...prozac, ambien, adderall, ritalin, aspirin, tylenol, zyperxa, effexor, xanax, vicodin...

Don't fall prey to the fallacy of the single cause. There was also Dupont, who wanted nylon to replace hemp. There were also racist motivations: making marihuana illegal was a good way to deport the Mexican laborers who were "stealing our jobs" and the Negro musicians who were "corrupting our youth." I'm sure there are a number of other fringe reasons for making it illegal.

Also, it actually started with the Marihuana Tax Act, in which farmers could only grow hemp if they bought stamps to do so from the government. The government didn't sell any stamps. The scheduling came later.

A lot of the change you are experiencing may be due to selection for THC over other cannabinoids in a lot of breeds. It's not necessarily that it's more potent, it's that the ratio of THC tends to be higher because THC is erroneously thought of as "the active ingredient." There are a lot more incidences of paranoia in people who take THC pills for pain relief than there are for medical marijuana users who smoke or ingest the plant. The "mellow luvving feeling" is a result of a more balanced bouquet.

Ass, Ass. There, I got the other two you missed.

Health effects are not a red herring at all. There have been cases of GMO food causing allergy problems. For instance, here is an article from the New England Journal of Medicine showing the effects of transgenic soybeans created by Pioneer Hi-Bred which contain a gene from the brazil nut. You don't even need to read the article; just look at the image of the allergic reaction caused by skin-prick testing of extracts from the GMO bean on a person who is allergic to brazil nuts.

And hell, some of Monsanto's corn is registered and patented as a pesticide! There was a recent article here which puts the blame for colony collapse disorder squarely on the use of HFCS from Monsanto corn to feed bees--the trace amounts of pesticide in the corn syrup are enough to make the bees get lost while foraging. This particular pesticide appears harmless to humans; it's been used since the '30s, but it is an illustration of how unintended consequences come into play.

What GMO essentially means is that you have no idea what kinds of genes are in your food, and you will continue to have no idea unless you have an allergic reaction. That's not great, but there could also be long-term effects that will remain unknown for years or decades--a little bit like the radiation craze before we realized it promotes cancer. And there could also be secondary effects: round-up ready crops are meant to be sprayed, and they're going to get hit with a lot more herbicides than non-GMO crops. The use of these crops has been widespread for under a decade. I think it makes sense to remain cautious on the health front as well.

The monoculture is almost certainly the larger issue, and my intention is not to detract from it. I have heard that something like 97% of the varieties of food we grew in the 19th century are now extinct. There are less than 10 kinds of potatoes widely grown, down from 500, and these kinds of numbers are seen across the board. That's not a good idea.

You're probably right about There Will Be Blood. The interesting thing is that the lines from the movie were based on reality:

I wondered a bit about that myself, but my intent was only to report what was missing from the summary. Is quartz used as a generator? I know it's often used as a timing oscillator, but if my understanding is correct it requires a bit of power to do so.

That question sadly went unanswered in the summary, but is discussed in the article. The viruses are preferable because making existing piezoelectrics is apparently difficult and requires toxic chemicals, while these viruses are self-replicating bacteriophages. They are also under the right conditions self-organizing, making the creation of piezo film easy by comparison. Looks like there's a long way to go to get a decent amount of electricity out of them, though.

In this case it wouldn't be hard, as the plant in question makes XBoxes . But then they couldn't have claimed the news was "sure to ruffle the feathers of Apple fans." Because...I guess...Apple fans are defending Foxcomm's mistreatment of its employees, or something.

I don't think it was a straw man at all. I have seen people take exactly the stance that I attributed to you as an overreaction to other people saying that spanking is not abuse. There was no intentional misrepresentation--GP said "Spanking is child abuse?" and you replied "Inflicting physical pain is child abuse." That rationally includes all physical pain regardless of intent. It turns out that what you meant is rather different than what you wrote, so thank you for clarifying.

I don't believe backtalk is in line with medical treatment, though I failed to make that explicit. There was another poster who mentioned that he spanked his son only twice, and one or both of those times was when he found his son doing something incredibly dangerous. The example that's stuck in my head is finding a child playing with a gun--and I recognize it's a poor one because responsible parents keep them where kids can't get to them. But in an instance like that, where the child cannot be expected to understand why he can't do this particular thing, it may take more than stern words to stop him from repeating it. And that's probably the approach I would take--first, get the child out of harm's way; second, tell him sternly never to do that again, and why it is dangerous in case he can comprehend it; and third, remain on the lookout and if he's heading towards the danger again, then maybe it's time for a spanking. I believe that for it to be effective it must be used sparingly, and for it to be punishment instead of violence it must not be done in anger.

I do not have children, so this is all hypothetical. I agree that there are problems in reasoning, implementation and severity. That says to me not that the entire practice is barbaric, but that people can misuse and abuse it. The same can be done with many (any?) form of discipline. Do you see a difference between inflicting physical pain versus emotional or psychological pain as punishment? Doesn't most punishment involve some kind of pain, even if it is the pain of having to sit on the couch while your siblings continue to play? That sounds trivial to an adult, but it is far from it for a child.

I had a good conversation with someone here a year or so ago where we discussed this pretty thoroughly, and I came away with more respect for his point of view than I had before. My own reaction against those who choose to never spank their kids is that that often means they do not discipline their kids at all--you can see examples of this all over in public: kids being given whatever they want in order to keep them from causing a scene--t's like the kids hold all the power and the parents none. So my perspective was almost the complete opposite of his and I suspect yours. Discussing the subject in-depth helped me to see more ways in which alternatives to corporal punishment can be applied, and I think my conversational partner left feeling like maybe it isn't the great evil he thought it was coming in. I probably would have responded to your post even with the "as punishment" qualification, because I think that's still overly broad and I am genuinely curious about the aspect of emotional and psychological pain. The tone of my response would have been more like this post than my previous one, though.

Indeed.

Don't put disinfectant on that scrape on your kid's knee, because it stings.
Don't take him in for surgery because there will be post-op pain--after all, the doctor abused him by cutting him open. How is this still legal, in this day and age?!

The examples above are cases in which the end justifies the means. I think that there are better ways to discipline most children than spanking, but equating a spanking given by a clearly responsible and loving parent with slapping a kid because he blocked your view of the television is incredibly simplistic. There is an argument to be had about whether or not spanking can be categorized with my examples above, and it's one I'm interested in, but your position is untenable.

Thank you for your thoughtful and informative response. This is why I come here.

I like your use of the word "experience" over "environment". That brings some overtones of pragmatism to the forefront of my mind, and as an admirer of William James that is a good thing, and fits very nicely with some of his writings about truth-making. While I am aware that "environment" includes relationships, often explicitly as in child-rearing, "experience" is as you say a richer and more demonstrative term. It's giving me some hints of connections to other things I've been thinking about.

Motivation is tricky. I know in my own case over-socialization doesn't play a role--I have always thought for myself, but it tends to stop at the thinking. I rarely attempt to do things that I know I will not excel at, and I frequently find that in things I am interested in but not yet adept at, my interest can flag fairly quickly--the thought pattern is, what's the point in doing it if it is already being done better? My hypothesis is that throughout grade school I was rarely challenged, and the times that I was were never in areas I found interesting to begin with. If my interest in something is strong enough, though, I will practice or learn what I need to in order to be able to pursue it. And I think reading (most of) this book has helped me realize that there is no substitute for simply doing more of what I want to be good at (music and songwriting in my case), and doing it in ways that are challenging, always setting the bar a little higher than I can reach. It won't help me establish a regular exercise routine, but there's very little in this world that will!

I read the abstract in your last link, or more accurately my eyes scanned the page. You wrote that the changes in the brain due to an unstable genome "can't be passed on, so it's not really the same thing." I'm not sure what thing you are referring to, and what differentiates that effect from other gene activations caused by diet or exercise or what have you--unless I missed something in my reading, the "on/off" state of a particular gene is not (or not necessarily) passed on. Or is the difference that the gene is likely to be passed on and therefore have the potential to be activated, whereas the unstable genome is not an activation but a mutation?

Whoa, hang on there. That seems awfully fine-printy to me, especially given the fact that everyone pushing CFLs, from government to the industry to the Home Despot, simply says, "Oh yeah, just stick it wherever you'd stick an incandescent and it'll last longer and use less energy!" There's a reasonable expectation that that is the case, and if it's not...it's sneaky.

Kudos for reading the instructions, though!

I already posted about this above so I'll be brief, but with you being a real live biologist and all, I was curious to know if you have ever come across David Shenk's The Genius In All Of Us, and if so what you think of it. There appears to be some correlation between the argument put forth in that book and what you wrote above, though from the book's perspective the question of which has a greater impact is not as meaningful, since it is the interaction between genes and environment that gives the outcome.

Seeing this story has inspired me to finally finish reading the thing...which will be good news to the person who lent it to me half a year ago!

It's actually a lot more complicated than Intelligence = Genes + Environment. According to the book The Genius In All Of Us, there is a large group of people spanning the fields of genetics, neuroscience, and cognitive psychology among others that hypothesizes (with plenty of evidence) that the equation looks more like Intelligence = Genes * Environment. That is, genes certainly play a role, but genes are being activated and de-activated all the time. Things like daily exercise not only get you habituated to fitness-helping routines, they can actually chemically act on cell DNA to turn on genes that...well I don't remember precisely what they do but it's something to do with adding more muscle mass or what have you. The point is that the interaction between genes and environment is more complex than previously thought, and it's looking like what common sense has said for years: certain people will thrive in certain kinds of environments that would stifle or prove useless to others. It cannot be simplified to "Person A has better genes and will always do better in this area than person B," nor can it be reduced to "Person A had a more nurturing environment than Person B and so does better in this area."

The book I mentioned is divided into two sections: the argument and the evidence, so for those of you who like substance with your sensationalism, it's nicely laid out (and is nearly half the volume of the total text).