Yeah, the point is that these recent obesity related disease epidemics have been caused by our *eating habits* and are directly related to what food we actually eat
Well if that was the point, then the point is a lie.
Show me the point in the GP's post where it was argued that "all food which has been scientifically modified is 'bad for the environment'. It wasn't a claim of the paragraph you quoted
Apparently we've got to work on your reading comprehension skills.
but we also have diseases wich were almost unheard of 100 years ago.
True. And we have diseases which were completely unheard of 30,000 years ago. Is there a point?
GM food has been shown to have negative impact on the environment where it's grown and it's effect on our health would best be described as "disputable", since the GM companies are actively lobbying the government for exclusive access to our kids food supply.
Sheer nonsense. First off, most of the food you eat has been genetically modified. It's just that silly buggers who don't know anything tend to get more upset about those eeeevil scientists in their crazy white coats than they do about farmer bob and his descendants selectively breeding plants for their own purposes. Anyone who eats seedless fruit while complaining about "GM food" is a fucking idiot.
And, second, the idea that all food which has been scientifically modified - regardless of what changes were made - is "bad for the environment" is so silly that it shouldn't really warrant a response.
into processing chemically enhanced and artificially produced food-stuff, as opposed to the biological, organic matter it was designed to handle.
Yes, because "biological, organic matter" is actually not made of chemicals. Everyone knows that only bad stuff is made of chemicals! No, "biological, organic matter" is made of pixie tears and fairy dust, fertilized with unicorn farts.
I have a hard time seeing what improvement Monsanto [wikipedia.org] (for example) brought to anyone than themselves
Well considering they were the first to genetically modify plants, you can stop wondering. However, even if that particular company had never done a single beneficial thing for anyone, your argument is fallacious.
As for "organic" farming being "distributed, diverse, and non-destructive"... that's a load of rubbish for the most part. It may be distributed and diverse - although nothing in it's definition necessitates those things - but it is certainly not non-destructive.
You're telling me technology has improved in the last 40 years? OMFG NO WAY!!! Wow. Have they made them shiny, yet?
Nobody ever suggested that breeders are the best possible solution, but they're certainly an effective solution. Whether or not gen 4 reactors are better is irrelevant as far as your claims about the viability of breeders is concerned.
Oh, and India IS developing both fast breeders and thermal breeders. They seem to think that nuclear power might be a good way to pull their one billion people out of poverty, so they're investing in it pretty heavily. Silly buggers, huh?
Um, no, I mean politics as in "OMFG DERE MAKING NUKULAR PLANTS LETZ GO PROTEST GUYZ!!! I BRING WEED LOLZ!!!".
And then the government panders to the people / gives in to mass-hysteria.
But hey, I'd love to see the financial figures for these reactors. Maybe you can send them to India and Japan, too - those poor deluded bastards still seem to think that breeders can be profitable. Those two nations must really not have any business sense!
Further, if we gave the clean alternative energies a fair chance, they'd end up producing cheaper energy than fission in a very short time, a decade, two at most.
I was ok with ignoring the irrational hysteria in the rest of your rant, but I cant let this blatant lie pass unchallenged. Please provide your sources for this claim, or retract it.
Oh no, another smug armchair nuclear idiot that thinks we are still living in the 1970s before the French put in the work that showed fast breeders are a very expensive and difficult dead end.
I don't suppose you'd want to provide some citations for that nonsen... err.. "claim"... would you? Because there are plenty of nations still working on different breeder designs, and almost every past shutdown of a breeder reactor seems to have been motivated mainly (if not entirely) by politics.
Still a shame someone flagged me as flamebait instead of discussing our different views. Cause flamebait i Was not.
Uh, yeah, you were, with both comments. You start off spreading FUD which has been addressed hundreds of times, and then follow it up by ranting about political corruption. All of that in response to an article which has more to do with economics than nuclear safety. If I had mod points I'd have a hard time deciding whether to mod you flamebait, troll, or off-topic, since all three clearly apply.
The animal world has cannibalism, also. It's not really a moral issue as far as I'm concerned - once I'm dead I don't really give a damn what happens to my body. If some chef can turn it into a culinary masterpiece, have at 'er! Serve me up with some Pinot Noir!
No, the real atrocities humans commit are things like torture and willful cruelty. Animals may kill for food, but they rarely inflict unnecessary suffering on their victim.
Harming any animal , just to get a little more profit , is wrong , and everyone knows it.
And the Retarded College Kid Of The Year Award goes to....
The "profits" you refer to would be things like a cure for cancer, gene therapy, organ transplants, and, oh, I dunno... maybe a better quality of life for people living with spinal injuries? I know that wannabe-communists like you find it much easier to blame everything on "profits" and "fat-cats" than to actually discuss the issues, but you're making yourself look like a fool, and even the real commies are embarrassed by your shenanigans.
How many men do you know have cried there way out of a ticket?... How many male cops have been busted trading sex acts for "warnings"?
What does that have to do with incarceration rates?
Really, in pretty much every aspect of our culture gender biases play a huge role.
Granted, but it's nowhere near enough to account for the difference in incarceration rates.
Saying that blacks commit a disproportionate amount of crime may not be overtly racist, but it is still racist.
Really. So saying that blacks are better sprinters is also racist? Saying that Asians do better in schools is also racist?
Facts aren't discriminatory - they're just facts. Interpretation and actions taken based on those facts can be racist, but the data itself can not. If your ideological indoctrination doesn't even allow you to acknowledge the facts without a knee-jerk guilt reaction, how can you ever hope to study the actual cause(s)?
Poverty is the biggest indicator of crime, not skin color.
So you want them to profile poor people, not black people. I'm not sure that you're helping things here...
Besides, your comment clearly indicates that you are classist. You may not be overtly classist, but you're still classist.
I could also point out that we have the highest ratio of people in/out of prison of any civilized nation. So now stack that with most people in prison are minorities and you get a pretty different picture as well.
It may be circular logic in some circumstances, but it's equally stupid to assume that racial profiling isn't justified, or that the profiling is the cause of the imbalance. After all, the majority of the prison population is male - are you going to try and argue that the only reason for this is that the police are biased against men?
Whether or not you like to admit it, it's a fact that blacks commit a disproportionate amount of crime. We can debate the cause and the best way to deal with it until we're blue in the face, but that won't change anything. And no, stating this one particular fact does not make me racist, any more than stating that the majority of the prison population is male would make me sexist.
Oh, I thought about it, but it seems silly. If you're not using pumps then you're going to have to dam the river in order to make it work, and if you're damming it anyway why not just use normal hydro-electric generators? Are these more efficient? Less efficient? More cost effective? The article just doesn't provide enough details.
There may be some places where the process could be useful, but just based on the details which we HAVE been given this seems like nothing more than a gimmick. It's a neat effect to observe, but I doubt it will have any practical applications.
Exactly. The thing is supposed to work by diffusion. According to the article, the salt crystals are forced away by the inrush of fresh water, and this movement is what creates the extra voltage. But if your inrush of water is caused by a pump, I don't care how efficient the pump is, you're still not going to produce enough electricity to power the contraption, let alone to get any energy out of it.
as has been pointed out, that's not a feasible scenario for China.
More importantly, though, I wasn't talking about the possibility of the Chinese invading - only of them coming up with technology which would make the American nuclear stockpile obsolete. In such a scenario, they don't need to attack - they can just sell or even give the technology away to your enemies. That's one reason (although clearly not the only one) to maintain a versatile conventional force.
I wasn't referring to China specifically in the second part. Nor did the second part have anything to do with the first part, really. They were related but separate points.
I think it's actually pretty unlikely that the US will ever go to war with China. But it wouldn't surprise me if the Chinese decided to engage in a bit of free-market capitalism by selling anti-missile technology to, say, li'l Kim.
Two engines does not equal superior. It just means more weight and a tad bit more speed
No, it means that when your engine sucks in a goose 10 seconds after takeoff, your multi-million-dollar fighter doesn't become a funeral pyre for your multi-million-dollar pilot.
The objective of an air force is to bring to your party the unimpeded use of the skies to deliver both transport for your troops and weapons to targets. This was never achieved during the war.
Nonsense. A large part of why the US won every major ground engagement is due to the fact that they had air-superiority. Once again, I'm not sure where you're getting these ideas.
11,000 helicopters flew in Vietnam. 5000 were destroyed.. That's nearly half. There was never a time and place where helicopters were not threatened by enemy fire. We never had air superiority, therefor, the USAF lost.
Again, nonsense. Air-superiority refers to the ability to deny the skies to enemy aircraft - it has nothing to do with how many of your helicopters get shot from the ground.
I should also point out that the helicopters generally belonged to the Army and the Marines, not the Airforce. So, again, helicopter loss figures do nothing to support your original premise.
Slashdot Mirror
Well if that was the point, then the point is a lie.
Apparently we've got to work on your reading comprehension skills.
True. And we have diseases which were completely unheard of 30,000 years ago. Is there a point?
Sheer nonsense. First off, most of the food you eat has been genetically modified. It's just that silly buggers who don't know anything tend to get more upset about those eeeevil scientists in their crazy white coats than they do about farmer bob and his descendants selectively breeding plants for their own purposes. Anyone who eats seedless fruit while complaining about "GM food" is a fucking idiot.
And, second, the idea that all food which has been scientifically modified - regardless of what changes were made - is "bad for the environment" is so silly that it shouldn't really warrant a response.
Yes, because "biological, organic matter" is actually not made of chemicals. Everyone knows that only bad stuff is made of chemicals! No, "biological, organic matter" is made of pixie tears and fairy dust, fertilized with unicorn farts.
Well considering they were the first to genetically modify plants, you can stop wondering. However, even if that particular company had never done a single beneficial thing for anyone, your argument is fallacious.
As for "organic" farming being "distributed, diverse, and non-destructive" ... that's a load of rubbish for the most part. It may be distributed and diverse - although nothing in it's definition necessitates those things - but it is certainly not non-destructive.
1. You keep making assertions without evidence. You need to stop.
2. The "above poster" didn't specify which type of breeder he was talking about.
It doesn't really have a name, only a shitty acronym. PFBR
You're telling me technology has improved in the last 40 years? OMFG NO WAY!!! Wow. Have they made them shiny, yet?
Nobody ever suggested that breeders are the best possible solution, but they're certainly an effective solution. Whether or not gen 4 reactors are better is irrelevant as far as your claims about the viability of breeders is concerned.
Oh, and India IS developing both fast breeders and thermal breeders. They seem to think that nuclear power might be a good way to pull their one billion people out of poverty, so they're investing in it pretty heavily. Silly buggers, huh?
Um, no, I mean politics as in "OMFG DERE MAKING NUKULAR PLANTS LETZ GO PROTEST GUYZ!!! I BRING WEED LOLZ!!!".
And then the government panders to the people / gives in to mass-hysteria.
But hey, I'd love to see the financial figures for these reactors. Maybe you can send them to India and Japan, too - those poor deluded bastards still seem to think that breeders can be profitable. Those two nations must really not have any business sense!
I was ok with ignoring the irrational hysteria in the rest of your rant, but I cant let this blatant lie pass unchallenged. Please provide your sources for this claim, or retract it.
I don't suppose you'd want to provide some citations for that nonsen ... err .. "claim" ... would you? Because there are plenty of nations still working on different breeder designs, and almost every past shutdown of a breeder reactor seems to have been motivated mainly (if not entirely) by politics.
Uh, yeah, you were, with both comments. You start off spreading FUD which has been addressed hundreds of times, and then follow it up by ranting about political corruption. All of that in response to an article which has more to do with economics than nuclear safety. If I had mod points I'd have a hard time deciding whether to mod you flamebait, troll, or off-topic, since all three clearly apply.
Ok, granted, Limewire is pretty bad, but calling it a trojan is going a bit far ...
Some peoples sole purpose in life is to serve as an example of what not to do.
The animal world has cannibalism, also. It's not really a moral issue as far as I'm concerned - once I'm dead I don't really give a damn what happens to my body. If some chef can turn it into a culinary masterpiece, have at 'er! Serve me up with some Pinot Noir!
No, the real atrocities humans commit are things like torture and willful cruelty. Animals may kill for food, but they rarely inflict unnecessary suffering on their victim.
And the Retarded College Kid Of The Year Award goes to ....
The "profits" you refer to would be things like a cure for cancer, gene therapy, organ transplants, and, oh, I dunno ... maybe a better quality of life for people living with spinal injuries? I know that wannabe-communists like you find it much easier to blame everything on "profits" and "fat-cats" than to actually discuss the issues, but you're making yourself look like a fool, and even the real commies are embarrassed by your shenanigans.
What does that have to do with incarceration rates?
Granted, but it's nowhere near enough to account for the difference in incarceration rates.
Really. So saying that blacks are better sprinters is also racist? Saying that Asians do better in schools is also racist?
Facts aren't discriminatory - they're just facts. Interpretation and actions taken based on those facts can be racist, but the data itself can not. If your ideological indoctrination doesn't even allow you to acknowledge the facts without a knee-jerk guilt reaction, how can you ever hope to study the actual cause(s)?
So you want them to profile poor people, not black people. I'm not sure that you're helping things here ...
Besides, your comment clearly indicates that you are classist. You may not be overtly classist, but you're still classist.
How so?
It may be circular logic in some circumstances, but it's equally stupid to assume that racial profiling isn't justified, or that the profiling is the cause of the imbalance. After all, the majority of the prison population is male - are you going to try and argue that the only reason for this is that the police are biased against men?
Whether or not you like to admit it, it's a fact that blacks commit a disproportionate amount of crime. We can debate the cause and the best way to deal with it until we're blue in the face, but that won't change anything. And no, stating this one particular fact does not make me racist, any more than stating that the majority of the prison population is male would make me sexist.
A little known fact about astrology is that most of it's principles originated from Uranus.
Oh, I thought about it, but it seems silly. If you're not using pumps then you're going to have to dam the river in order to make it work, and if you're damming it anyway why not just use normal hydro-electric generators? Are these more efficient? Less efficient? More cost effective? The article just doesn't provide enough details.
There may be some places where the process could be useful, but just based on the details which we HAVE been given this seems like nothing more than a gimmick. It's a neat effect to observe, but I doubt it will have any practical applications.
Exactly. The thing is supposed to work by diffusion. According to the article, the salt crystals are forced away by the inrush of fresh water, and this movement is what creates the extra voltage. But if your inrush of water is caused by a pump, I don't care how efficient the pump is, you're still not going to produce enough electricity to power the contraption, let alone to get any energy out of it.
I'm calling this myth BUSTED!
as has been pointed out, that's not a feasible scenario for China.
More importantly, though, I wasn't talking about the possibility of the Chinese invading - only of them coming up with technology which would make the American nuclear stockpile obsolete. In such a scenario, they don't need to attack - they can just sell or even give the technology away to your enemies. That's one reason (although clearly not the only one) to maintain a versatile conventional force.
Cute :)
I wasn't referring to China specifically in the second part. Nor did the second part have anything to do with the first part, really. They were related but separate points.
I think it's actually pretty unlikely that the US will ever go to war with China. But it wouldn't surprise me if the Chinese decided to engage in a bit of free-market capitalism by selling anti-missile technology to, say, li'l Kim.
No, it means that when your engine sucks in a goose 10 seconds after takeoff, your multi-million-dollar fighter doesn't become a funeral pyre for your multi-million-dollar pilot.
Easy there. I didn't realize you were a professional asshole. I take it all back - I don't want to tangle with someone who is so far out of my league.
Nonsense. A large part of why the US won every major ground engagement is due to the fact that they had air-superiority. Once again, I'm not sure where you're getting these ideas.
Again, nonsense. Air-superiority refers to the ability to deny the skies to enemy aircraft - it has nothing to do with how many of your helicopters get shot from the ground.
I should also point out that the helicopters generally belonged to the Army and the Marines, not the Airforce. So, again, helicopter loss figures do nothing to support your original premise.