In truth, the retarded are just punted back a few dozen meters. Provided they're educable in the most basic sense, they can be trained to be normal; and, once normal, they can use the training to become hyper-intelligent.

This seems highly unlikely. You are in essence claiming physical deficiencies in brain structure will simply disappear with enough training. This in turn implies that anyone who has such a handicap is merely too lazy to overcome it. Do you have any evidence?

What is happening here is that a bunch of politicians are interfering in the legitimate business of a private enterprise.

Yes. And it's nice to know they have the balls to. This motion may or may not be a good idea, but simply bringing it up serves to remind everyone who is in charge here: voters rather than shareholders.

However, we do not know what long-term unintended consequences there may be to this type of gene modification, because there has been no long term. While selective breeding of natural mutations -- even of a relatively "forced" variety -- has been around for millennia.

The point being that one method is time-tested and the other one not. We don't have any long-term examples of jellyfish genes crossed with plant genes. We do have evidence that bacterial and viral genes have invaded other organisms, but again those we have evidence of were very long ago and have had eons to weed out any bad variants or effects.

I do agree, however, that the regulatory system is faulty.

And I would disagree.

Societal / economic issue aside, when an altered genome that was controversial in the first place, and was promised not to be cross-fertile, proves otherwise and starts cross-pollinating other strains uncontrollably, we should take that as a strong warning.

Ever read Jurassic Park? The book, not the movie.

Warming, according to whom?

This says long-term trends have not been detected, up to 2000.

This says no warming trend in upper ocean SINCE 2000.

This -- which is the longest and most comprehensive study to date -- says there is no detectable warming in the deep ocean.

So I don't know who you've been listening to, but my sources say it isn't happening to any noticeable degree.

I don't "think" it, I know it. I haven't been following you around and spamming YOUR comments with insults. That is not a matter of opinion it is provably true. I have only been replying to your own harassing comments.

Listen up: while YOU might find name-calling as a matter of opinion objectionable, there is a line -- and it isn't all that fine of a line -- between that and LIBEL. (I am not accusing you here of libel, that is just a neutral statement of fact.)

There is ALSO a fine line between replying to a comment, no matter how angrily, and HARASSMENT.

Name-calling might not be a nice thing to do, but libel and harassment are behaviors that are so odious they are actually ILLEGAL. Illegal behaviors are grounds for lawsuits. That is also a statement of fact.

Do you understand the difference between those kinds of behaviors, or not?

I would very definitely call this HARM.

Introduced plants spreading where they are very definitely unwanted are called invasive species.

Companies suing farmers whose fields have been invaded without their consent is abusive monopolistic behavior. (Read: "corporatism".)

I could go on, but those are 2 harms that have been proved. One to crop diversity, the other to society and free markets.

You just gave away who you are. But I knew already.

Sock-puppetry is another form of dishonesty. It's also universally despised here on Slashdot.

But you've been told that before. So why don't you cease the BS, and STOP HARASSING ME?

Or do you somehow think that my behavior is evil, but bullying and harassment isn't? It's that hypocrisy rearing its head again.

But according to the description their methodology very clearly ISN'T "agile", whether they think so or not.

Agile isn't a tool, it's a method. And that method doesn't include eons of top-down planning, no matter what tools are used. But I may be preaching to the choir here.

Well, in my opinion -- I admit that's all it is -- that suggests that you may not understand it very well.

I stated what I stated. If you have a specific argument to make, then make it. Otherwise kindly go away. I won't argue over insinuations.

That's a fair point.

Just curious: are you saying you don't believe GMO corn spread beyond its boundaries and hybridized with other corn, after Monsanto had claimed that wasn't possible in its applications to USDA? (Hint: it has been proven in court.)

Are you claiming that the roundup-ready genes have NOT been found in other plants growing near cornfields?

As I say: I am just curious what your point is here.

Since the satellite AND balloon AND un-"adjusted" ground temperature measurements ALL say the globe isn't warming, even while CO2 has risen significantly, I wouldn't worry much about it.

But more to the point: even if that were not true, and CO2 warming were proved (it is not), we didn't really suspect any actual warming until the late 70s... more than a hundred years after we started "spewing" it into the air. So... no.