What did you type there? I'm having trouble seeing.
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness" - Mark Twain
Strike two!!! y'all have a great weekend, im signing off!
Good read IMO
http://fw.to/0aOI7HC
Interesting ... but I only made it about 2/3 (if that) of the way through before I decided "I don't give a rat's ass"!
But, I'd never heard of "Slate" before and decided to check them out. DANG!! I think maybe I could get a job there and possibly get PAID for "shit-disturbing"! I think I'd fit in quite nicely with their staff.
From Wiki:
Reputation for counterintuitive arguments ("Slate pitches")
Since at least 2006, Slate has been known for publishing contrarian pieces arguing against commonly held views about a subject, giving rise to the #slatepitches Twitter hashtag in 2009. The Columbia Journalism Review has defined Slate pitches as "an idea that sounds wrong or counterintuitive proposed as though it were the tightest logic ever" and explained their success as follows: "Readers want to click on Slate Pitches because they want to know what a writer could possibly say that would support their logic". In 2014, Slate* 's editor-in-chief Julia Turner acknowledged that a reputation for counterintuitive arguments forms part of Slate's "distinctive" brand, but argued that the hashtag misrepresents the site's journalism: "We are not looking to argue that up is down and black is white for the sake of being contrarian against all logic or intellectual rigor. But journalism is more interesting when it surprises you either with the conclusions that it reaches or the ways that it reaches them."
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness" - Mark Twain
Well Sunny, you've already admitted to buying unregulated food (remember your local buying) but you're concerned about food that goes thru many strenuous regulations to ever make it to your table. Go figure .......
Science and technology always wins out over ignorance and superstitions......
Yep, follow the "old" ways! Sunny, only 5.3% of white females lived to see 80 years of age in the early 1900's ... compared to almost double that at 9.7% today. Do you think science and technology may have had something to do with that? Or do you think we should have stuck with the "old ways"?
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness" - Mark Twain
So the premise here is that science and technology always pushes society forward in the right direction?
BKB
The worst part about progress is.. when you get it wrong, there's very seldom any "going back".
If you turn a dog loose to hunt – you’d better to be ready to deal with what he trees.
You can take DDT as a prime example of how a topic can be so blurred by 'information' that its damned hard to find anything objectively written about it. Modern day defenders of DDT almost always point to the bad science in the book that started the whole movement to ban it, 'Silent Spring' by Rachael Carson. There are people, even now, that will look you straight in the eye and tell you DDT isn't bad for you. And then they'll point to lives saved from its use. Very similar to what we hear in this argument 'the golden rice story in No Till's reference article). sure, DDT saved many lives and filled many stomachs. It also had severe unintended consequences that we are STILL seeing aftereffects of today in our environment.
Upton Sinclair was branded a crackpot, a shit disturber of the highest degree, and an outright liar not only by the media, but by the federal friggin government after he published The Jungle. Until they looked into it and found out he was right. His book opened the door to the Pure Food and Drug act and many of the food safety regulations we have today. and Silent Spring opened the door that eventually led to the banning of DDT. if you read about both of these events in history, the arguments from the pros are exactly the same as are the tactics of labelling anyone who asks questions as having some liberal agenda.
Bucky can reference his John Stossell flawed argument about DDT here. He thinks he's the smartest man in the world, unless he's reading someone else.
I read noTill's article. He makes three points that he outlines quite succintly. In the first two he simply attacks the people who question GMOs, says they are frauds and shams, and in the third point he obfusticates the issue with some wierd shit claiming genetic engineering isn't a thing, but is a process. I've cut and pasted the relevant summary below.
"Many of us, however, don't trust these assurances. We're drawn to skeptics who say that there's more to the story, that some studies have found risks associated with GMOs, and that it's all being covered up by Monsanto Company, the huge agribusiness that sells GMO seed and the herbicide Roundup. I've spent much of the past year digging into the evidence. Here's what I've learned. First, it's true that the issue is complicated. But the deeper you dig, the more fraud you find in the case against GMOs. It's full of errors, fallacies, misconceptions, misrepresentations and lies. The people who tell you that Monsanto is hiding the truth are themselves hiding evidence that their own allegations about GMOs are false. They're counting on you to feel overwhelmed by the science and to accept, as a gut presumption, their message of distrust.
Second, the central argument of the anti-GMO movement — that prudence and caution are reasons to avoid genetically engineered, or GE, food — is a sham. Activists who tell you to play it safe around GMOs take no such care in evaluating the alternatives. They denounce proteins in GE crops as toxic, even as they defend drugs, pesticides and non-GMO crops that are loaded with the same proteins. They portray genetic engineering as chaotic and unpredictable, even when studies indicate that other crop improvement methods, including those favored by the same activists, are more disruptive to plant genomes.
Third, there are valid concerns about some aspects of GE agriculture, such as herbicides, monocultures and patents. But none of these concerns is fundamentally about genetic engineering. Genetic engineering isn't a thing. It's a process that can be used in different ways to create different things."
This is more of the same hyperbole, NoTill.
Meanwhile, here's a link to an article written by someone on the 'other side'. Its not perfect but I think it does at least have some objectivity.
http://michaelpollan.com/articles-ar...in-the-garden/
I still have no opinion on this, and honestly could not possibly care less.
However, in the hopes of continuing this much past 5 pages............ .......I do have a question.
Why is 'caution and prudence' in farming, harvesting, timber production, oil drilling, and almost everything else, almost exclusively the provenance of "the Left" and technology, progress, efficiency, construction, etc., the provenance of "the Right". It's almost exclusive, is the part that sort of amazes me. It's almost like all the Lefties got together and decided they'd all think the same way, and all the Righties thought they were all silly.
I guess I'm way more "Right". But when I read Posthole's comments (And in fairness, anyone else who leans his way and who is wanting 'caution' on such things), I don't really read "let's go slow". I know that is what he/they are saying. I get it. But I sorta read into that "Let's stop dead still, and if we never fire back up, that'll be ok". I read him saying 'I have an opinion, a bias, and that's ok', but I don't see him thinking it's ok for ME to have the opposite bias. And in all honesty, I think his bias is way off base, too.
So, I guess that's 2 questions. Why does the discussion of these things centrifuge folks into two distinct camps, always.........and Why do both sides get belligerent if the other side won't listen to them, but then turn around and pay no attention themselves?
This is 5 pages of "My side says THIS" and "Well, POOH, MY side says the other".
I don't care one way or the other. I usually do, but not on this one for some reason. So maybe that's why I ask.
Carry on, though. I gotta go find some processed meat to eat.
WARNING - Due to the rising costs of ammunition, warning shots will no longer be given.
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness" - Mark Twain
Those are good questions. my own opinion is that the more leftish (note: not leftists) people have always been the ones to take up the cause relating to the 'user' side of things, to put it in terminology we both relate to. Take the coal vs labor stuff in the early 1900s. People were out and out dying from the labor practices of the coal producers with virtually no hope of ever breaking the cycle their families were in. Enter big labor, driven mainly by extreme left folks of the socialist and communist persuasions. At odds were far left and far right political and social ideologies but the real folks who did the work and bought and used the coal were largely on between.
And I never in this thread said we had to stop anything. I think regardless of whether No Till or I is right, agribusiness and farming will go on, and hardly anybody in the United States will drop dead of eating frankenbeans. (I made a funny!)
What do I want to happen? I believe the current agribusiness model of ever more planting with ever more efficiency is not sustainable. I believe its led to the monoculture farms and meat operations that pollute the earth, sterilizes the soil, and has impacted other species in ways we still don't understand. These things can't change overnight. There is a growing need for food in the world that the pointy, business end of agriculture (the farmers) is desperately racing to fill. And there are factors that make it impossible for farmers to not go along with the tide. Some of those factors, by the way, are created by the big end of that plow, the Monsantos of the world. The evil part about The Monsantos of the world isn't that they are angels of the devil. The evil part is that their own survival and success drives their need to control all of our agriculture. There are practically no industrial farms, the ones that produce the bulk of our food, that can operate outside of the Monsanto family. I don't think that is sustainable either. It wasn't in banking and it isn't in food production.
it'd be crazy to ban GMO foods. It'd be crazier to try to regulate in some way the Monsantos of the world.
It wouldn't be crazy though to make regional farming more profitable, to remove the subsidies that make it possible for tomatoes grown in Mexico or California to be sold cheaper than the ones grown in our own states. It wouldn't be crazy to reduce the extremely high pressure to plant and produce more per acre just to maintain margins. I'm not at all sure how to do that, but there are ways. Its some of these factors that lead us down the path we're on of adjusting our chemistry to keep up with the consquences that our last chemistry left us with.
Keep defending the current process though. It gives us cheaper calories, poorer food, and consequences we can't ever dream of yet.
BKB
Yep sure Posthole. Like the left fought Lincoln tooth and nail to NOT free the slaves. It was the right ( the republicans) that wanted the slaves freed. But those old democrats fought hand over fist to stop that from happening.
I can match you all day long on examples where the right was right and the left ONLY got on board when there was something in it for them. NOT THE PEOPLE....
A Government that pays people to do nothing destorys their willingness to do anything!
I didn't mean to imply the left was always right! Just that they were mostly left.
.....maybe that's what I meant anyways.
BKB
Keep defending the current process though. It gives us cheaper calories, poorer food, and consequences we can't ever dream of yet.
I imagine that 7 Billion humans will probably be on "the Right" on this one. You just gotta eat. As for me, I'll eat food either way, don't care. But something has to be done.........either let those folks a) eat what there is or starve, b) teach them to grow their own food, or c) grow it for them faster, bigger, stronger, and more of it. You choose. I doubt you Leftish type folks would like global starvation much either.
Not that this is directly relevant..........but I can't help but think of the coolest, funniest, sharpest, and absolutely most apropos bumper sticker in the history of cars........... "If you don't like logging, try wiping your butt with a spotted owl".... And I think you're smart enough to see the analogy here.
WARNING - Due to the rising costs of ammunition, warning shots will no longer be given.
Didn't make it up, dude. I never lie. I'm stupid, and very ignorant.
But I never lie.
Old, old bumper sticker. Heck, even Audubon magazine knows about it.
http://archive.audubonmagazine.org/i...xclusives.html
Last edited by Buckrub; 08-01-2015 at 05:23 PM.
WARNING - Due to the rising costs of ammunition, warning shots will no longer be given.
DDT was used right here on thousands and thousands of acres of rice with no ill effects, and is still used in other counties.
The only farming practice that I know of that sterilizes the ground is potato farmers. Our ground is richer than it was when it was originally cleared for farming.
Barry, I really wish you would start with you biggest concerns and lets go over them ONE at a time. You write a pretty paper, to me, it's the same gargled up jargon that you keep denouncing tho.
Well, except for the raptors and stuff. And more links to other stuff is coming out all the time. There's a lot of breathless rhetoric coming out of both sides on that whole DDT deal.
We ain't gonna get anywhere with this discussion, NoTill and Bucky is quoting his tired old internet memes.
I think I'll go wipe my ass with a spotted owl before I tell him to go fuck himself.
BKB
Ps...I'll tell you what I'll do though. Some day I'll sit down with you and a bottle of whiskey and we can argue it out as long as you want to. I'm looking forward to it.
Ha! Whiskey has prolly killed more people than DDT and GMO's put together!
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness" - Mark Twain
I'll bring an Okie twist too.
And a picture for Earl Butz for his office! It can go roght next to his Richard Nixon!
BKB
Posty, I'll be bringing the corn squezins'. And now that I'm no longer "the man" you are welcome to bring along any green vegetable material as you see fit! I'm certain we would agree on more than we disagree. And as always it's an honor to disagree with a fine (old hippie) gentleman.
A Government that pays people to do nothing destorys their willingness to do anything!