Comment Re:The Republicans that rule this country... (Score 0) 272
liberal logic at its finest
"... you are cleared for take off."
Can't beat the rush even if your ride is just a little Cessna or Piper.
Cheers,
Dave
That's called bad slashdot submitters and equally bad editors. It's nothing new. I think it's pretty well established at this point that you take slashdot summaries with a pinch of salt (especially the ones about graphene.)
I'm anti-GMO for the main reason that it's not been proven "safe". Something about creating "frankenfood" (what else can you really call it when you're combining genes from different organisms or even those completely fabricated in a laboratory?)
Except nobody is combining genes from different organisms. What you're reading about is experimental research done to understand what the genes do, but that is never made into actual food that lands on your plate.
There really is no such thing as "frankenfood." In fact it doesn't even qualify as a myth, rather it's just a lie invented by the dietary fanatics I speak of. The ones who perpetuate it know it isn't true, rather they just in principle are spreading shit because they don't like it being on the market. Some of them have a financial interest in it not being on the market, namely because they're in the business of selling organic food, which makes HUGE profit margins.
After all, we thought DDT was the be all and end all all purpose insecticide, until decades later - gee, that stuff is hampering the survival of a bird or two. Or what about Freon?
Well let me say this much: GMO foods have very few modifications made. Generally the count is about 15 genes. Considering that a given plant can have millions of genes, this is a very tiny number. Basically this small change makes the plant resistant to glyphosate, and it is inspired by other plants that are already resistant to it (but isn't copied from them, rather the gene sequences are engineered in the literal sense.)
Now consider that when a plant naturally reproduces, literally thousands of genes are mutated in ways completely unknown. Absolutely 100% we have no idea what these mutations do. 100% completely unknown "tampering" done by nature on a very massive scale compared to what GMO does deliberately. Yet the organic crowd insists that these thousands of mutations are harmless, whereas a very tiny deliberate change, the effects of which we know precisely what they do, that GMO does is supposed to be considered dangerous? How the HELL is that even logical?
There really is not any compelling reason to be opposed to GMO plants.
One thing I can caution you about, as a med student, is to question where the guidelines for the "correct" cholesterol came from. Hint: it's probably an echo chamber, and not tied to scientific evidence.
And this may be true. To be honest I'm not overly concerned about the cholesterol, rather my bigger concern was the triglycerides being too high. The statin drugs are regulating that rather well.
Besides, lovastatin literally comes from an oyster mushroom. You can literally eat oyster mushroom (about 2 grams according to my calculation) and get the same effect.
by are still in "hypertension" according to the experts echo chamber definitions. I mean, obviously they aren't, if their blood pressure is causing orthostatic hypotension.
I have hypertension myself, which I happen to know shouldn't be there (and I should be taking medication for it) because of damaged renal function. Since my kidneys are impaired, the renin cycle is thrown out of whack, which means my blood pressure is rising higher than it's supposed to be. Again, IGAn is the root cause of this. There are potential medications for correcting this (ARBs to be specific) but they're still considered experimental.
If that was the case (which it isn't) then pharma wouldn't ever manufacture antibiotics, or any number of drugs which permanently remove acute conditions. Instead they'd sell a treatment that never gets rid of the underlying cause.
Sorry but you're just subscribing to yet another bullshit conspiracy theory, only to a lesser extent, but bullshit all the same.
It doesn't seem to me that anybody ever claimed it was a cure. So what point are you trying to get across?
That's not exactly what I said.
I quoted your words to the letter, so of course it is.
Workers don't necessarily do better because a company's profits went from 30% to 60%. Not any more, at least.
Of course they do. You're only saying it doesn't because it doesn't come in the form of a raise, and there's a good reason for that: Salary is merely required to keep an employee; numerous research shows that increasing it doesn't increase their happiness or their productivity, rather it just helps to ensure that they work for you instead of somebody else.
Instead it comes in the form of long term job security, increased number of workers to meet demand (which means more jobs) and as a result of that, potential promotions (i.e. we need more people to supervise these new workers, and typically your veteran employees are better suited to this than new hires.)
Although I'm not in management (I fancy myself as more of a Mr. Spock than a Captain Kirk) I do understand management and the reason for decisions like these. You can play armchair general all you want, but you are very much wrong here.
Start your own business and see if you'll do any better (which is actually rather easy to do these days, in spite of the typical slashdot doom and gloom; in fact entreprenuerism is very strong in the US, which happens to be one of the major five factors of production right along with land, capital, labor, and knowledge.)
We now have data on NAFTA, CAFTA and other "free trade" agreements. They all resulted in an upward redistribution of wealth.
Since NAFTA has passed, exports to Mexico have increased 150%, and exports to Canada have increased 66%. It seems to have exceeded its goals to me, making it a success.
But anyways, everybody has had increased wealth across the board. Maybe the rich have gained more wealth than anybody else (I don't know whether or not they have, but I'll just take your word for it,) but the poor and middle class are certainly wealthier than before, that I do know for a fact.
You're probably talking about distribution of income and not wealth. That is, you're talking about money. Money is not wealth. Wealth is material possessions.
Since this is slashdot and we like technology here, let's consider technology: Back in the 80's, only the filthy rich had car phones upon which they paid a fat per minute rate for, big screen TVs, and personal computers.
Today even the poor have smartphones with unlimited minutes that fit in your pocket, let alone the trunk of your car. The big screen TVs the poor own today make those big screens from the 80's look like a total piece of shit with their vastly superior resolution and color accuracy, in addition to smaller size. Personal laptops which most rich people couldn't even afford then are now so cheap you even see homeless people walking around with them.
Also consider that in the 80's, there were still some people that were so poor that they were starving, even in America. That problem doesn't exist anymore. (You pretty much have to choose to starve these days. Even if you're homeless, food is so cheap now that organizations can give it away without a second though.)
In light of the above, I'm having a difficult time seeing just how badly the poor have been harmed by NAFTA. Have the rich benefited? Maybe, but why is that such a bad thing? The reality here is that you choose have a shitty opinion of life (and yes, that is very much your own choice to make,) so you choose to find things to be negative about, even though by every measure life has become easier for you today than it was 30 years ago. It's a pretty destructive thing to do, but so long as it doesn't harm me or anybody else you are welcome to continue along your path of self destruction.
The best things in life go on sale sooner or later.
