I like your point, but the "Broken Window" theory is an false argument. The gist being that if you break a window, the glass maker must make a new pane of glass, the delivery man must carry the window, the carpenter must install the window, etc... and thus economic value is created by the breaking of the window.

It is false because the economy has not created new value, instead significant effort is being spent on existing value. The opportunity cost here is that the same effort could have been spent on creating new value and causing economic growth.

-Rick

I'm not sure about that.

As a rough estimate, a 3 credit hour course is ~45 total hours of class time over a 15 week semester. Or about 3 hours a week. Code Bootcamps (the USMC did their Comp Sci training in this way back in the 90's) are 40+ class hours per week. Or roughly the equivalent of 13+ simultaneous college courses. Over a 19 week boot camp, the student gets as much class time as 17 university classes.

To complete a university BS, you're looking at ~120 total credits. Figure almost half of those are non-major focused classes, you're only looking at 60 total CS credits. Which works out to be roughly 20 classes.

So the total class time difference between a 19 week boot camp and a full 4-year degree, in terms of comp-sci classwork only, is roughly 3 classes.

And I'm pretty sure we could knock off 3 university classes that are great for more theoretical knowledge, but of significantly less importance to entry level contractors. I mean, writing assembly and creating your own compiler are fun and educational projects. But in almost 20 years in LOB software development, I haven't ever encountered a situation where that knowledge has enhanced my ability to do my job or to create quality software.

-Rick

"So, cover the entire planet with corn for thousands of years and your single desired gene has a decent chance of appearing spontaneously."

Correct, if we were looking for a truly spontaneous event, you are absolutely correct. But we aren't. We're looking for a mutation as a result of a intentional change in environment, or as an existing trait that is intentional breed for.

If we are looking for a selectively bread Corn plant that is roundup resistant, averages 1.3+ ears per stalk, has a good flavor, has an acceptable growing period, and is disease/drought resistant for the regional climate, it's not like we're going to wait for the perfect kernel somewhere out in the 'corn world' to just by chance have all of those traits.

In fact, all of those traits except for the roundup resistance had already been developed through selective breeding long before scientists got involved.

If we take a field of non-GMO corn, and apply a light spraying of Roundup on it, much of the corn will die. But odds are some of the stalks will survive due to as you put it, "a relatively minor mutation to one or more existing genes which makes the plant more resistant". If we breed those surviving plants together, odds are that gene will propagate on, along with some minor mutations. And if we again spray the field with roundup, we will again kill off those without resistance. This is the exact same function whether we apply it to weeds or to corn.

Keep this up for a couple of generations and we have a roundup resistant corn plant without any scientists involved. From there, it's just a mater of selectively breeding back in a combination of taste/resilience/yield if any were lost over the previous selective breeding.

Spontaneously, yeah, incredibly unlikely to ever occur. Realistically though, a person could go out and do this in a small field over the next 20 years and have a product ready to ship.

-Rick

"given the extraordinarily low rate of mutations"

"low" is a relative term. In the case of corn, it's roughly 5.1 * 10^-5. Which sounds pretty low until you consider that each stalk will have 1-2 ears, and each ear has ~1000 kernels. And roughly 30,000 stalks per acre. Which means you're looking at dozens of mutations per acre. Yeah, processing that many kernels is going to be a royal PITA, but that's why we have undergrads ;) Even if you're just looking at grown plants, you're likely to see a mutation once every few acres.

"You are also ignoring the fact that in the time it takes for a new gene to be bred into a large portion of a species"

It is actually exactly the same either way. There isn't a massive assembly line of seed modification that alters 1 seed at a time. A select number of seeds are modified and breed in order to create the homozygous parents of the hybrid. As long as those seeds do not cross breed, you simply continue breeding that specified plant until you have sufficient quantities to sell (of both parents combined). It doesn't matter if the first seeds are from genetic manipulation or selective breeding.

"Contrast that with the ability to, say, insert bacterial genes into corn - something only possible through genetic modification"

I disagree with this assertion. It is possible through the sheer randomness of life for this same genetic change to occur. Again, I point to the existence of Roundup resistant weeds. They have by random mutation and environment changes developed similar genetic traits that closely match the intentional changes we made to the corn.

We could take the exact same approach to corn. Take non-Roundup ready corn, spray it with a small amount of Roundup, the more susceptible plants will die, the less susceptible plants will propagate. Next cycle, repeat the process, upping the dosage slightly. You will over a matter of a few generations wind up with a corn plant that is Roundup resistant. The problem though, is that you have no idea what other genetic traits have been propagated. Your corn may now have a longer growing period, may taste bad, may not be as disease resistant, etc... so you will need to take your new "non-GMO" Roundup resistant corn, and breed it back into plants that have your other desired traits. So after another pile of generations you'll wind up with a plant that is Roundup resistant, tastes good, grows well in your climate, and is resistant to drought/disease/etc...

Or instead of making it your life's goal of breeding corn, we can use technology to see what is the genetic difference between various Roundup resistant corn plants and non-resistant plants that have other traits we want. And in a period of just a few years you can have that same plant that would otherwise take a good bit of your life to breed.

At the end of the day, they are the exact same plant (genetically speaking). The only difference is whether you used science from the 1800's vs the 2000's.

There are risks to GMOs, specifically the homogenization of crops. For example, what we call a Banana today is not what our parents called a Banana decades ago. The banana propagates as a clone, exact genetic copies of itself. So if a disease or climate change occurs that effects 1 plant, it effect ALL plants. This is a risk with GMO as we wind up with far less genetic diversity by planting only the highest yielding seed lines. A single blight could wipe out masses of corn fields. But GMO doesn't cause such weaknesses, poor planning does. It takes all kinds, be it GMO, selective breeding, heirlooms, etc... bio diversity is a good thing.

-Rick

I would argue that a more technically accurate term is unnecessary because they would both describe the exact same thing: the breeding and cultivation of a mutated of spring of an existing crop.

Mutations are constantly occurring, even when the organism has evolved to the point where it is no longer in need of additional mutations to continue its existence.

The difference between us manually manipulating a gene and naturally selecting a set of plants with the desired mutations boils down to a level of effort.

For example, we can manipulate the corn genome to make it more likely to produce two ears of corn per plant than 1. Or, we can go through millions of plants until we find a handful that all have that exact same mutation, and breed them together.

The end result is the same, we have a new strain of corn with a specific deviation from it's ancestors that propagates a trait that we find desirable. Whether we hire a handful of scientists to make that change, or hundreds of thousands of undergrads to find the mutation, at the end of the day it's the exact same outcome.

This is also why we now have Roundup-resistant weeds. Plants continue to mutate, and just like the corn that we have modified to be resistant to Roundup, after billions of weeds have been sprayed by roundup, the only ones to survive are those that have a Roundup resistant mutation. Get a couple of those close enough together and next thing you know, you have a new weed that Roundup won't kill. And no one put crab grass under the microscope to make it happen.

We've been doing "selective cross breeding" of completely unrelated organisms for generations. The technical term for it is "hybrid", or when specifically talking about plants "Heterosis". This is why the corn seeds you eat are not the same corn seeds you plan. If you were to plant the hybrid seeds, you would not get the same plant. Similarly, my apple trees cross pollinate between themselves, even between species, resulting in Hawaiian-Honey Crisp hybrids. If I were to plant one of those apple seeds, I would not get a Hawaiian nor a Honey Crisp, I would get some random jumble of combination of genetic traits from both lines. The resulting tree could produce no fruit, or fruit that can't hold up to the local climate, or require more resources, etc...

The more you learn about crop science, biology, and genetics, the less scary the existence of GMO becomes. Now, the business processes, homogenosis, and idiots who don't understand how to efficiently run a farm with minimizing fertilization and herbicide usage are all serious issues that need to be worked on. The general fear of the GMO boogie man though, is just wasted heat from the FUD machine.

-Rick

"No, the vast majority has two: cable (DOCSIS) and telco (DSL)."

Around my place I get to basically chose between Jack and Shit.

Cable, for which there is exactly 1 player in the regional market, ends it service about 1/4 mile down the road. We are ineligible for cable.

We have DSL, for which there is exactly 1 player in the regional market. The best speed they can offer us maxes out at 1.2 Mbps, even though we pay for "up to 6 Mbps".

We can get WiMax from one of two local competitors, it is roughly the same price as our "6 Mbps" DSL service, but maxes out at ~750 Kbps.

We can get Satellite, for about 5 times the price, and to get a 12 Mbps down pipe, but the lag makes it unusable for gaming.

-Rick

They were using GMO crops, the big difference is that they we doing GMO through selective breeding, hybrid seeds, and a whole lot of guess and hope. Instead of what we think of today where we have the gnome of corn mapped and we can work with specific elements of it to intentionally cause the mutations we want to propagate. 100 years ago people worked to do the same thing, finding mutations that resulted in beneficial traits, then finding ways to breed it consistently.

The existence of hybrid seeds far predates any modern concept of genetic manipulation.

Don't get me wrong, Monsanto has some evil as fuck business processes, but they products they create are exceptionally good at increasing yield and farm stability. Same for most of the big ag players.

-Rick

Love the miner, hate the mine.

I would also argue that the left hasn't lost votes, I would suggest that instead, seeing as how this last election had fewer voters (by % of total eligible population) than any national election since WWII, that it is Democracy that is losing voters, not any specific party.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Comparatively, in 2010, when the GOP won big, they did so with a total margin of ~2.75 million voters. In 2012, when the Dems regained ground, they did so with a margin of ~10.8 million voters. The 2012 election also sported almost 30% more of the eligible population voting.

-Rick

Don't work for me. Most of the dev shops I've managed have been so ridiculously gender unbalanced that there are men who think it is actually acceptable to put up girlie mag art in their cubicles. Seriously, if that is the crap you want to defend, you have no place on my team. If you are unwilling to proactively work for a more balanced work environment, even if it is just telling said bone-head to take down the girlie mags, you don't need to be one of my employees.

Don't join my guild. I don't want to listen to you belittle women on vent. I don't want to hear about how "girls can only heal". I don't want to hear how you "raped" that boss. You know who got raped? Do you know more than 5 women? Odds are at least one of them have been raped. So when you're pwning that boss, and you're about to squeal with delight over "raping" it, just think, it could be your mother, your sister, your wife, your highschool sweet heart, that lady from accounting...

-Rick

Yeah, that is my expectation as well, but I wasn't able to quickly find any number other than their press releases. If I get some time tonight I'll see what I can dig up.

-Rick

Yeah, I remember the math working out to just barely favorable 10 years ago when I was looking at doing my roof. So either I misses a w to kw conversion, or DOW's claim of 12 w per Sq foot is a massive improvement over the technology from 2004.

-Rick

Last time I checked a new roof was going to run me ~$10,000 installed. Going to a solar shingle roof was going to be ~$20,000 for the same roof. But thanks to State and Federal grants, I could shave about $5,000 off that price. Leaving me $5,000 more out of pocket than the standard roof replacement.

In Wisconsin, kWh averages about 14 cents per. So I would need to generate 35,700 kWh either in offsetting my existing usage, or with net metering to pay off the difference. Expected life span should be ~20 years, so I need to do it faster than that.

Solar shingles generate ~12 watts per square foot. Lets ballpark that a 2200 sq foot house, two story, maybe some gables, etc... has roughly 500 sq feet of south facing roof line. That's 6,000 watts at peak performance. Even if you only get 1 hour of peak performance a day, and nothing else, you will effectively generate the full 37.5 mWh in the first week.

Even if DOW is doubling their performance number you'll still crush the target in a month.

Even if the state/federal grants have dried up, you're still looking at paying off the difference in a couple of months.

Even if you don't have net metering, at a US average of 11 mWh per month, you'll pay off the difference in ~3 years.

This is of course based on the assumption that you are either building a NEW roof, or that your existing roof is in need of a full rebuild. If you have a house from the 1990's and are looking at throwing a layer of shingles on top of the original shingles, your base cost is going to be a thousand dollars or less for the same roof. It may still be economically wise to go solar, but it will have a much longer payoff than on new roofs.

-Rick

Years and years ago while working 3rd shift in college I stepped out for a smoke. Two cops, no lights/sirens, lined up at a stop light in the deserted 4-lane manufacturing district street. Both of them waited for the light to turn green, and buried the pedal. At the next stop light, both cops hit their red and blue lights and did a high speed U-turn. They raced all the way up to the original stop light and then drove off at more acceptable speeds.

I ask the other smokers what the heck that was and their response was, "They do that every night."

-Rick

Only in order to cover the cost of labor, a burger goes up in price ~$0.12.

Mean while, the employee gains $3/hr, $24/day, $120/week. That $120/week then gets spent on groceries/entertainment/rent/etc... which increases demand on those products/services.

The increase in demand of the bottom 5% of our workforce getting a nearly 50% raise has an immediate and significant impact on gross revenue and employment demands, which causes that same burger flipping joint to need to hire an additional burger flipper just to keep up with all of the new customers.

This is a true scenario so long as demand lags behind supply (which it currently is). Raising the minimum wage when supply lags demand causes immediate inflation (the same volume of goods are available, but more people have the purchasing requirements, so the purchasing requirements raise).

This has already been proven (many thousands of times over through out history) numerous times in the last few years in the US. One town in Oregon (IIRC) raised their minimum wage to $15. The same companies that screamed bloody murder before the wage hike (a restaurant and a hotel) have actually seen the biggest boosts to their business. States that have already raised their minimum wage north of $10/hr are seeing lower unemployment and faster economic growth than states that are still sitting on the federal minimum wage.

Economics is an incredibly complex field. But there is a pretty clear picture painted by case study after case study: raising the minimum wage does not cause a significant spike in inflation.

-Rick

It doesn't have to be highly accurate for agricultural use. More valuable is the soil samples. Nothing your average joe-farmer is going to spring for, but many of the mega-farms already do this to identify the minimal amount of fertilizer/herbicides to use to maintain a maximum profit margin.

I'm interested in this for another reason though. The state (assuming other states have similar programs) already has recording equipment attached to a truck that they drive every road with. When project requests come in, they can play back the video and do things like count the cracks per mile, look for shoulder erosion, count pot holes, etc... It is a manual process, literally a guy sits in front of a monitor and takes notes as he watches the road roll by.

To be able to take that video and run it through a system like this to get a point cloud, then work out a "smooth road" algorithm to identify deviations... we could take a guy out of the eye-glazing/brain killing job of watching road videos for hours each day to reviewing short segments of deviations, letting him spend more time on putting together proposal responses or proactively notifying municipalities/agencies when there are significant issues that need to be addressed.

-Rick