Planting a GM future
As a geneticist-bioethicist with no links to the GM food industry, I am heartened that the commercial planting of GM maize is to be permitted (Letters, February 20). The alteration of genetic sequences has been carried out for millennia by agriculturalists using selective breeding. GM technology simply offers a more efficient means to alter genetic sequences, thus providing an enhanced means for improving food.
Moreover, neither evidence nor logic supports the supposed health risks of GM food disingenuously alleged by opponents of the technology. Indeed, millions of consumers in the US and elsewhere have been eating GM food on a large scale for several years, with no negative health effects. Of course, some individuals are allergic to particular GM foods ? but food allergies are not restricted to GM foods, nor do allergies occur at a higher level with GM foods than with "natural" foods. Indeed, it is ironic that GM technology offers the means to remove known natural allergens from crop plants.
Biotechnology is one of the few growth sectors within our beleaguered industrial economy. Had the government listened to the anti-GM propaganda and prohibited the commercial planting of GM crops, the country would not only have taken a step backwards in terms of scientific progress, but such prohibition it would also have jeopardised the UK's future as a hi-tech industrial economy. We ought to ignore the shrill voices of the anti- science Luddites and embrace GM technology.
Kevin Smith
Dundee
***************************************************************
Thats from The Guardian's "Letters" section.
Hmmmm. Where to start. How about at the beginning?
As a geneticist-bioethicist with no links to the GM food industry
It is irrelevant that you have no connections with the GM food industry. Your vested interest lies in your scandalous and poison releasing chosen career. If these plants are legalized, you might get the chance to practice your evil...and get PAID. That is the REAL reason you are "heartened" by this bad news.
The alteration of genetic sequences has been carried out for millennia by agriculturalists using selective breeding.
Selective breeding is a slow and NATURAL process; in other words, the genes combine through the force of nature, and not via manmade cutting and slicing at the molecular level.
more efficient means to alter genetic sequences, thus providing an enhanced means for improving food.
That is utter and complete bollocks. Do you know how a "more efficient means to alter genetic sequence" is done? They take genetic material, put it in a Petri dish, and then expose the contents to ionizing radiation, which damages the exposed material at the molecular level. The kook^H^H^H^H scientists then try and grow something from the results of this scattergun technique. When something grows, they try and find out what its characteristics are and what it?s good for, if anything. This is as far from genetic alteration through selective breeding as you can get. Selective breeding produces strains that are natural and that exhibit traits that are desirable (if that?s what you are breeding for; some selective breeding produces
this kind of thing) and more or less
predictable. It is not dangerous. There are no ill effects to the environment from cross pollination...its slow, and that?s what the companies cannot bear; to have to do the hard work of breeding many generations of plants to get a desired strain. They want profits NOW, and nature doesn?t work on a NOW basis.
neither evidence nor logic supports the supposed health risks of GM food disingenuously alleged
Of course, some individuals are allergic to particular GM foods
You contradict yourself in the same paragraph. There is nothing wrong with being self contradictory, but there is everything wrong with it when your work is going to be released into the environment. The UK has the highest levels of Allergies in Europe. This has only been the case recently. Obviously something is terribly wrong with the modern environment (taking as given that the human population has not changed into ...
something else in the intervening years. But I have already spoken about THAT have I not? :] )
To deliberately add these new, known allergens into the food chain is totally INSANE.
offers the means to remove known natural allergens from crop plants.
You can?t do that. You dont know how to do that. And more to the point, we have to find out WHY people are more allergic today than they were in the 1950's before we start releasing GM plants into the environment to solve a problem that is being caused by who knows what.
industrial economy
scientific progress
hi-tech industrial economy
Bullshit bullshit bullshit. Money is
your God. Go back to university and re-train as a space engineer - that?s what the UK needs more of. Scientific Progress, and any kind of progress is not measured by a blinkered elite of salary addicts, and a "high-tech industrial economy" does not mean one that HAS to include the work of your particular specialty.
This all boils down one thing; to whom does the environment belong? If I own a farm, should my neighbor be allowed to plant something that will poison and destroy the value of my crops? If this was in any way a fair country, anyone?s plants that were shown to be contaminated by cross pollination would be able to sue the manufacturers of GM plants, and their neighbors for the losses. If the Biotech garbage makers knew that they could be put out of business by a torrent of lawsuits resulting from proven contamination claims, they would never have released even the test plants into the environment, never mind full scale production. And of course, no farmer would take the risk of being sued if he knew that cross pollination was bound to happen. GM would be a non starter, at least in a country with a fair legal system.
The Environment
must belong to everyone collectively, otherwise, Mosanto and the other companies staffed with insane, 100% ego personality scientists would be able to alter all life forever, and we the chattel, will have no choice but to literally eat it. People like this ?Kevin Smith? if that is his real name, are, literally, the problem. Their blind belief in the God of money and science puts them on a pedestal above all other people and above all morality and responsibility. Only they are right, only their view of nature and the world is correct, and you will EAT what they give you to eat or you are a an anti science screeching Luddite.
I am more than happy to break the following news to these people; the environment belongs to everyone equally, an no company, no single person has the right to permanently alter the environment for the sake of an experiment or the almighty dollar. If it is found later that you and your colleagues are in error, and that your work has damaged the environment, I guarantee you that you will, along with your corporate masters, be hauled into court in the Hague, where you will all face charges of crimes against humanity. You will not be able to claim that you were just following orders, or that you were doing what you thought was the right thing. You will be found guilty, and you will deserve your sentence, because
you were warned not to release these organisms into the environment, but decided to do so anyway, to keep up with the joneses and to retain your salaries.
Die you pigs
DIE!
WRONG
My concern, once again is for the future. The suffragettes took matters into their own hands, and won the vote through brave acts of outrage. If the march of medicalized bith does not abate, who is going to come to the aid of women in this area? Surely you cannot expect the male dominated medical establishment to come to its senses and impliment the right policies? If the suffragettes took that route, women would still be without the vote. Its clear that unless people organize, educate themselvs and take their rights no one is going to sympathise and relent out of the goodness of their hearts. People make money out of medicalized birth; that means the pressures to spread it are even greater than the ones that kept the vote from women, especially today, where money is everything. If the solution is not to make the cost of c-sections the issue that reduces their over application in hospitals, then we need to have another solution presented; one that works in reversing the trend of medicalized birth in the west.
RIGHT
Medical treatment should always be freely available, and that means any needed proceedure, regardless of the cost. The level of service should also be identical to the service that you get if you pay for private health care. That goes without saying. What I am talking about is the routine perfomance of unneeded and humiliating proceedures, done for the most part because fear has been been drilled into the patient and I mean FEAR, as in False Evidence Appearing Real; "the baby's head is too big", "you cannot deliver twins naturally", "you cannot deliver a posterior baby naturally", "you are a week late, we HAVE to induce you" - and so on. This is the sort of nonsense that gets trotted out so that professionals can keep a job. The reality is, most of the time, there is nothing to do right up to the time of the birth, and even then the labouring woman does it all by herself. After the baby is born, mother and child go to bed, and then thats it. There is literally nothing else to be done in the majority of cases.
Unless there is a campaign to educate the educated women of the west, medicalized birth will take over everywhere, and then the third world will follow and not a natural birth will take place on this planet. The same goes for the replacing of breastfeeding with formula all over the world, a prure money motivated phenomina, women being told that they have to give birth on their backs in bed (a trend which started by a European king who wanted to see his child emerge) and every other fleecing scam whose target is the womsn. Yes womsn. In the not so far future, after its all over and midwifery is lost to us, THEN try and complain, and see how far your daughters get. If their eyes dont glaze over and yawns dont erupt from their mouths before you finish speaking.
Exquisite Blog Corpse thing last post related tie-in:
"Childbirth is no more a miracle then eating food and a turd coming out of your ass." - Bill Hicks
And I would also argue that women are united in this, the women I know who help give birth, both inside the medical institution and out, are quick to educate and share their knowledge. Its only for someone to listen.
The NHS is an amazing organ. Did you know that the accountants in the NHS cannot tell you how much, for example, an appendectomy costs? Normally you can count up every drug, the time of each medical professional...everything, so that you can arrive at an accurate costing for every operation or proceedure in the hospital.
The NHS doesnt do this.
They dont know what ANYTHING costs. That my friends, is totally absurd. If lets say for example, the NHS could count the cost of each operation or proceedure, they would be able to apply some form of economics to which operations and proceedures are performed, and the whole thing would become much more cost efficient, while giving the same standard (or higher) levels of care.
When women are brought to hospital in the UK, there is a 30% chance that they will be given a cesarean section. Most of these proceedures are absolutely unnessesary, as are the many epidurals that are administered. Now, no one knows the cost of giving an epidural to a wonman in labour, and neither do they know how much it costs to perform a cesarean section. If they were made to account properly, the number of cesarean sections performed on the NHS would plummet down to only those that were actually done for a medical reason; in other words rarely. The same for epidurals; they are rarely needed during childbirth, analgesia is despensed like candy to women in labour, and in the case of epidurals, the labouring mother's temperature rises artificially, birth is made more difficult, and the probability of cesarian birth increases drastically.
Since women cannot defend themselvs, and almost always give in to medicalized birth, it appears that they will have to be saved from it by economics. It has been demonstrated statistically that home birth is safer than hospital birth, and also it is less expensive. Birthing at home, as it has been done for thousands of years, as it is done today all over the world except in the "civilized" countries, is perfectly normal and costs close to nothing. On the other hand, a cesarian section, if we are going by the other health institutions that have responsible accounting procedures, costs at least $8,000.
You do the math. Or let 
I am not bullshitting. This is for real. An appalling nightmare made real. There is no need for this, it is being done soley to fleece the eitire european population one face at a time, and then to control all europeans with this massive database. They will use this for absolutely everything, and it will control you from the day you are born to the day you die...if you consent to it. Even if "enrolment" is mandatory, the word mandatory is only real if the majority of people accept the new regulations. If they do not, the system will become "unworkable" which is doublespeak for "they wont buy it", which is market speak for "that dog wont hunt" which is southern speak for "back to the drawing board boys".
I will not enroll for this. No one that I know personally will enroll for this. This time the EU has gone too far.
Animal control officers spent almost an hour trying to pull a pup from a storm drain pipe in Syracuse this week.
Kids walking down a sidewalk spotted the golden retriever in the storm drain, and rushed home to tell their parents who called police.
Three Davis County Animal Care and Control officers responded and tried to get to the dog, but he got spooked and crawled into the drain's pipe.
It took the officers about 45 minutes to rescue the lucky pup, and when they did, they were all covered in mud. The dog had no collar or tags and police think the dog's owner abandoned it.
The dog is doing fine and is staying at an animal shelter in Fruit Heights.
TETHL (There ends the hard link).
A DRUG addict who repeatedly pleaded to be committed to hospital because demons ordered him to do ?bad things? pushed a commuter under a Tube train, the Old Bailey was told yesterday.
Christophe Duclos was left slumped on the tracks with a severed left arm and broken bones after he was sent flying into the path of a fast-moving Underground train during rush hour. A Frenchman who had worked in Britain for six years, he died in hospital three days later.
Just hours before Stephen Soans-Wade, 36, pushed M Duclos on to the tracks he had told police he was hearing voices in his head, the court was told. He was taken to hospital but left before doctors were able to assess him. He had a history of trying to get himself sectioned under the Mental Health Act and was known for becoming violent when discharged because doctors found that he was not mad, it was alleged. [...]
Why Leaders Fail. A synopsis for you:
Inability to organize details: Efficient leadership calls for ability to organize and master details. No genuine leader is ever "too busy" to do anything which may be required in the capacity as a leader. When a person admits that they are "too busy", they admit inefficiency.
Unwillingness to render humble service Truly great leaders are willing, when occasion demands, to perform any sort of labour which they would ask another to perform.
Expectation of pay for what they "know" instead of what they do with what they know The world pays people for what they do, or induce others to do.
Fear of competition from followers The able leader trains their understudies to delegate, at will, any of the details of their positon. Only in this way may a leader multiply themselves and prepare to be at many places, and give attention to many things at one time.
Lack of imagination Without imagination, the leader is incapable of meeting emergencies, and of creating plans by which to guide followers efficiently.
Selfishness The leader who claims all the honor for the work of the followers is sure to be met by resentment. The really great leader claims none of the honors.
Intemperance Followers do not respect an intemperant leader. Moreover, intemperance, in any of its various forms, destroys the endurance and the virtality of all who indulge in it.
Disloyalty Disloyalty marks one as being less than the dust of the earth, and brings down on one's head the contempt one deserves. Lack of loyalty is one of the major causes of failure in every walk of life.
Emphasis on the "authority" of leadership The efficient leader leads by encouraging, not trying to instill fear in the hearts of followers. If a leader is a real leader, they will have no need to advertise that fact except by conduct - sympathy, understanding, fairness, and a demonstration that they know the job.
Emphasis of title The person who makes too much over their title generally has little else to emphasize. The doors to the office of the real leader are open to all who wish to enter, and their working quarters are free from formality or ostentation.
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 08:25:25 -0500 From: Bonnie 
Scientists Discover Methane Ice Worms on Gulf of Mexico Sea Floor
A team of university scientists using a mini research submarine on a NOAA-funded research cruise has discovered, photographed, and sampled what appears to be a new species of centipede-like worms living on and within mounds of methane ice on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, about 150 miles south of New Orleans.
Although scientists had hypothesized that bacteria might colonize methane ice mounds, called gas hydrates, this is the first time animals have been found living in the mounds.
The discovery of dense colonies of these one-to-two-inch-long, flat, pinkish worms burrowing into a mushroom-shaped mound of methane seeping up from the sea floor raises speculation that the worms may be a new species with a pervasive and as yet unknown influence on these energy-rich gas deposits. [...]
Diggers.
Wiggers.
Irizzos.
who knows what will happen?!
Why dont you simply 
Microsoft today released a critical update to remove "unacceptable symbols" from Bookshelf Symbol 7 font.
Just 58-odd years after the Red Army hoisted its standard on the roof of the Reichstag on 30 April 1945, effectively ending the European war, MS has finally flushed the swastika from its last hiding place - an otherwise innocent font shipped with Office 2003. [...]
???!!!
Mr Skolnick is the second US national to be fined for "disrespecting police" since Brazil began photographing and fingerprinting US citizens in January. [...]
I tried to search for this with google.....This is the faked photo of Kerry and "Hanoi" Jane Fonda, created by a dirty tricks office somewhere.
See / get it and others by Paul Griffiths 
Dont you wish that Spirit had a simple crowbar so that it could filp over some of these rocks? Thats where all the bugs live!
On February 9, 2004, the Local 802 Chapter of the American Federation of Musicians announced what they described as an "historic joint agreement ... banning the use of the virtual orchestra machine (sic)" in all future productions of the Opera Company of Brooklyn" [...]
nka Essenhigh (American, born 1970).
Deluge, 1998.
Oil enamel on canvas, 72 x 72" (182.9 x 182.9 cm.).
Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery.
Sarah Norton Goodyear Fund, 1998.
In an age of satellite TV, the Internet, and global positioning systems, even artistic media are increasingly giving way to the high-tech. In this epoch, what is the role of painting? [...]
