The code you write can be compiled on multiple platforms, but the development is done in windows. Or you think xbox/ps3/wii dev is done using an IDE on the console? ;)

Well, I use it for multi-platform C++ development and IMHO it is the best IDE for that language out there.

Compared to *any* other common energy source, coal is by far the worse.
Oh, and a quick google search returned this. Apparently, filter or not, Germany still made into the top 10.

D'oh!!

Is that perhaps because you're extending the life of extremely polluting coal plants?

Well apparently not, and not for lack of trying. But why would you think cross-breeding is preferable? It would be a shotgun approach, since you could get the resistance as well as another set of undesired side-effects.

Besides, it's two viruses (CMV and TSWV) which are currently threatening that tomato. For the first we have the other variety. For the other we managed to identify a few genes that could give resistance. Would that be okay?

Not necessarily. Take the "San Marzano" tomato: the common and most appreciated variety is currently threatened by a virus. There's another one, of the same type, that has the resistance, but it is not as.. delicious. We could just carry the gene of the resistance across and eat your cake too, but nooooo! It would be playing God! Billions would die! Kittens would cry!

I understand there are risks in some of the GM techniques, but such a wide and blanket prohibition makes no sense.

In Soviet Russia... maybe. This Russia? Unlikely.

GMO != Monsanto. There's a lot of free and publicly available research on GM, but as long as most of people will consider it evil a-priori, only evil companies will take advantage of it.

What part of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_breeding#Classical_plant_breeding you don't understand?

I have heard this argument a million times and it still does not convince me. What makes GM particularly threatening compared to crop artificially selected via shotgun approaches, e.g. crossbreading?

And the madness is that from the activist POV there's no distinction between a single gene flip and a full fledged injection from other species! As long as it's made in a lab, then it's "potentially harmful".

This. A million times.

relevant?