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Comment Re:I guess he crossed the wrong people (Score 1) 320

Society is run by interest groups. Money creates its own interest groups (e.g., Monsanto), but not every interest group is some type of money. For example, the people who got the UN to ban land-mines -- was just a bunch of average Joes. (Personally I think this is a mistake, because landmine technology has come a long way.) The scientists against Oz are just a bunch of average Joe scientists.

Comment Re:in my opinion this guy is like Jenny McCarthy (Score 4, Insightful) 320

or do you just stand against genetic engineering as we currently practice because you have an ignorant fear of what you don't understand?

I stand against genetically modified crops because I don't want fucking multinationals to own the intellectual property rights over basic foodstuffs.

this is what you represent:

And this is what you represent:

http://www.usnews.com/news/ene...

http://www.wvgazette.com/News/...

http://www.chemicalindustryarc...

Because make no mistake, those are the people who will own those rights. And they're the people saying GMOs will feed the hungry when GMOs are mainly targeted to countries where there are no hungry people.

I personally don't give a shit whether or not GMOs are safe. Hell if I cared about whether or not my food is safe, I wouldn't have eaten that burrito this afternoon from a street cart on Milwaukee Avenue run by the lady with prison tattoos. I care about what kind of sleazy motherfuckers are going to be gaining even greater wealth and political power from their iron grip on our food supply.

And, I'm also more than a little offended by people who say that consumers don't have a right to know the provenance of the food they eat. As if you've become some new arbiter of what information consumers may be allowed to base their purchasing decisions on. If I don't want to buy green socks, I don't have to buy green socks, even though they are every bit as safe as the grey socks I prefer. Does that mean that sock consumers must now not be allowed to see the color of the fucking socks in the package, because after all, green socks are functionally the same as grey socks? And if I don't want to buy GMO food, and you are hell bent against me finding out whether my food is from GMOs, we have a problem. Not because I'm denying some eternal law of Science, but because fuck you, I'm the one paying for that food. My purchasing your food is not some part of the social contract, and Monsanto making profit beyond the dreams of avarice is not part of some social contract, it's a simple consumer transaction. So if I want to know whether that sweet corn has been soaking in some Roundup lab experiment shit that has to be used in greater and greater amounts just to make the cockroaches drop dead, you'd better be prepared to tell me or no goddamn sale.

It's funny that our consumer economy has made a fucking religion out of people's purchasing preferences, but as soon as someone says, "Hey, I'd like to know if this food product came out of Doctor Motherfucking Frankenstein's lab" he is told, "No, you are not allowed to have that information. Just purchase and believe. Even worse, when a company did decide to state on their label that their products did not contain GMOs, motherfucking Monsanto sued them. Fortunately, they lost, but I don't think for a minute that this won't be revisited. When someone is so desperate to hide a single fact, to the point of spending billions fighting legislative and grass roots efforts just to make sure there is this one, single, scientifically-verifiable fact, that food product X contains genetically modified organisms that makes me suspicious as hell. Because when did it become "pro-science" to hide information from people?

Also, the studies on GMO safety have been extremely narrow, looking for toxicity and certain types of cancer-causing effects. There have been no studies at all on people who've eaten GMOs for 20 years, because they've only been selling GMOs to people for 20 years. Further, no studies on the overall health of people eating GMOs or life expectancy of people eating GMOs or effect of GMOs on developing children or senior citizens. Not a fucking one. And I don't know what's up where you live, but judging from the people I see walking the streets who eat the foods most likely to come from GMOs (ie: prepared foods), I would say it's not a shining endorsement of the health-giving benefits of GMOs.

So knock off the ad hominem attacks on people who want labels on food or who don't want to pay license fees for sweet potatoes. The use of "anti-science" accusations for this kind of thing is actually devaluing peoples' respect for science. That's how you get these whacko anti-vaxers and people who think the earth revolves around the sun. To a great extent the arrogant attitudes of scientific mouthpieces in fields as diverse as astrophysics, climate science and the gold-plated jackoffs who do "agricultural sciences" in campus buildings named after the owners of chemical companies who have created some of the deadliest substances on earth are actually causing people to lose respect for "Science" (as if it were some monolithic council of elders), and that's a bad outcome.

So knock if off before you get someone hurt. And just put the goddamn label on the package, OK? If you're so ashamed of where that food comes from, well that tells me something, too.

Comment Re:So (Score 3) 193

Not sure what reagan has to do with racisim

1. Reagan opposed all civil right legislation.

Reagan's transformation from actor to serious political figure began in the 1960s, first with a nationally televised speech on behalf of presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and then with his election as governor of California. This was also the decade in which the civil rights bills that ended legalized racism were passed ... and Reagan was on record opposing all of them, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

Reagan continued this pattern as president by gutting the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), fighting the extension of the Voting Rights Act, vetoing the Civil Rights Restoration Act (which required all recipients of federal funds to comply with civil rights laws) and initially opposing the creation of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (he changed his tune when it passed Congress with a veto-proof majority).

2. Reagan vetoed and anti-apartheid bill.

Reagan further tarnished his record on racial equality when he vetoed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, which imposed economic sanctions on South Africa that could only be lifted when that country abolished apartheid. Although Reagan argued this was because he worried the sanctions would prompt the South African government to respond with "more violence and more repression," critics pointed to his administration's close relationship with the apartheid regime, well-known belief that anti-apartheid groups like the African National Congress were Communistic, oversight of the decision to label Nelson Mandela as a terrorist and weakening of a UN resolution condemning apartheid.

Ronald Reagan was one of the most racist presidents we had in the post-WWII period. He and Nixon are 1a and 1b on that list.

http://mic.com/articles/85379/...

Comment Re:Think walls of steel... (Score 1) 193

I'm having flashbacks to grammar school

Well, consider yourself lucky. I'm having flashbacks to the time I took three hits of yellow double-dome and thought I was Doctor Octopus. When I finally came down, I was naked under a railway crossing and covered in a substance that was eerily similar to sweet and sour sauce.

But enough about the good old days.

Comment Re:Still don't get where the market is (Score 2) 138

I used to think this way, because if you want to know the time look at a clock or cell phone. Then I got a Pebble, and found that it's fantastically useful to have little bits of info pushed to your wrist to see at a glance, and to have your watch know your schedule and location rather than just the time, so it can tell you things like "you should leave for your next appointment now, given where you are and where you need to be and the traffic". Then you only need to pull out your phone occasionally, she you want to actually talk with someone or use a large screen. It's very convenient.

Comment Re:So (Score 2) 193

We can't get any large projects completed today. Not the International Space Station, a large hadron collider, or anything of that sort.

The origin of both of those projects was over a decade-and-a-half ago. And the LHC was built by Europeans, where the anti-government rhetoric hasn't reached the AM-Radio fever pitch that it has here in the US. You see a lot less of the "Get government out of my Medicare" sentiment in Europe than in the U S of A, where a gun for every person is the reason there is zero crime.

The statement was that we couldn't get those large projects completed today unless they can be shown to create a massive and ongoing profit to some rent-seeking corporation with legislators and governors in their pocket.

Comment Re:So (Score 3, Insightful) 193

Song of the South isn't racist or offensive or anything. It's just not a very good movie.

It's just a simple tale of how slavery wasn't as bad as all that and how well the white landowners got along with their help.

The movie is racist enough that Disney stopped listing it in their film catalog, in 1980. If folks during the Reagan administration thought it was a little over-the-edge, I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that the Song of the South minstrel show was probably kinda racist.

Comment In Other News (Score 4, Insightful) 177

And in other news, MakerBot CEO Jonathan Jaglom will receive a bazillion dollar bonus, and another ten bazillion dollars in stock options. It's predicted he will end his term as CEO by urinating and defecating and the smoldering corpse of MakerBot before seeking greener pastures to assrape and pillage.

When asked for comment, Mr. Jaglom replied "I'd just like to say fuck you all very much!"

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