It came up last night at dinner with friends. Everyone had a different idea of how it came about.
"It's to help farmers who get up with the sun"
"It's to prevent children from getting run over on the way to school."
"It was proposed by Benjamin Franklin, to conserve whale oil."
"It's the capitalists."

Nevertheless, we were all pretty much against it, although one considered it a "thing to do."

I can't determine any benefits from it, and find it an inconvenience at best. I say chuck it! Are you all with me? Fuck whale oil!

--imm

--imm

--imm

It is extremely rare to encounter, and have the opportunity to vote for, a candidate of the quality of Bernie Sanders. The last for me was George McGovern, and I am always happy I had the chance to vote for him.

My friend said he likes Bernie for president, then said Bernie is "too radical, and radicals are unelectable." So I talked about radicals like TR, (busted monopolies) and FDR, (socialized retirement) and (wait for it) ... Reagan! Voodoo economics! Old folks will remember that a Reagan candidacy was ridiculed in the 70s, and as heir apparent to Barry Goldwater, he was called "extremist."

I explained how the demographics puts the presidency well within the reach of whoever is the Dem nominee. In a dynamic, chaotic system, like a society, outcomes are not predictable.

--imm

Fare well, Chris.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/14/chris-christie-marijuana_n_7066636.html



My take: Pile on now, while there's still time before he fades out.

--imm

If he was not the son of god, born to a virgin, healer of the sick, walker on water, feeder of the multitudes, and part time zombie, then what's his gig?

--imm

I guess that goes all the way back to the decision that organisms can be patented. Very bad precedent, I think. Plays right in to corporate greed.

The graphic that conflates anti-vaxxers with anti-GMOers, amounts to a long list of gratuitous insults, which GMO defenders expect people to refute. (As if they have stopped beating their wives. )

Beside the corporatization, I suspect the assimilation of what should be independent testing by "endowments with strings" to universities. And the phony "consensus" of people who haven't tested the safety of GMOs. People dumped me with hundreds, then thousands of studies in the field, who were conducted "as if" GMOs are safe. But none of them espoused that conclusion.

If one takes an ecological point of view, the consequence are beyond these boundaries. And the system soundly rejects sustainability.

--imm

These were promised, but I've not seen them fulfilled. I'll be glad to look at your data, though. The studies you cited, were limited in scope, and short term. Most were single season, and new plantings. Is it conceivable, that planting a novel crop might also initiate other practices that could affect yield? Moreover, this precludes observing the effects of mutated pests and weeds. More moreover, these studies are overwhelmingly on Bt producing crops, so it's not surprising that the cost of pesticides are reduced, since these plants are pesticides, and especially before resistant organisms can proliferate. Consider that the cherry picking was done before I got there. The study may be useful, but it's hardly definitive.

My understanding of golden rice was that it did not yield enough vitamin A to make it effective. (And I am not arguing that "science is wrong..." It always is. I am arguing that any validity of "science" that comes from think tanks is questionable. In my experience, they want to fool us.)

AFAIK, GMO seed companies do not make their seeds available to independent researchers. Therefore no controlled experiments. BTW, do you really think it's unreasonable to have GMOs labeled, and to have some independent testing?

--imm

Would that satisfy the semantical differences we are encountering?

There is little disagreement over the issues. Few are disputing that the police are militarized, tend toward brutality, are protected from prosecution, and are hypocritical of civil rights.

But we can post about it! So this can't be a police state. I propose the compromise term, "policeish" to denote a state where police can exceed their legal authority, assault and arrest peaceful assemblies, and they are covered and exonerated by the system.

--imm