its one thing to be manufacturing brass its another thing to be manufacturing brass as part of a company whose major business interest involves making bullet cartridges out of that brass. you can't argue its a "neutral product" when it goes right off of one line into the other where they make weapons.
the herbicide defoliant is similar here. Monsanto was a major manufacturer of agent orange - they needed the herbicide at the West Virginia plant in order to make agent orange. Acting like it was not produced for the purpose of the vietname war is, to borrow your phrase, "fucking bullshit".
Except that 2,4,5-T was developed in the 1940's... Even without the Vietnam war, we still would have had 2,4,5-T herbicide, because *SHOCK!* herbicides are pretty widely used in the developed world on crops to prevent weeds from growing. In fact, 2,4,5-T kept being used by farmers up until the 1970s when it was banned from everything but rice, and in 1985 it was banned from even rice farmers.
Your whole argument is "fucking bullshit", because 2,4,5-T was designed for purposes other than killing off foliage so that we could kill people, and the history of the chemical's usage demonstrates this.
So, let me repeat the important point here one more time for you, so that hopefully you will get it: 2,4,5-T WAS DEVELOPED WELL PRIOR TO THE VIETNAM WAR, AND WAS WIDELY USED EVEN AFTER THE VIETNAM WAR, THEREFORE, EVEN WITHOUT THE VIETNAM WAR, THEY STILL WOULD HAVE MADE 2,4,5-T!
In which case you actually can't prove anything at all... ever. For instance, the entire world (yourself included) could be figments of my imagination. Or maybe we're both characters in a book, and just don't know it.
For the strictest definition of "prove", indeed we cannot. As Decartes so eloquently stated, the only thing I can be sure of is my own mind. (After all, if my mind didn't exist in some form, then I wouldn't be able to even contemplate not-existing.) But just because I am sure of my own mind's existence, does not mean that I can definitively extend that to other people.
"Truth" is commonly accepted to be something that is so likely that to withhold provisional belief would be irrational. Sure everything (with a single exception) cannot be proven definitively, but at some point things are so likely true that not believing in them just makes you crazy.
So, proving this whole issue and claiming the prize money would involve demonstrating that believing in practical quantum computers would be unreasonable. And that is perfectly reasonably possible.
But one has to realize the ambiguity of the word "prove" here. There is absolute proof of certainty (for instance most mathematical proofs), while just about everything else lies in a range of "yeah, probably." Newton's Laws of Motion were proven correct time and time again, until we eventually started noticing very small errors, and even yet today, while we know that Newton's Laws of Motion aren't the most accurate model, we still know that it's often "good enough".
However, proving that specific gods don't exist is a whole lot easier when they make outrageous claims that do not conform to the world that we witness today. For instance, if their holy book ascribes cities that have no archaeological evidence to suggest that they ever existed, or did not exist at the time described.
See Swinburne's Revelation: From Metaphor to Analogy (Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. ) for a case that scientific or historical errors in the Bible (or Qur'an, Vedas, Mahayana canon, etc.) do not necessarily undermine religious claims.
Indeed, one can shift the goalposts and re-root their religious claims on other matters. However, archaeological, and geographical evidence don't support many religious scriptures.
I suppose it's not possible to falsify every possible notion of a specific god, but one can falsify the literal interpretation of most gods based on the inconsistency of their religious scriptures and data that we can observe. (e.g. It is well known now, that there is no evidence for gods up on Mount Olympus.)
Note, this doesn't make any religion any less practical in the real world, it was always teaching a set of moral guidelines, and encouraging good behavior... nothing in their religious texts have to be literally true for the guidelines and behaviors to be valid.
Just like a fallacious argument does not make the argument false. If the consequences of the religion are good, and reasonable, then who cares if they think that the Invisible Pink Unicorn is putting holes in their socks to remind them to be humble?
But what if the Bible is often stated by archaeologists to be the most accurate archaeological textbook? There are literally thousands of obscure facts in the Bible (name of the king's eunuch, etc) backed up by archaeological evidence. Most of these were argued to be false at one time or another.
I'm not necessarily referring to the Bible here... the stronger evidence on this front is against the Book of Mormon.
As for the Bible, Nazareth didn't exist during Jesus's lifetime.
Also, it is definitely possible to prove a negative. I can prove that there are no lions in my refrigerator, no elephants hiding behind my couch, and no dead zombie typing this comment, to most people's satisfaction, for starters.
The lions in your refrigerator are microscopic. The elephants hiding behind your couch are invisible, and you actually are a dead zombie. You just don't realize it, because of a psychological hallucination that you are not actually dead.
I'm willing to bet all I own that neither will ever be successfully claimed. You need faith to accept either to be met.
Well, proving that there are no gods at all is impossible, as "there exists some form of god" is an unfalsifiable claim.
However, proving that specific gods don't exist is a whole lot easier when they make outrageous claims that do not conform to the world that we witness today. For instance, if their holy book ascribes cities that have no archaeological evidence to suggest that they ever existed, or did not exist at the time described.
WTF is it with Science these days where it wants people to prove a negative, something which I was explicitly told over and over again in class is impossible.
Except that we've proven that Caloric Theory does not accurately explain reality.
"Proving a negative" is a complicated topic, but falsifying a theory is not. In order to claim the reward specified, one would have to prove that the quantum theory as we understand it is false, by demonstrating a falsifying experiment. I don't know if that's particularly possible...
the whole point of defoliation was to prevent the enemy from having any sort of cover. how is that not a weapon or an instrument of warfare?
"Instrument of warfare"? Sure, it's an instrument, and it was used in warfare. However NOT a weapon. Again, a weapon is designed to kill people. Sure, I can go fishing with a gun, but that's not what it's designed for, and it won't be particularly good at it. 2,4,5-T was designed to kill weeds, it just happened to also be good at killing leaves, and things that produce leaves in the jungles of Vietnam, and was retasked to kill that stuff. It was not retasked to the purpose of killing people directly, and thus was not a weapon.
Your whole argument that it was used to kill people indirectly is totally fucking bullshit, because then EVERYTHING that the military owned was a weapon. <satire> MRE? That's a weapon! Because it fed soldiers, who used the energy to kill people! Lucky rabbits foot? It raises moral of a soldier, so they can kill more people! </satire> At that point, the definition that you suggest for "weapon" becomes worthless, because it applies to everything that anyone in the military has.
its like saying that helicopters are not weapons. they only enable the planning and use of weapons. well, fine, technically, guns arent even weapons, they dont kill people - bullets kill people.
Helicopters and herbicides have uses beyond just killing people. Any tool can be used to facilitate in the death of other human beings, but "weapon" is typically explicitly reserved for tools that were designed with the intent of killing people.
Besides, as toxic as Agent Orange was/is, it would make a really shitty chemical weapon... kills insanely slowly... better to use mustard gas. Far more efficient weapon that...
Well of course, we inherited this whacked Common Law system from those morons. We should have given them the finger in yet another way back in 1776 and adopted French Civil Code (or whatever the French were using at the time, as Napoleon hadn't quite come along yet to make his revisions). The idea of a court system where the judges and the lawyers are two entirely separate professions, going to two separate schools, makes a lot of sense when you see the shenanigans going on in the US legal system.
I definitely agree... although everyone now tends to be using the German Civil Code, as it's very well engineered... (stereotyping not intended)
In the civilian world, if you have meetings every day, it's because your boss or some other important idiot is a bottleneck in the process and they need daily reinforcement of common sense, at the expense of department productivity.
Alternatively, it's a great way for a manager to enforce office hours on their should-be-flexible-schedule programmers if they set it early in the morning, but then that just bottles down again to "a manager who insists on micromanaging everything, and being a bottleneck".
Are you saying that's the way it works in practise? Not saying it isn't, and hoping that it is, but I thought your justice system was completely wack, in practise.
Yes, this is the way it works in practice in US Common Law.
US law might be whacked, but it's still not really any more whacked than UK law. I mean, at least here the truth is an absolute defense to defamation.
so therefore it is relevant. without the 'emotional rhetoric' about the threat of the communist chinese, the domino effect, etc etc etc, there would have been no need to kill a million people with various weapons like agent orange. so there would have been no need to manufacture it.
What the fuck are you going on about? Agent Orange was a DEFOLIANT, and 2,4,5-T is an HERBICIDE, and was used on corn crops to prevent weeds for a period of time.
Agent Orange was NOT intended to be a chemical weapon, it just happened to be ubiquitously contaminated with TCDD, which was a highly toxic dioxin.
Monsanto has not sued any farmer for unintentional cross-pollination that they have not unreasonably exploited.
Ohhhh, now I know why you were angry from the "hype and emotional rhetoric" of saying this chemical was an active ingredient in Agent Orange.
... 2,4,5-T is bad. TCDD that it is likely contaminated is even worse. I think that Monsanto should have to pay to clean up wherever it can be shown that this chemical is in significant occurrence. Do you know why? Because it's bad shit, and companies should be held accountable for their actions.
But Monsanto is not any more evil than any other corporation, and they have not unethically sued people when those people have had no fault.
I'm a pedantic bitch, if you don't like me complaining about unnecessary emotional rhetoric, then state shit clearly, and if you don't like me correcting facts, then GET THE RIGHT THE FIRST TIME.
There are a whole lot of reasons to hate Monsanto (the same as any corporation), but hyperbolic rhetoric is not a good reason to hate Monsanto.
Except that in this case, because it is an ACTIVE ingredient AND toxic the association is valid and not hype.
Sounds like you are backpedaling.
I'm not backpedaling, because I never made the claim that 2,4,5-T was not dangerous or toxic. Just that the article wasn't clear about what the actual dangers of 2,4,5-T actually are, and just said, "it's an ingredient of Agent Orange!"
Evil filthy scumbag bastards who sue farmers after the cross-pollination from Monsanto corn caused their patented genes to show up in the farmers crops. Yes, they will sue a farmer because of an act of nature. If the devil founded a company, it would probably look something like Monsanto.
Yeah, fuck Monsanto for suing a farmer for spraying his whole crop with RoundUp after a cross-pollination incident, which resulted in only the RoundUp resistant cross-pollinated stock surviving... That farmer was just practicing selective breeding, right?! Right?!
Monsanto has not sued any farmer for unintentional cross-pollination that they have not unreasonably exploited.
Monsanto is suing organic farmers because they can find some of the gmo plants on their fields.
Monsanto has not sued anyone who has not intentionally exploited GMO genetic material in their plants. The primary example was a guy who was growing something, and when he suspected that some GMO round-up resistance had pollinated his crop, HE SPRAYED THE WHOLE CROP with RoundUp, and low and behold, only the GMO contaminant survived, which he then used to plant his next crop.
Monsanto does not sue farmers who have incidental cross-pollination.
Doesn't that give enough info for a summary though? The average reader knows it was harmful - caused cancer. Most people don't know a whole lot about chemistry or Agent Orange. So by linking it to Agent Orange (and its a good link not a bogus link) people understand that its dangerous and can go look up if they want details.
But just because it was "a part of Agent Orange" does not mean that it was the reason why Agent Orange was so toxic in the first place. Water is "a part of Agent Orange", and thus my satirical comment that kicked off this thread. The fact that Agent Orange was so toxic and dangerous does not mean that each and every individual part of Agent Orange were harmful.
Explaining that it is the principle reason WHY Agent Orange was so toxic, would have been far better, and would have just been a few more words additional, rather than even the whole sentence that I've called for earlier.
It's harmful because it causes some of the same problems that Agent Orange caused?
Exactly, and the TCDD that 2,4,5-T turns into under heat was responsible for Agent Orange being so dangerously toxic (as opposed to "reasonably" toxic). But there is no explanation that an all but ubiquitous 2,4,5-T contaminant was the principle chemical for why Agent Orange was so dangerous.
Just explaining that it was the principle cause of why Agent Orange was so toxic would have been better than the simple and uninformative, "it's a part of Agent Orange".
I don't disagree with you, but going into that level of chemistry is probably going to make even NPR listeners/readers glaze over. Using the AO shortcut might not be the best way to present the argument from a scientific point, but since they're presenting to a popular audience I don't personally have a huge issue with it.
It would cause their listeners/readers to glaze over to say "2,4,5-T is one of the two herbicides in Agent Orange, and the one that breaks down into the extremely toxic dioxins that made Agent Orange so much more harmful than it was original designed to be"?
I have heard some people say that NPR listeners/readers are retarded idiots, but that would have to take the cake. I mean, we're not talking about explaining complicated chemistry here, we're talking "there are two active chemical ingredients" and "when heated chemical A turns into chemical B, which is even more toxic". That's the kind of chemistry that anyone can actually understand.
And even then, it works out to be one sentence of content in an entire article. I've heard deeper explanations for how infectious beetles kill trees on NPR...
Gr... NO! That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that if this were an article about ANY OTHER CHEMICAL, there would be a short sentence IN THE ARTICLE (which I've already read... SCARY ME! I RTFA'ed) explaining why the chemical is harmful and why it is harmful. This article short-circuits all of that with: "it's a part of Agent Orange!"
Of course herbicides are toxic, they're kind of designed to be. But just how toxic is it? What makes it such a big deal? Why is it that this chemical made Agent Orange so toxic in the first place?
We're not all fucking chemical experts who understand and know everything about Agent Orange before we even read the article. Give us BACKGROUND, give us EXPLANATIONS. It takes one god-damn sentence out of an entire article to explain this shit to someone who has never actually learned anything about Agent Orange beyond "it was used in Vietnam to defoliate, and ended up causing serious harm to our soldiers."
A quick check on Wikipedia shows that 2,4,5-T made up about 50% of Agent Orange (the other 50% was another herbicide), and 2,4,5-T is considered the more hazardous of the two, so in this case the reference as a component of Agent Orange seems quite legitimate and so is linking the emotional connotations of Agent Orange to the compound in question.
But the article doesn't EXPLAIN any of this. That's the issue I had with the article. It doesn't explain why it's harmful on its own, and just relies upon "it's a part of Agent Orange" to establish that it is harmful. Well, big fucking whoop. I want to know why the chemical itself is harmful, you know, like if it were any other chemical in the world, the press about the chemical would be explaining just why the chemical is toxic, and why it's dangerous. Instead, this article sees a shortcut, and just jumps on it: "It's a part of Agent Orange!"
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its one thing to be manufacturing brass its another thing to be manufacturing brass as part of a company whose major business interest involves making bullet cartridges out of that brass. you can't argue its a "neutral product" when it goes right off of one line into the other where they make weapons.
the herbicide defoliant is similar here. Monsanto was a major manufacturer of agent orange - they needed the herbicide at the West Virginia plant in order to make agent orange. Acting like it was not produced for the purpose of the vietname war is, to borrow your phrase, "fucking bullshit".
Except that 2,4,5-T was developed in the 1940's... Even without the Vietnam war, we still would have had 2,4,5-T herbicide, because *SHOCK!* herbicides are pretty widely used in the developed world on crops to prevent weeds from growing. In fact, 2,4,5-T kept being used by farmers up until the 1970s when it was banned from everything but rice, and in 1985 it was banned from even rice farmers.
Your whole argument is "fucking bullshit", because 2,4,5-T was designed for purposes other than killing off foliage so that we could kill people, and the history of the chemical's usage demonstrates this.
So, let me repeat the important point here one more time for you, so that hopefully you will get it: 2,4,5-T WAS DEVELOPED WELL PRIOR TO THE VIETNAM WAR, AND WAS WIDELY USED EVEN AFTER THE VIETNAM WAR, THEREFORE, EVEN WITHOUT THE VIETNAM WAR, THEY STILL WOULD HAVE MADE 2,4,5-T!
In which case you actually can't prove anything at all... ever. For instance, the entire world (yourself included) could be figments of my imagination. Or maybe we're both characters in a book, and just don't know it.
For the strictest definition of "prove", indeed we cannot. As Decartes so eloquently stated, the only thing I can be sure of is my own mind. (After all, if my mind didn't exist in some form, then I wouldn't be able to even contemplate not-existing.) But just because I am sure of my own mind's existence, does not mean that I can definitively extend that to other people.
"Truth" is commonly accepted to be something that is so likely that to withhold provisional belief would be irrational. Sure everything (with a single exception) cannot be proven definitively, but at some point things are so likely true that not believing in them just makes you crazy.
So, proving this whole issue and claiming the prize money would involve demonstrating that believing in practical quantum computers would be unreasonable. And that is perfectly reasonably possible.
But one has to realize the ambiguity of the word "prove" here. There is absolute proof of certainty (for instance most mathematical proofs), while just about everything else lies in a range of "yeah, probably." Newton's Laws of Motion were proven correct time and time again, until we eventually started noticing very small errors, and even yet today, while we know that Newton's Laws of Motion aren't the most accurate model, we still know that it's often "good enough".
See Swinburne's Revelation: From Metaphor to Analogy (Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. ) for a case that scientific or historical errors in the Bible (or Qur'an, Vedas, Mahayana canon, etc.) do not necessarily undermine religious claims.
Indeed, one can shift the goalposts and re-root their religious claims on other matters. However, archaeological, and geographical evidence don't support many religious scriptures.
I suppose it's not possible to falsify every possible notion of a specific god, but one can falsify the literal interpretation of most gods based on the inconsistency of their religious scriptures and data that we can observe. (e.g. It is well known now, that there is no evidence for gods up on Mount Olympus.)
Note, this doesn't make any religion any less practical in the real world, it was always teaching a set of moral guidelines, and encouraging good behavior... nothing in their religious texts have to be literally true for the guidelines and behaviors to be valid.
Just like a fallacious argument does not make the argument false. If the consequences of the religion are good, and reasonable, then who cares if they think that the Invisible Pink Unicorn is putting holes in their socks to remind them to be humble?
But what if the Bible is often stated by archaeologists to be the most accurate archaeological textbook? There are literally thousands of obscure facts in the Bible (name of the king's eunuch, etc) backed up by archaeological evidence. Most of these were argued to be false at one time or another.
I'm not necessarily referring to the Bible here... the stronger evidence on this front is against the Book of Mormon.
As for the Bible, Nazareth didn't exist during Jesus's lifetime.
Also, it is definitely possible to prove a negative. I can prove that there are no lions in my refrigerator, no elephants hiding behind my couch, and no dead zombie typing this comment, to most people's satisfaction, for starters.
The lions in your refrigerator are microscopic. The elephants hiding behind your couch are invisible, and you actually are a dead zombie. You just don't realize it, because of a psychological hallucination that you are not actually dead.
Prove there is a god
I'm willing to bet all I own that neither will ever be successfully claimed. You need faith to accept either to be met.
Well, proving that there are no gods at all is impossible, as "there exists some form of god" is an unfalsifiable claim.
However, proving that specific gods don't exist is a whole lot easier when they make outrageous claims that do not conform to the world that we witness today. For instance, if their holy book ascribes cities that have no archaeological evidence to suggest that they ever existed, or did not exist at the time described.
Prove man is NOT responsible for Global Warming.
WTF is it with Science these days where it wants people to prove a negative, something which I was explicitly told over and over again in class is impossible.
Except that we've proven that Caloric Theory does not accurately explain reality.
"Proving a negative" is a complicated topic, but falsifying a theory is not. In order to claim the reward specified, one would have to prove that the quantum theory as we understand it is false, by demonstrating a falsifying experiment. I don't know if that's particularly possible...
the whole point of defoliation was to prevent the enemy from having any sort of cover. how is that not a weapon or an instrument of warfare?
"Instrument of warfare"? Sure, it's an instrument, and it was used in warfare. However NOT a weapon. Again, a weapon is designed to kill people. Sure, I can go fishing with a gun, but that's not what it's designed for, and it won't be particularly good at it. 2,4,5-T was designed to kill weeds, it just happened to also be good at killing leaves, and things that produce leaves in the jungles of Vietnam, and was retasked to kill that stuff. It was not retasked to the purpose of killing people directly, and thus was not a weapon.
Your whole argument that it was used to kill people indirectly is totally fucking bullshit, because then EVERYTHING that the military owned was a weapon. <satire> MRE? That's a weapon! Because it fed soldiers, who used the energy to kill people! Lucky rabbits foot? It raises moral of a soldier, so they can kill more people! </satire> At that point, the definition that you suggest for "weapon" becomes worthless, because it applies to everything that anyone in the military has.
its like saying that helicopters are not weapons. they only enable the planning and use of weapons. well, fine, technically, guns arent even weapons, they dont kill people - bullets kill people.
Helicopters and herbicides have uses beyond just killing people. Any tool can be used to facilitate in the death of other human beings, but "weapon" is typically explicitly reserved for tools that were designed with the intent of killing people.
Besides, as toxic as Agent Orange was/is, it would make a really shitty chemical weapon... kills insanely slowly... better to use mustard gas. Far more efficient weapon that...
Well of course, we inherited this whacked Common Law system from those morons. We should have given them the finger in yet another way back in 1776 and adopted French Civil Code (or whatever the French were using at the time, as Napoleon hadn't quite come along yet to make his revisions). The idea of a court system where the judges and the lawyers are two entirely separate professions, going to two separate schools, makes a lot of sense when you see the shenanigans going on in the US legal system.
I definitely agree... although everyone now tends to be using the German Civil Code, as it's very well engineered... (stereotyping not intended)
In the civilian world, if you have meetings every day, it's because your boss or some other important idiot is a bottleneck in the process and they need daily reinforcement of common sense, at the expense of department productivity.
Alternatively, it's a great way for a manager to enforce office hours on their should-be-flexible-schedule programmers if they set it early in the morning, but then that just bottles down again to "a manager who insists on micromanaging everything, and being a bottleneck".
Are you saying that's the way it works in practise? Not saying it isn't, and hoping that it is, but I thought your justice system was completely wack, in practise.
Yes, this is the way it works in practice in US Common Law.
US law might be whacked, but it's still not really any more whacked than UK law. I mean, at least here the truth is an absolute defense to defamation.
Ambiguity, when it comes to working with a litigious company, is not a good thing.
Ambiguity, when dealing with a boilerplate contract, is always interpreted as strictly against the drafting party as possible...
I'm impressed with your tenacity in attempting to explain something I would have expected to be easily understood by this community.
See, it's funny because it's true... oww... I made myself sad.
so therefore it is relevant. without the 'emotional rhetoric' about the threat of the communist chinese, the domino effect, etc etc etc, there would have been no need to kill a million people with various weapons like agent orange. so there would have been no need to manufacture it.
What the fuck are you going on about? Agent Orange was a DEFOLIANT, and 2,4,5-T is an HERBICIDE, and was used on corn crops to prevent weeds for a period of time.
Agent Orange was NOT intended to be a chemical weapon, it just happened to be ubiquitously contaminated with TCDD, which was a highly toxic dioxin.
Monsanto has not sued any farmer for unintentional cross-pollination that they have not unreasonably exploited.
Ohhhh, now I know why you were angry from the "hype and emotional rhetoric" of saying this chemical was an active ingredient in Agent Orange.
... 2,4,5-T is bad. TCDD that it is likely contaminated is even worse. I think that Monsanto should have to pay to clean up wherever it can be shown that this chemical is in significant occurrence. Do you know why? Because it's bad shit, and companies should be held accountable for their actions.
But Monsanto is not any more evil than any other corporation, and they have not unethically sued people when those people have had no fault.
I'm a pedantic bitch, if you don't like me complaining about unnecessary emotional rhetoric, then state shit clearly, and if you don't like me correcting facts, then GET THE RIGHT THE FIRST TIME.
There are a whole lot of reasons to hate Monsanto (the same as any corporation), but hyperbolic rhetoric is not a good reason to hate Monsanto.
Except that in this case, because it is an ACTIVE ingredient AND toxic the association is valid and not hype.
Sounds like you are backpedaling.
I'm not backpedaling, because I never made the claim that 2,4,5-T was not dangerous or toxic. Just that the article wasn't clear about what the actual dangers of 2,4,5-T actually are, and just said, "it's an ingredient of Agent Orange!"
I suppose you can use both a herbicide and an herbicide, but in the same sentence? How did that H become silent all of the sudden?
Because the "h" sound is nondeterministic in English as to if it's an "a" or an "an".
Evil filthy scumbag bastards who sue farmers after the cross-pollination from Monsanto corn caused their patented genes to show up in the farmers crops. Yes, they will sue a farmer because of an act of nature. If the devil founded a company, it would probably look something like Monsanto.
Yeah, fuck Monsanto for suing a farmer for spraying his whole crop with RoundUp after a cross-pollination incident, which resulted in only the RoundUp resistant cross-pollinated stock surviving... That farmer was just practicing selective breeding, right?! Right?!
Monsanto has not sued any farmer for unintentional cross-pollination that they have not unreasonably exploited.
Monsanto is suing organic farmers because they can find some of the gmo plants on their fields.
Monsanto has not sued anyone who has not intentionally exploited GMO genetic material in their plants. The primary example was a guy who was growing something, and when he suspected that some GMO round-up resistance had pollinated his crop, HE SPRAYED THE WHOLE CROP with RoundUp, and low and behold, only the GMO contaminant survived, which he then used to plant his next crop.
Monsanto does not sue farmers who have incidental cross-pollination.
Doesn't that give enough info for a summary though? The average reader knows it was harmful - caused cancer. Most people don't know a whole lot about chemistry or Agent Orange. So by linking it to Agent Orange (and its a good link not a bogus link) people understand that its dangerous and can go look up if they want details.
But just because it was "a part of Agent Orange" does not mean that it was the reason why Agent Orange was so toxic in the first place. Water is "a part of Agent Orange", and thus my satirical comment that kicked off this thread. The fact that Agent Orange was so toxic and dangerous does not mean that each and every individual part of Agent Orange were harmful.
Explaining that it is the principle reason WHY Agent Orange was so toxic, would have been far better, and would have just been a few more words additional, rather than even the whole sentence that I've called for earlier.
It's harmful because it causes some of the same problems that Agent Orange caused?
Exactly, and the TCDD that 2,4,5-T turns into under heat was responsible for Agent Orange being so dangerously toxic (as opposed to "reasonably" toxic). But there is no explanation that an all but ubiquitous 2,4,5-T contaminant was the principle chemical for why Agent Orange was so dangerous.
Just explaining that it was the principle cause of why Agent Orange was so toxic would have been better than the simple and uninformative, "it's a part of Agent Orange".
I don't disagree with you, but going into that level of chemistry is probably going to make even NPR listeners/readers glaze over. Using the AO shortcut might not be the best way to present the argument from a scientific point, but since they're presenting to a popular audience I don't personally have a huge issue with it.
It would cause their listeners/readers to glaze over to say "2,4,5-T is one of the two herbicides in Agent Orange, and the one that breaks down into the extremely toxic dioxins that made Agent Orange so much more harmful than it was original designed to be"?
I have heard some people say that NPR listeners/readers are retarded idiots, but that would have to take the cake. I mean, we're not talking about explaining complicated chemistry here, we're talking "there are two active chemical ingredients" and "when heated chemical A turns into chemical B, which is even more toxic". That's the kind of chemistry that anyone can actually understand.
And even then, it works out to be one sentence of content in an entire article. I've heard deeper explanations for how infectious beetles kill trees on NPR...
Gr... NO! That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that if this were an article about ANY OTHER CHEMICAL, there would be a short sentence IN THE ARTICLE (which I've already read... SCARY ME! I RTFA'ed) explaining why the chemical is harmful and why it is harmful. This article short-circuits all of that with: "it's a part of Agent Orange!"
Of course herbicides are toxic, they're kind of designed to be. But just how toxic is it? What makes it such a big deal? Why is it that this chemical made Agent Orange so toxic in the first place?
We're not all fucking chemical experts who understand and know everything about Agent Orange before we even read the article. Give us BACKGROUND, give us EXPLANATIONS. It takes one god-damn sentence out of an entire article to explain this shit to someone who has never actually learned anything about Agent Orange beyond "it was used in Vietnam to defoliate, and ended up causing serious harm to our soldiers."
A quick check on Wikipedia shows that 2,4,5-T made up about 50% of Agent Orange (the other 50% was another herbicide), and 2,4,5-T is considered the more hazardous of the two, so in this case the reference as a component of Agent Orange seems quite legitimate and so is linking the emotional connotations of Agent Orange to the compound in question.
But the article doesn't EXPLAIN any of this. That's the issue I had with the article. It doesn't explain why it's harmful on its own, and just relies upon "it's a part of Agent Orange" to establish that it is harmful. Well, big fucking whoop. I want to know why the chemical itself is harmful, you know, like if it were any other chemical in the world, the press about the chemical would be explaining just why the chemical is toxic, and why it's dangerous. Instead, this article sees a shortcut, and just jumps on it: "It's a part of Agent Orange!"