It's good that they're fining Facebook for tracking users without telling them, albeit with a slap on the wrist, but it would be nice if the laws also had fines for tracking non-users without telling them.

What I think is daft is the insinuation that people will like these things, therefore they are bad. I don't particularly see the point of these things, but saying 'This is a terrible idea!' while at the same time saying 'People will use these so much that small stores will go out of business' are contradictory statements. If people want these, they'll use them. If people don't, then they will not be replacing anything. Which is it, are they horrible, or are they going to be welcomed? It can't be both.

This sounds like a bunch of attention seekers desperate for some relevance at someone else's expense, with some vague accusations of 'cultural appropriation' (that thing that every single human society has been doing since forever) thrown in for good measure, and while at the same time attempting to absolve themselves of any responsibility for their purchasing choices, because apparently when you vote with your dollars you are not responsible for what you're buying. The over-glorified vending machines are a bit silly, but why is anyone paying attention to what these detractors think?

Metro also works on this principle.

I have a very hard time believing that. I can't speak to the quality of Harvard's education because I've never stepped foot in the place, but I've met a few people who went to those so-called 'elite schools.' They didn't seem any better or worse than those of us who could not afford the feeder schools, extracurricular activities, and other elements of institutionalized classism. The only difference I could tell was that they had nicer clothes and more expensive hobbies. Pardon me if I am highly skeptical of the claim that there's anything special going on there beyond networking and brand recognition, but I for one would much rather work with an Iowa State grad than someone from Harvard. At least I know which one has the ability to justly earn their position.

I wonder what the exchange rate for Woppercoin to Chuck E. Cheese tickets is?

I prefer that psychos who hijack planes, hold the passengers hostage with a bomb threat, and manage to make off with $200k in ransom money get caught and brought to justice. Isn't that what the law is supposed to do?

There's nothing wrong with nice new features, but when you're adding unnecessary ones while ignoring what is really needed (like doing something about Firefox's memory hogging), that's a bit different.

Firefox already uses an obscene amount of memory. The longer it runs, the more ridiculous its memory consumption gets, as it gets slower and slower to the point where it becomes unusable. Then crash, restart, repeat.

This still has not been fixed and now they're thinking up new ways to make it even worse? Firefox has become the Hummer of browsers. No wonder Chrome is taking over. NoScript is Firefox's sole redeeming feature at this point.

That doesn't at all disprove what I said. AS I mentioned, Monsanto does sue people. It is a well known and undeniable fact that they do. What I said is that they have never been documented to have sued someone for simple cross pollination, and that the cases I know of were justifiable, and could have been avoided had patents not been intentionally violated. I somehow doubt that the Center for Food Safety mentioned in your link, a group well known for their anti-GE activism, goes out of their way to mention those inconvenient details in their reports.

Your link also mentions the Bowman lawsuit, which was ongoing at the time that article was published. That was not one of the cross pollination cases (more of someone trying to get circumvent patent law with a perceived loophole), however the Supreme Court would later unanimously and in my opinion justly rule in favor of Monsanto.

I have never heard of a single case of that happening. The only cases where someone has gotten sued over cross pollination are those where someone then knowingly, purposefully selects for and propagates the transgenic material. If you don't want sued, don't violate patent law.

If that did happen, yes, it would be terrible. But when the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association filed a lawsuit against Monsanto a few years back, they were unable to provide a single instance of that happening when the judge requested it. That should tell you something.

For the most part, our crops are not particularly fit in the wild. They are to the wild plants what pugs are to wolves. A change made by genetic engineering will typically be pretty minor compared to the other aspects of the species. With drought and virus resistance, those have only been applied to corn and papaya/summer squash, respectively, and thus far there hasn't been any major ecological issues, although transgenes have been found in wild squash populations. You occasionally have canola or papaya growing feral in some places, but that doesn't have anything to do with their transgenics, and certainly they do not occur at a concerning rate as an invasive weed would. In theory there could be issues if a species able to reproduce really well were modified to survive well outside its typical range I suppose, but in general I think that would be the exception rather than the rule.

This is why opposition to plant patents makes no sense. Either patented plants are useful, in which case patents are clearly beneficial because they allow crop breeders to make a living and continue to make desirable new varieties, or the patents are not useful, in which case, it really doesn't mater if they are patented because you would be better off freely growing the older non-patented varieties.

The problem is, in their effort to demonize every single aspect of GE crops, the anti-GMO people want to have the argument both ways, that plant patents are bad and that patented plants are no good. That farmers choose to pay extra for the patented varieties should tell you exactly where they stand.

Patents already cover that. Next time you're looking at potted flowers, check out how many of them have tags that say 'Propagation Prohibited' under the patent number. The floriculture industry always has something new and patented on store shelves. Sterility is not necessary for market control, unless someone somewhere is illegally violating your patent.

Your post only serves to prove that GMOs are exactly what people oppose. You mention corporate control of them, and yet, plenty of non-genetically engineered crops varieties are also patented. Besides that, those patents expire, like all patents...Monsanto's first generation of GE soybean is now available as an off patent generic...and you fail to clarify what is wrong with a system whereby one makes something superior, gains control of it for a limited time to recoup their R&D costs, then it falls into the public domain. I can only conclude that corporate control is not the real issue, or else far more than GE crops would be targeted, and the argument would be more coherent.

You then mention herbicides and pesticides. This is actually a great reason to support GE crops. There are no insecticide resistant GE crops, but there are those which resist pests, and therefore need less insecticides. As for herbicides, yes there are herbicide resistant ones, but you neglect to consider the alternatives. Do you think weeds will just go away without herbicides? Nope, but without the GE crops, you have to use harsher types of herbicides, and soil damaging tillage, to control weeds. This argument makes sense only if you know nothing of how agriculture really works. Besides that, there are non-GE crops like the Clearfield lines are also bred to be resistant to herbicides, so even if you had a point, it still would not be a reason to oppose only GE crops as opposed to crop improvement in general. So we can conclude that this justification is also wrong. You may be referring to the recent dicamba problems, which is a real problem, but that is not an issue with the genetics so much with the herbicide formulation.

Finally, you mention issues of saving seeds, which farmers haven't done since the rise of hybrid seed in the 30's. You rarely save seed anymore because it is more profitable to use seed with hybrid vigor, which does not breed true in the second generation. That's not the fault of corporations, that's just how genetics works. Again, if this were the real issue, people would be protesting much more than GE crops, so we can conclude that it is another justification.

Basically, your reasons are invalid. They sound rational enough on the surface, so I can't fault anyone for believing them, but what they really are they are after the fact justifications to make GMO denialism seem somewhat rational to those not well versed in modern agriculture or crop genetics. Keep in mind, these talking points are coming from the same groups that also lie about non-profit, publicly funded projects, like the International Rice Research Institute's Golden Rice, or the University of Hawai'i's Rainbow papaya. Those who lie to you about science will also lie to you about business.

No it doesn't.