, apocalyptic levels of destruction if done wrong. We're not near either extreme right now, but we're definitely on the 'wrong' end of things.
Recently graduated, currently employed for a consulting company, pretty nice job with a great salary and benefits and basically the best job you could expect straight out of college. Yes, the math SUCKS. I had to do three semesters of calculus, then I got screwed into taking linear programming (not bad) and non-euclidean geometry (pretty bad).
Are you ever going to use this stuff? Probably not. If you do, you'll look it up. If you're going to actually be using that kind of math on a daily basis they'll probably be looking for someone with a math major, if not a PhD programmer. But first recognize that there's a distinction between 'i'm going to need to know this' and 'it'll help me to sit through this'. Just because you aren't calculating multi-variable integrals on a daily basis doesn't mean it won't help to know a bit about them -- just knowing that such things EXIST is a HUGE advantage, because then you can recognize places where you might need to use it and go look it up. Advanced math is also helpful just for rough estimates, so you recognize that you can't always just throw more servers at a problem and expect it to get faster; I'd say it'll help you recognize "Mythical Man-Month" type situations and such.
But I suspect you may be like me, as I had a ton of trouble with the math too. And the reason, I think, is because I'm more of an engineer than an academic, and they don't teach high-level math properly for engineering minds. They never give practical applications. If I can see how something is used, I can understand it. But if you just tell me to memorize some formulas, I'll never get it. So if you have that same issue, it might help to talk to your prof or look around in some different textbooks to see if you can find some examples of actual applications of this stuff.
2.1Ah at what, 3.8V? At 120V that's around 10A. Certainly a lot, but not unheard of. Hell my laser printer uses 8.6A at 120V. More likely though it won't be a 20 second charger, but perhaps a 5 minute charger. Still quite fast, but that would pull less than a single amp out of the wall socket.
The other possibility is they'll put some regular capacitors into the charger. Build a rapid charger with a couple of those big capacitors they put into disposable cameras, let it charge those caps at a couple mA, then when you plug your phone in it dumps them in seconds. Given how much they charge for phone chargers these days, I think they could afford to toss in a couple extra caps without raising the price too much.
Faraday cage? Or you could just...ya know...unplug the router! :)
it would need to store more than one picture in RAM though -- to never touch the flash memory it would need to store every picture you have not yet viewed. Of course, the bigger concern is probably that rebooting your phone would wipe every image you haven't yet seen.
This isn't a rural area; this is outside NYC. It's got reasonable population density, and perhaps more importantly it's the wealthiest region in the entire state of NJ. It's also a very small region -- they could probably blanket the entire town with a single cell tower. I highly doubt they'll have any signal strength issues unless they decide to put the receiver in their freakin basement.
They're trying to invest in basic infrastructure. We don't have any obvious use for this stuff yet...but how could we, when we it doesn't really exist yet? I mean I'm not saying it's the best use of money in the world, but you've gotta be pretty dense to not understand why they're doing it. If nobody ever spent money on seemingly useless things, we wouldn't have electricity or tv or radio or ANY remotely modern technology, even back further than those.
I'm reminded of a story of Faraday...it is said he gave a very early demonstration of electricity in London -- essentially two coils of wire, one around a magnet and one around a compass, so when the magnet moved the compass needle did too. After the demo, one of the audience members approached and said "Well that's all very interesting, but what USE is it?" to which Faraday simply replied, "Of what use is a newborn baby?"
Also I think it's worth noticing that so far investments in communications technology have never really been wasted. Telegraphs to telephones to dial-up to broadband, every time we expand it we find something to fill that space. Humans LOVE communications tech. This is fairly new tech, and while I can't think of any good use for the average person to have that much bandwidth, I'm sure someone will figure something out. Why not crank it all the way up and just see what happens? Plenty of far worse things that the government blows money on -- like bombing eight year old Pakistani kids at $60k+ each.
Oh, and I know this isn't the point, but if you offered me 500amps of electricity for my home at $35/month, I'd take it in a heartbeat. Not sure what I'd do with it, but I'm damn sure I'd have a helluva lot of fun figuring that out! Wonder how much juice you'd need to keep a gattling railgun operating... :)
People used to think electricity was useless too.
So who's the idiot who decided put this on 4/20? :D
Well...it's a voice recording, so it's still somewhat identifiable even if they don't store any further information with it...
OK, so we've got posts here about wiring up a webcam to a computer to do motion tracking and such...how about build a simple pedal with a momentary push button and have the conductor tap his feet on that, then connect that to, say, a 555 timer to generate an audible tone while the button is depressed which can be routed to some sort of earpiece or headphone -- or even a piezo element which the singer should be able to feel vibrate or click. Whole solution shouldn't cost more than $20, and that's at Radioshack prices. And it could be put together in an afternoon. Only downside is you'd need to have a wire running between the conductor and the singer, and it may be slightly more complicated for the conductor. Could have one of the other musicians tap his foot instead and see if that'd work, that would shorten the run of wire as well.
They do, however, apply a separate legal framework to Palestinians than they do to Israeli Jews. Which is also the literal definition of apartheid....
How can they declare war when we're already at war?
So they were supposed to come negotiate with us...when, exactly? While we were threatening to blow them off the face of the earth? Maybe while we were telling the world that they're Satan incarnate? And why would they? We've already proven to them that we won't uphold our end of the agreements we make, and we've also proven in Iraq that we're willing to launch an all-out war for literally no legitimate reason.
Could they have stopped this? Sure. But look at what we're doing. They finally match the weapons we were pointing against them 60 years ago, and we go drop fake bombs on them just to prove we could still kill them all with the slightest provocation. Great way to ease tensions...
I'm not saying this is entirely our fault, I'm just saying if you look at the history you sure as hell can't pretend we're entirely blameless.
Got a citation for that? Russia helped then with experimental reactors prior to signing the NPT, but never completed a full power reactor. Try reading the Wikipedia page...or correct it i guess if you can actually verify your claim.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_North_Korea#section_1
Sorry for posting this twice; my first comment didn't appear and I thought maybe I had forgotten to submit it fully.
Are you kidding me? We've broken every damn promise we've ever made to them, all with a loaded gun pointed at their head...and we're supposed to be surprised that they're not our best fucking friends?
Let's start with the question of when and how nuclear weapons were first deployed on the Korean Peninsula. It wasn't from North Korea. It was the USA under Eisenhower in the 50s. We had fighter jets armed with _nothing but_ nuclear weapons on constant alert; 20 kiloton nukes being carried around in jeeps and helicopters just south of the DMZ, all with the understanding of detonate first, ask questions later...lest they fall into enemy hands. We kept that up for decades, only withdrawing them in the early 90s -- not because we didn't think there was a threat anymore, but because we decided it was safer to keep our nukes on submarines and aircraft carriers parked just offshore. We've had them under constant threat of nuclear attack for sixty years now.
Also, worth noting that the entire UN is _STILL_ officially at war with North Korea.
Then we say they violated the 1953 armistice 221 times -- many of which they dispute. What nobody keeps track of is how many times we have. At the very least, that armistice prohibited the introduction of nuclear weapons into the Korean theater -- so we've been in constant violation for around sixty years.
Then there's the claims that North Korea violated the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. What nobody ever mentions is that a condition of that treaty was that non-nuclear signatories, in exchange for signing, would be given assistance by nuclear states in building nuclear power for peaceful uses. The USSR promised to build these reactors for NK in the 80s...and never did. So in the 90s, the USA promised to build them four LWRs in exchange for them agreeing to more IAEA inspections. We got the inspections, but never even broke ground on a single one of those reactors. Instead, when the USSR collapsed, we declared that we were taking the ICBMs we'd had aimed at Russia, and pointing them at NK. So now they've got nukes in subs, nukes in aircraft carriers, and nukes halfway across the world all ready to be fired at them at a moment's notice. This policy of keeping our nukes focused on NK has since been reasserted by Bush and Obama.
So...we've had them in our nuclear crosshairs for sixy years, and as soon as they do the same to us everybody freaks the fuck out. If you sit there bullying some kid for the first fifteen years of his life, how the hell are you gonna act surprised when he starts going to the gym and punches you in the face one day?