That's a concern for vegans, though frankly, there's really no such thing as a vegan--just people who like to pretend they aren't using animal products. That said, there are occasionally (not always) nutritive merits to organic food--not so much when it comes to plants, but specifically with meats. Factory farmed animals/eggs/milk are lower in omega-3 fatty acids because their diets are formulated for cost rather than nutrition--whereas free range animals have a much more balanced diet.

Of course we could easily fix this by throwing some flax seeds in with the corn and soy. We don't really have to get rid of modern farming techniques to get healthier food, just revise them a bit and perhaps spend a tad more on feed. But, that's only going to happen if their is consumer demand for it and many of the people who feel strongly have essentially "opted-out" of the voting process by becoming vegans/vegetarians. We could address a lot of the complaints vegans have about how we treat animals in this country by simply having an "ethical meat eating" movement to replace veganism.

Clearly it's not, because you make this about the technology instead of how its used. Round-up resistant corn is only a sped up version of what nature would have delivered to us eventually. The issue isn't the corn, but rather the fact that we've taken it as an excuse to use way more round-up than is even remotely reasonable. The pesticide use is a problem--but you're not going after that, you're going after a technology that made it possible--a technology than can just as easily be the solution rather than the problem if used properly.

Not only does the anti-gm crowd seem to want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but they actively campaign against the *baby* and pretty much ignore the bathwater. It makes no sense.

Unless you're out picking wild berries and digging up tubers in the forrest, you're eating GMO even if you're eating organic. Just because the previous technologies for genetically modifying an organism weren't as sophisticated as modern ones, doesn't mean the results are any less freakish. After all, we spent a lot more time turning an every day grass into the genetic freak corn we know and love to use for pretty much every aspect of our diet. Hell, the modifications we've made since using modern gene splicing techniques are paltry by comparison.

People need to get over their irrational fear of GM foods. If we all eat organic, we're all going to starve eventually.

And Amazon has been collecting taxes from me for ages. What the hell were those taxes?

The free market is magic. It's powered by unicorns. Have some faith.

The EU is investigating Google because large corporate targets are a good way to channel the electorates anger safely away from the people who want to be elected. If its going to be us vs them, we need a them--and European's natural distrust of large corporations makes Google a natural target. Ignore that they flat out deny doing most of the things they're accused of by various EU investigative bodies--and there's no evidence to suggest they do either.

It's been pointed out that Americans trust corporations and not the government, while Europeans trust the government and not corporations. Personally I'm not a huge fan of either, but its pretty clear to me that the their case against Google is a bunch of nonsense. They've got people freaking out over street view but not over live video cameras on your street corner? Give me a break, Europe.

Except that Microsoft has a phone OS and Bing is it's default search. So Microsoft does do this, and nobody has raised a peep about it. Google is the new Microsoft, for no other reason than because they're big. Corporations are bad. Big ones must therefore be worse. It's really quite simple.

I was with you before that, but . . . what? That is some weird logical gymnastics, my friend.

She detested religion, and yet she created a cult with herself at it's center. Oh, sure it's not your typical cult, but it was pretty clearly a cult.

I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they just didn't want the traffic Slashdot might bring, but I'm guessing that's not really the reason they took it down.

And, IIRC, didn't the Supreme Court recently rule that an AT&T provision in their contracts did not violate the law? If you are an AT&T customer, your lack of right to sue them (for any reason, no less) has apparently been upheld by the courts. Your sole method of redress is binding arbitration with, as I recall, some sort of liability cap.

If kids eat them. It sounds like the issue here is not that the magnets are particularly dangerous (i never ate any pennies, and I doubt most kids do)--but rather that parents don't perceive/anticipate the danger and seek medical help before a situation forms. If your kid drank a cup of bleach, you would, I hope, immediately take him to the hospital. People just need to understand the same mindset applies to small powerful magnets.

And, just as you would bleach, don't put them where a small child may get to them. It's really a pretty simple fix.

I'm sure its *a* factor, at least--but yeah, there's probably some price fixing going on as well using the flood as cover.

Wait, so you have simultaneous price hikes on Peanut Butter *and* Bananas? This seems like a conspiracy to me.

Hard drives fail. A lot. At about 3% per year according to one study. They're one of the, if not the, most likely to fail components. Given the moving parts and speeds they move, that's not completely unexpected. In fact, if you count heat issues caused by broken fans, I'll bet you could trace a *majority* of hardware issues to moving parts.

You may have been lucky lately, but that's all it is. You're a statistical outlier. Hard drives are just not very reliable at the best of times, no matter the brand.