Out of curiosity, what was your major within the natural sciences? I'm not asking to try to discredit you or anything. But it's been my observation at my current institution that undergraduates in two different departments, both within the college of natural resources graduate with wildly different views on the consensus of the scientific community about genetic engineering, both convinced all the evidence was on their side.

The two departments are Plant Sciences and Environmental Studies and Policy. I'm sure you can guess which is which.

Selective breeds often means altering the genetics of a plant by a transposon insertion or gene deletion. These changes are just as drastic and unpredictable as those produced by genetic engineering, occur in nature all the time, and produce much of the variation that is selected for in traditional breeding. It's just that since traditional breeds selects based on the effect, rather than the gene itself, no one can tell you what strange and never before seen genetic alteration has just been introduced into the food you are eating.

A great example of this is a lab at Cornell that has actually tracked down the genetic alterations behind those delicious purple and orange cauliflowers that started showing up in organic grocery stores across the US about a decade ago. Both were caused by transposon insertions (genomic parasites often related to plant viruses) that changed or broke genes. But nobody protests or rips up the fields because no one, not even the breeders at the time, know what was responsible for the change.

Sources:
Purple: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2971621/ Orange: http://www.plantcell.org/content/18/12/3594.full

Great point that point that these patents are starting to expire.

Out of curiosity I heard Monsanto had put out a second-generation round-up ready trait (that of course lets them reset the patent clock, but is also supposed to increase yield more). Do you have a sense that many farmers are going to shell out the money for RR2 or do you think will most stay with the first generation round up trait, either from saved seeds, or other seed companies like Pioneer?

Considering bananas are sterile, and propagated vegetatively (ie no sex, and the resulting plants are genetically identical) they're one of the few examples you could have picked that is NOT the result of centuries of selective breeding.

Bananas are one of the crops that stand to benefit the most from genetic engineering because there's no way to introduce disease resistance or other new traits through conventional breeding. In the US that's not a big deal, but bananas in Africa are the primary food source for whole countries, and are constantly being attacked by devastating diseases like Black Sigatoka. So there's an example of how the technique of genetic engineering stands to benefit someone other than Monsanto. (And note that the attempts to produce varieties of banana resistant to Black Sigatoka are being run by non-profits and government scientists, particularly those of Uganda).

The bananas you see at your local supermarket are already produced using vast quantities of highly toxic fungicides, which barely impacts the price you pay in the checkout lane, but can cause real problems in the banana producing countries, which are predominantly poor, generally have far fewer and less strictly enforced regulations on pesticides.

...of sex robots running linux? Because I can't, and I'm kind of glad.

Well they got the order wrong. For resisting arrest it's 1. arrest 2. beat. For an assaulting an officer change they apparently beat you first, then arrest you.

(I defy anyone to take a severe beating without doing SOMETHING that, out of context, could be described as assaulting an officer.)

An average of $3.3 million a year for ANY government program seems quite reasonably priced!

In response to any question: I'm not sure, let me consult my super computer and get back to you. In any presentation: After crunching a lot of numbers on my super computer I can tell you that ...

Randomly guessing should give them eight people preferring the higher bitrate. What we're talking about is a difference of 2-3 people from the expectation if no one could distinguish. (16 doesn't divide evenly into thirds)

I just wanted to say thanks for putting genetics in Good Things.

I've gotten drawn into Battle for Wesnoth twice before, and it sounds like it's about time for me to make it three.

Awesome game!

You're right there are a bunch of leaps of faith in his premise but let me address some of your concerns:

Cooked foods, whether meats or vegetables have more calories (energy) although the process may destroy some vitamins. For most of historical and pre-historical time humans have been calorie limited. Vitamin deficiencies are a separate issue and hunter gatherers living on a diverse diet of whatever they could lay their hands on would have had plenty of those with and without cooking.

As for the mechanics of cooking, you've overlooked two simple techniques. Cut off a piece of the animal you just killed, stick it on a sharp stick, and hold it over the fire (think of it as a bloodier alternative to a hot dog). Alternatively you can burry things in the coals of a fire and then dig them out again (we used to do this with potatoes when I went camping as a kid). Both are going to have cooking benefits although they won't taste nearly as good as something cooked over a charcoal fired grill (although you know what they say about hungry being the best spice, and our ancestors were definitely hungry).

You're right grains came much later and producing things like bread or even boiled rice takes more effective cooking technology. Agriculture came much later, you need the good brain first, then you can start altering your environment over months or years to ensure you can keep getting enough food to support that brain.

Has anyone conclusively demonstrated we really are smarter than Neanderthals were? I mean clear we had some advantage since we're here today and they aren't but I think you could make a pretty good argument that our advantage was some specific trait, like better language skills which allowed us to work better in groups, rather than overall intelligence.

Please let me know if you know something more about this than I do.

Thanks. Awesome photos. Though I can imagine it being a disturbing sight to walk up to, or in your case be to be revealed as the sun rose.

Wow. I just can't imagine waking up to that. Now I'm off to try to track down pictures of it on flickr.