That's silly. You're free to create a market demand so that you are the one paying for it though, but don't drag the rest of us into it.

Considering the rate of adoption among farmers, maybe you should reconsider your take on that one. Reduced insecticide use, better weed management, no-till promotion, saving the Hawaiian papaya industry, and higher yield are all proven and well documented benefits.

The silliness of both situations was kind of the point. I know the difference between theory the scientific term and theory the common vernacular. You can be intentionally misleading with accurate terms, just like misuse of food labeling can be misleading even if accurate.

If pharmaceuticals and GMOs were in any way comparable, you might have a point. However, they are not.

There is about the GE crops Whole Foods is always on about. If I say "Everyone deserves to know to think for themselves! Just put a label the [blank] on the [blakn]!' is the missing work evolution/textbooks, or GMOs/foods? They're both part of unscientific, regressive movements. Neither is the main driver, but they're both moving in bad directions.

I'd love to know the causative mechanism behind this. I mean, its complicated, but I'm guessing your reaction is either do to factors not directly involving the organic growing methods, or its psychological.

It irks me that they also encourage it. I know a guy barely making ends meet who shops at the local overpriced natural/organic/non-GMO store because he is afraid that doing otherwise would be a health hazard. I once seriously heard he say he only buys 'non-chemical sugar.' They might sell some nice produce, but stores like that also sell fear.

There's hundreds of studies on the topic. You're pulling the same 'just one transition fossil' trope. In fact, that line would fit even closer in a anti-vaccine argument.

You could apply that to anything. No hybrids by my heirlooms? No red corn by my yellow corn? No warty squash by my smooth squash? Your reasoning is highly selective.

...or your salt.

I disagree. In my opinion, the IP issues are merely an attempt to move the goalpost, so that anti-science becomes the much more reasonable anti-corporation. For example, the Honeycrisp apple used to be patented. The patent expired, but in that time the breeding program was able to recoup their costs and make enough to develop new varieties, such as the fabulous SnowSweet. Who complained? No one, that's who, because the system worked, and GMOs weren't involved. Now Monsanto patents a variety of soy, which I might remind you goes off patent before the end of this year, uses that money to produce new things like DroughtGard, a drought tolerant corn (assuming that works, independent data not yet in), and that's bad? They have a monopoly you say? Tell that to BASF, Syngenta, Dow Agrosciences, Pioneer, Bayer Cropscience, Vilmorin, and all the other small seed companies. Of course, given that less that 2% of the population is actively connected to agriculture, are you really surprised that we don't have a huge number of companies? Hell, everyone owns computers and there's really only two major companies selling operating systems so I'd say the seed world is doing pretty damned good.

I'm tired of defending them (if I was into that I could easily be working for them and be living much nicer than I do now), but I wish people would stop with the bullshit about them. Plant patents are good. Sorry, you might not agree that the people improving the plants that help make your lifestyle possible deserve to make a living themselves, but they do. You think plant breeding is easy? You think genetic engineering is simple? It isn't! Ever had a pluot? Ever had a really nice watermelon or ear of sweet corn? Years of someone's dedicated effort went into that. You want to attack Monsanto? Fine, whatever, go ahead, but try to stick to the real and the rational.

Great, now Syngenta's GMO sweet corn is labeled and Monsanto's non-GMO broccoli is not. You do realize the topic is more complicated they you're presenting it yes?

You mean the ones anti-GMO groups routinely lie about? The one where no farmer has ever been sued for accidental cross pollination despite the lies to the contrary? The one that has allowed them to recoup losses to reinvest in new projects like Vistive Gold soybeans and DroughtGard corn, the exact thing patent laws are supposed to do? The one that basically all plant breeders use to fund themselves without controversy (you think your non-GMO crops are not patented? Think again). The one where their first GE soy goes off patent this year? What exactly do you find wrong with it?

I want textbooks to be labeled as identifying evolution as just a theory. It's true, you know. Evolution is just a theory, disagree with that? Then why not label it, just for information's sake? Or, do you think that selectively deciding what gets labeled and what does not is a deceptive and biased lie by omission? Most people have no idea what goes into their food, what things breeders do, and you want to irrationally single out one aspect, one that is the easiest to identify (corn, soy, cotton, canola, alfalfa, sugar beet, summer squash, and papaya are the only species that are GE) and call that informative? Instead of spreading education the pro-labeling people just want a label that says nothing other than how a crop was improved, completely ignoring the nature of the modification and rational behind it. In other words, a label that contains no information. I tell you I modified my computer; tell me exactly what I did to it. Can you do that? If not, my statement was not informative, was is? That pro-labeling people push for something that is the target of fearmongering, that you know damned well will be taken to be a bad thing if singled out, without attempting to inform or educate or give context should tell you something.

I don't buy organic because, among other reasons (promoting socially unsustainable rigid pre-scientific pre-enlightenment appeal to nature type dogma being the main one), I prefer the more intensive farming practices. You might feel good supporting less intensive practices, and that's fine, but there's a reason organic production is not a universal practice; among other things, lower yield per acre, which is to say, more land requirements to produce the same amount of food. If everyone went all natural there'd be no nature left.

I sort of miss Clippy and the other Office Assistants. Sure, I never used them and they mostly just got in the way, but I still kind of liked them

Yeah, I'm sure their utter hatred for GE seed is why they keep buying and using it.

You mean like seedless bananas and seedless watermelons? Surly those were made by nature, since sterility & seedlessness are such an advantageous traits. Or corn, which has its seeds encased by a husk preventing dispersal. Yep, a product of nature right there.

Even if what you were saying wasn't an appeal to nature, the same nonsense spouted by every snakeoil salesman hawking naturopathic cure-alls I might add, you're still wrong. Everything you eat has been dramatically changed by human hands. Strawberries? Human creation. Wheat? Human creation. Look it up, neither of those existed in nature prior to humans making them. Broccoli, cabbage, kale, kohlrabi, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts are the same damned species, selected for centuries by humans. Ever seen a wild carrot? Look up Queen Anne's lace. Same thing, not that you'd recognize it. Carrots weren't even orange until a few centuries ago. Wild apples are small and sour, wild pears are gritty, wild cherries are just bad, wild grapes are seedy, wild tomatoes are tiny, wild potatoes are mildly toxic, the first beans to be eaten had to be popped like popcorn. Even the original corn was not sweet.

The notion that science can do better isn't hubris. It's well proven fact that you take unknowingly enjoy the benefits of every day. The only arrogance I ever see when dealing with this topic are people who know bugger all about plants, agriculture, or genetics, yet still think they know better than those who actually work with plants. It's the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.

No one is saying that Latin would not be useful in learning other romance languages, but I do not see how understanding various quirks of etymology (ex. forêt used to have an S, just like English forest still does) is sufficiently valuable to merit learning an entirely separate language, even if it is the ancestral language, as opposed to simply learning those various things that it would help you with. Learning Latin as an aid, unless you are learning the languages to study linguistics, while interesting from an intellectual standpoint sounds very inefficient from a practical one. I'd much rather use other useful languages as my guide. Even if we make the assumption that the cross language benefits are substantially less, I fail to see how the usefulness in terms of communication applications would not compensate for whatever is lost in terms of learning guidance.

Once upon a time we called avoiding eating foods like that eating healthy, not whatever fad diet is in vogue this year.

HFCS is treated basically the same as sugar, just don't overdo it.

And there's lots of evidence that any more than moderate amounts of meat are pretty bad for you, but 'no bacon' doesn't sell fad diets very well.