I don't know. The way I read it, he was first an anti-GMO crusader, and now he has become a pro-GMO crusader. Neither one I'm too fond of.

Did you read his speech? Because I did, and I don't agree with you at all.

Lynas was a knee-jerk environmentalist who was an anti-GMO crusader. Then he got into climate change... and became wise in the ways of science (though, mercifully, he has not yet shared his theory on the prevention of earthquakes using sheep bladders).

In his speech, he dug into some of the specifics you bring up... and emphasized the importance of the science.

If you don't see a lot of discussion about the specifics, you're probably not looking very hard.

In baseball, you don't measure how well a player bunts or takes a few pitches or leads off base for a steal ... how does not matter - it is only the outcome.

That's not true at all. Have you seen the type of stats kept by sabermetricians? I think you're mistaking casual fan stats with the stats pros use to evalute and manage players.

There are about 130 plays per game, and 256 games per year. That is 33,280 plays to analyze each year. That would increase to about 135k if you include Division 1-A college games. If you had two guys spend 15 minutes analyzing each play (2 guys to reduce errors) then it would take 20 full time employees to do this each year. More if you want to get more immediate results after each week. There are plenty of ex-athletes that couldn't make the pros and are intelligent enough for the work. Probably somewhere around $2 million per year in salary ($500k if you only look at professional games).

And for each play, you have 44 athletes whose performance needs to be evaluated according to specific metrics for multiple categories.

Let's look a one typical, very simple play: a running back dive through the strong-side B-gap with the fullback lead blocking out of a standard I formation. I'm not going to do this by each position, too much space, but here's a quick overview of the stats that would need to be collected:

Offensive line: Snap, blocking efficiency. This is complicated by blocking schemes (chip blocks, zone-blocking schemes, etc).
Fullback: Lead blocking -- did he clear the hole? Did he make a block at the second level but miss a free LB? Should he have blocked that LB at all, or was it someone else's missed block?
WR group: did they sell the decoy route, or make the block on the CB?
QB: Pre-snap activity, receiving the snap, handoff.
RB: Receiving the handoff, yards gained, yards after contact, depth of contact (none of which are the direct result of only his actions).
Defensive Line: block-eating, gap-filling, penetrate, containment: what's his responsibility? How do we know? If the weakside DE didn't fill his gap, but it didn't matter to the result of the play... is that scored at all? How can you determine if he filled the gap when he never had to get off the block?
LBs: Reads, shucking blocks, tackling, containment.
Safeties: positioning, reads, shucking, tackling.
Cornerbacks: reads, shucking, closing, tackling.

A football play is just far too complex to boil down to numbers for each position, since there are so many possibilities for what a player is supposed to do and how they fulfill their responsibilities.

So say you just look at the handful of players directly involved in a play... say, ten of them. Do you just look at the yards gained? How do you account for things like down and distance factoring into the style of play? A 2-yard run on 3rd-and-1 is much more valuable than a 4-yard run on 2nd-and-10... so how do your statistics weight that?

Long story short: unless the GMs office understands that statistics are a source of information, and not the be-all and end-all of player value, I can't see this being successful... scheme, coaching, other players are far too impactful on measurable results to make the stats definitive.

, just like pitchers gain poor ERAs due to bad defense that allows easily defended ground balls to become runs scored

Just an FYI... ERA is Earned Run Average. It does not include runs arising from errors made by fielders (those are unearned runs).

Of course, there is still a very human factor in determining what defensive mishap is scored an error instead of a hit... not to mention great defenders who turn what would be a hit into an out because of their athletic range.

I say it is nearly impossible to do for football what Moneyball did for baseball. It's not just the scope of the stats that are important... it's also the team nature of football and the difference between systems.

In baseball, the average ball hit into play involves 5-6 people (catcher, pitcher, batter, fielder, baseman, sometimes an additional baseman). In football, the average play involves 22 people. The interdependencies are huge.

Plus you have the issue of players in different systems not playing to the same set of standards... how do you come up with equivalent metrics for players in positions whose role is different depending on the offensive scheme? Resort to video-game player stats for catching, awareness, blocking, etc? A wide receiver for the New York Jets is going to have a very different set of responsibilities than a WR for the Indianapolis Colts, and thus should be judged differently.

Plenty of people have been doing advanced statistical analysis of football players for a very long time. It's a muddle at worst, and can inform scouts and GMs at best... but I believe the Bills will have very limited success if they plan on going "pure Moneyball" style.

I think what this is really all about is normalizing the market for players. Costs are not even close to being in line with the value of a player or position, and by sticking to their "Moneyball" rules, the Bills gain some negotiating leverage... and some of the costly mistakes they (and other teams) have made wrt free agent signings.

I don't know how such a blatant ad hominem argument can be modded informative.

Anyone who isn't aware that the Democratic Party includes a large contingent of those who openly profess to being socialists/communists, along with those who hold ideological views that are blatantly Marxist in nature, would have to be dangerously ignorant/, uninformed, and/or experiencing a psychotic break with reality.

Wow, talk about a break with reality...

There is a *very small* contingent of Democrats who profess to being a socialist or a communist. Most who had done so in the past have left the Democratic Party because the party is very much in the capitalist camp.

If you believe a large contingent holds views that are Marxist in nature, you need to either read up on Marx or actually talk to Democrats... instead of listening to the demagogues who profit from your buy-in to their claptrap on right-wing radio.

I recall a while back how Obama was using a talking point about how there was a relatively small building in Grand Cayman which housed some thousands of corporations who didn't really do business there. He blamed it on tax avoidance. Trouble is, the same kind of building exists in Deleware, who has an income tax.

DE does not assess income tax on income earned outside of DE. I'm not sure how DE's income tax is relevant here.

Wlell, Deleware has very lax laws and the "deregulation" that many socialists decry, which make it much easier to run a business out of there.

What do you mean, "lax laws"? What laws are lax that would encourage corporations to incorporate there? The fact that shareholders can issue binding statements in writing rather than being required to have meetings? I fail to see how "socialists decry" that kind of activity.

The reasons to incorporate in DE are simple... it's far cheaper outright (low fees and extremely low franchise tax) and laws kind to corporations in re: legal activity (e.g., certain classes of civil cases are adjudicated by judge's written statement, not trial by jury).

Another way the DE:Cayman similarity breaks down is that income in other states is still taxable in other states. A DE corporation HQ'd in NY with an operations nexus in MA still pays NY corporation taxes and MA personal property taxes. So I'm not sure what you are complaining about, or what similarities you're trying to draw.

You can establish a blind trust with restrictions on the activity of the trust, such as investing in specific sectors, or in specific regions. It's the specific transactions that are "blind".

you most certainly can tell the trustee not to use off-shore tax havens if you so choose.

That money is most often re-invested in said company

If they do that, they are idiots. Why would you reinvest after-tax distributed income when you could use the money in the company prior to distribution of profits to shareholders?

Something about your claim doesn't add up.

I worked for an S-Corp at one time; shareholder distributions were made AFTER all expenditures, including capital expenditures. If a shareholder wanted to invest more money in the company, usually it was done via loan. This loan was a personal investment like any other... and as such, must be done with after-tax income unless part of a qualified IRA or 401(k) plan.

It's not global warming that is killing coral reefs. It is ocean acidification [wikipedia.org].

Acidification is a threat to the long-term viability of coral reefs.

However, the reefs that are dying off now are doing so not because of acidification, but by-and-large because of high water temperatures.

Here, "ocean/shore localities suitable for farming" don't become less suited for salmon farming just because there is a farm there for any period of time.

Obviously, you don't have any knowledge of salmon farming or you would know that salmon farming *does* make the real estate used for it unusable after a period of time with current methods. Decades for recovery.

You're talking out your ass again. I'm done with this discussion.

Farmed != harvested. It's pretty deceptive to equate the two.

Not when I address that issue in my very next sentence.

If one were being fair and truthful, one wouldn't say that salmon farming isn't sustainable, but that it isn't sustainable at its current volume under current circumstances (an assertion which I'm not convinced is true BTW).

Except that is what I said: "Salmon, on the other hand, is not really sustainable using current practices." Why are you insinuating I am not being fair or truthful?

I fail to see any item of discussion in your post I did not address in my original response, other than your accusation of me being unfair or lying (which is clearly unfounded).

If you have anything of substance to add to the discussion, I'd be happy to continue it. Otherwise, bugger off.

They claim salmon and carp are the most farmed fish in the world.

Just because they're the most farmed fish in the world doesn't mean they are sustainable. Passenger pigeons, at one point, were the most-harvested bird species in the US... turns out that wasn't sustainable. One difference between passenger pigeons and salmon is what the diminishing resource is... in the case of the pigeons, it was the pigeons themselves that were hunted to extinction. For salmon, the resource is ocean/shore localities suitable for farming.

Carp, I'd guess, is sustainable, since it can be farmed much like tilapia.

Salmon, on the other hand, is not really sustainable using current practices, though there is promise for integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA) and other methods to improve sustainability.

Even if you wanted to say that something that happened in the 12th Century is relevant, those were regional power struggles under the guise of religion.

Somehow you think the situation today is any different?

You can't explain that away by anything other than we're experiencing massive spending increases that have no relation to anything but that the feds just want to spend more money.

To be a little more complete, the "partners" of the feds who own private concerns doing contract business with the US government want the feds to spend more money. Government payrolls? Way down since 2000. Direct government assistance? Doesn't even come close to making up that increase.

The federal government wastes its money lining the pockets and coffers of private businesses. I believe that if it's worth it for government to spend money on something, then the government should operate it. Schools (local government), prisons, military, roads, etc. The only exception should be commodity procurement necessary for operations where there is a competitive marketplace.

I find it ludicrous that there are companies that contract with the US government whose executive compensation is in the tens or hundreds of millions per year. Civil servants should be doing their jobs.