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Comment Re:I Love Americans (Score 1) 456

Probably most of them. But a few that I know better I'd be pretty confident in saying the feeling is their own. Still might be a more chronic version of what you're talking about, where people learn to "care" about the kinds of "news" that get clicks and headlines. Maybe you don't see that as any different...anyway I do.

Comment Re:Cashing in on the Chick-fil-A effect (Score 1) 456

There will still be homophobes and other bigots but they'll keep their mouths shut and hopefully their children won't learn their bigotry.

They'll keep their mouths a little more shut in public, and maybe that will actually lead to some good (maybe), but not to their children. Strong opinions + lack of open conversation = more polarization.

And, to me, it is the point. There are issues I frankly care more about a food company's position on than whether a pasta company dude thinks that the iconic family that he wants to portray in his ads includes a woman in the kitchen. I don't speak for Minupla, and have no problem if this issue makes or brakes his pasta-buying choices over other issues that I wished more people cared more about. But against his point as stated, I think my point stands valid.

Comment Re:Apologies... (Score 2) 456

Sometimes apologies don't mean shit. It's far more important to know what people really believe.

Which is one of the reasons I did/do not support this boycott. Best I could tell, he expressed his opinion, but wasn't or isn't actively trying to suppress gay rights. If we boycott companies for honestly stating opinions, as is my read of this situation (please inform me of any more relevant details, however), then we don't change their opinions, we just change what they say. Everybody loses.

Comment Re:GM Rice NOT passing to weeds (Score 1) 208

"GM rice passes unexpected benefits to weeds" is true. This does not imply that this is occurring on any particular scale at any particular location, it just states that it happens. Which it does. When GM rice cross-breeds with a wild variety, the offspring has a benefit.

To this point, the weeds were not GM'd directly with the transgenic gene, they were cross-bred with GM rice crop. So, it is reasonable to suspect this is likely to happen in the wild. I wonder how difficult it is to collect a reasonably meaningful survey of wild crops to detect this occurrence, and if anyone has attempted it.

Comment Re:Wait...what? (Score 1) 208

As I have read it (in the paper itself), the authors cross-bred the rice & weedy rice, then split up the following generation of plants into those that expressed or did not express the modified gene. So the comparison was amongst hybrids. Still, it may be that this division has an inherent bias as to the presence or absence of other beneficial genes from the food crop, so it is interesting to question what the mechanism behind the reported benefits were.

The take-home point, however, is still that the hybrids containing the modified gene possessed an advantage over hybrids not containing that gene.

Comment Re:Wait...what? (Score 1) 208

Calling it "insanely dangerous" and talking about a famine in 5-10 years may be going all tin-foil hat, but you still can see why faster can potentially mean more dangerous, right? (Of course, I'd be more inclined to spend energy on investigating the Bt modification than the roundup ready, but anywho...)

Comment Re:In the absence of glyphosate (Score 1) 208

Likewise, assuming that anything GM is going to be more dangerous is rather shortsighted.

Perhaps, as stated, sure. In the same breath, though, I'd also call not devoting just a little more of our finite resources toward scrutiny of the effects of rapid GM (i.e. transgenic methods over cross-breeding) similarly short-sighted.

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