Because sorry, but that's really what they've become. If each was a masterpiece like the original book, I'd be all on board. However they aren't. They are a mess of characters nobody cares about.
I think some forget, or never knew, that his first book was published 1996. This guy is not a fast writer.
Personally doesn't bother me, since I stopped reading after the third book because the quality tanked so hard. The original Game of Thrones is my all time favourite fantasy novel and I will recommend it all the time. A Clash of Kings was good, but a major step down. I enjoyed it though. A Storm of Swords wasn't very good at all.When A Feast for Crows I asked some people and the answer I universally got was "don't bother" so I didn't. It was also a bit harder to maintain the "givashit" with 5 years intervening instead of 2.
It seems like he more or less ran out of ideas and has bogged things down in to a whole bunch of characters nobody cares about. Ok, he can do as he pleases, but I'll keep my money thanks.
Well conservatives downright hate the poor - cuts to SNAP and food stamps tucked into the farm bill? Hell yeah! (yes, that is sarcasm)
My problem with liberals usually has more to do with the money. They want all these fancy social programs but don't want to pay for them, so the programs are doomed to go belly-up starting in about the next decade likely with Medicaid. If you want these fancy programs, either increase taxes, fix the broken corporate tax system so corporations pay taxes (most pay zero tax, 94% of US corporations pay less than 5%, and yes the tax rate is 35%), or make cuts (military spending would make sense, since we're not actively in any wars, yet Obama is asking for more spending here) to pay for them. I miss Clinton in this regard, but also hate him for burying the actual debt numbers that show money needed to be able to keep social programs running, mainly to garner favor of older voters (and every president since has continued this).
I'd be interested in reading the source to see what the argument is. Off the top of my head, the Irish Potato Famine strikes me as a pretty real famine. It was certainly exacerbated by political pressures, and they were growing monocultures in the first place because of the pressure for productivity. But it was a real crop failure, and they learned to reduce their dependence on a single crop.
Certainly it could have been handled better, and far fewer people would have died. But I still think the death toll would have counted as a famine, or at best a famine barely averted by aid. I'd put it in a different category from starvation caused by war or corruption. Even the Great Chinese Famine could be chalked up to politics without too much of a stretch, but there are still crop failures due to drought and disease.
Since the agricultural revolutions of the past few centuries and especially the last few decades, we're so awash in food that aid will always be stymied by people rather than lack of calories. But I'd put the tipping close closer to 40 years than 400.
The terminator gene solves the gene-spreading problem, but it introduces the problem of leaving farmers permanently at the hands of Monsanto. They are forced to buy new seeds every year.
They can, of course, opt out, but then they miss out on Monsanto's improvements. So we've got a conflict of expectations not entirely unlike Slashdot's frequent outrage about EULAs that effectively mean you don't own your own software, or even hardware.
As I understand it, most farmers buy seeds anyway, because the plants don't breed true to type. But there was particular worry about poor nations, where the farmers are closer to being completely broke, and this looked suspiciously like indentured servitude.
I'm not taking a position on the argument here, just clarifying what it's about.
State governors can't exercise Federal Executive powers - such as commanding the Army, or supervising the Federal courts or the Postal Service, or... well, you get the picture.
My point was all about what happens when the mosquitos are not as infertile as planned.
If some offspring survive that means that they didn't get the gene to kill them for some reason. Aka, they're just like wild populations. So.....?
If chemical companies are going to dump something into my backyard, I will scream and shout just as loud
Your back yard is full of the intentional products of chemical companies. Here we're talking about the intentional products of genetic engineering. You're trying to change the situation by comparing waste products with intentional products.
You seem to claim that people should just trust experts. I claim that experts should attempt to inform the public better, thereby earning their trust...
Sorry, but Joe Blow GED is never going to become an expert on genetic engineering. Ever. Period. And the same goes for the vast majority of the public.
So, rabbits that got released in Australia are the top predator? The Pampas grass in California is the top predator? I can make a long list of invasive species that are not the top predator and still influenced their ecosystem a lot
.
Got any examples that aren't introduced species? We're talking about reducing or eliminating species within an ecosystem, not adding new ones from totally different ecosystem. And part of the reason rabbits were so uncontrolled in Australia anyway was because settlers had killed off almost all of the top predators. One could easily imagine that, for example, tasmanian tigers would have quite enjoyed a rabbit feast. Dingo numbers were also shaply culled in the areas with the highest rabbit populations.
What happens if a small percentage don't?
Then they didn't get the gene to kill them. Your point?
That's because most physics and chemistry experiments don't breed and multiply.
Neither do infertile mosquitoes; your point?
They are talking about something that happens literally in their own backyard.
Really, you think there's no products of modern chemistry in your backyard?
They are right to do a risk assessment.
And there have been risk assessments done, by regulators, taking into account the scientific data. Risk assessments are not something for Joe Bloe and his GED who reads NaturalNews and thinks that "GMO mosquitoes" means that they're going to bite his children and spread a zombie plague.
Changing the balance in an ecosystem can have huge consequences.
Contrary to popular belief, changing the bottom of a food chain rarely has major consequences; it's the changing of the top of a food chain that tends to have the biggest consequences. The higher up the food chain you go, not only do you have more of a profound impact on the landscape (look at how radically, say, deer overpopulation transforms a whole ecosystem), but also the more species tend to be generalists rather than specialists. Generalists means the ability to switch more readily between food sources, meaning changes further down have little impact on them. But if you eliminate a top predator from an area, the consequences further down can be profound.
The last I looked, the state of remote-sensing algorithms for limb profiling is something between bad and "are you kidding?".
But they are not doing much "remote sensing". All they are doing is recording when a GPS signal is received. That's it. That shouldn't be too hard. The delay between when the GPS should have been received, and was actually received, will tell them the index of refraction of the atmospheric cord it passed through, and from that, a ground computer can calculate the humidity, temperature, and pressure.
That sound you heard is the OP's point whooshing over your head. Limb profiling (what you describe) is a remote sensing technique, and it's not one that works really well.
The problem isn't receiving the signal (well, it's not a problem in this sense though it has challenges of it's own), the problem is analyzing the signal. You have three different variables (all of which vary with altitude to boot), with no way to significantly constrain any one of them - meaning arriving at an accurate value for one (let alone three) is a Very Hard and Poorly Understood problem.
Those who can, do; those who can't, write. Those who can't write work for the Bell Labs Record.
