Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Genetically Modified Crops

Overview
For thousands of years, human beings have modified nature's organisms for usage in agriculture. New technology has furthered this trend: recombinant DNA technology allows biotechnology firms to insert DNAs into plant genomes, thereby creating plants that express the desired traits. Use of such genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has prompted controversy, especially for its role in ensuring food security. As such, the use of transgenics merits a serious discussion regarding its relevance to food security.
This piece discusses the purported benefits and costs of utilizing GMOs, as well as the benefits they have brought – saving land, reducing pesticide use, and promising to alleviate third world hunger. Then we provide an in-depth analysis of the health, ecological, and socio-economic impact of transgenic organisms. Our ultimate stance on this issue is to wait for greater availability of biotech organisms unassociated with large agricultural corporations, and for additional scientific data. Any reference to genetically modified (GM) organisms in this piece are exclusively pointed at transgenic organisms. We will also be examining in depth the two most widespread types of transgenic organisms: herbicide-tolerant crops and insecticide-producing plants. More...

Mission 2014: Feeding the World

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Pithy Quotes

Poetry is an act of peace. Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour goes into the making of bread. - Pablo Neruda
Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing. - Albert Schweitzer
We dismantle our moral universe to serve the cause of war. - Chris Hedges
We are healed from suffering only by experiencing it to the full. - Marcel Proust
...the only thing left for me is to say to workers: I am not going to resign! Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life. And I say to them that I am certain that the seeds which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever. - Salvadore Allende
Humanity, wholly unprepared by its humanist traditions, faces its greatest trial. The acceleration of climate change now under way will sweep away the comfortable environment to which we are adapted. - James Lovelock
My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But, ah, my foes, my friends-It gives a lovely light. Edna St Vincent Millay
One can say, looking at the papers in this symposium, that the elucidation of the genetic code is indeed a great achievement. It is, in a sense, the key to molecular biology because it shows how the great polymer languages, the nucleic acid language and the protein language, are linked together.- Francis Crick
It is raining DNA outside. On the bank of the Oxford canal at the bottom of my garden is a large willow tree, and it is pumping downy seeds into the air. ... [spreading] DNA whose coded characters spell out specific instructions for building willow trees that will shed a new generation of downy seeds. … It is raining instructions out there; it's raining programs; it's raining tree-growing, fluff-spreading, algorithms. That is not a metaphor, it is the plain truth. It couldn't be any plainer if it were raining floppy discs.-Richard Dawkins
If the results of the present study on the chemical nature of the transforming principle are confirmed, then nucleic acids must be regarded as possessing biological specificity the chemical basis of which is as yet undetermined. -Oswald Avery
DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music. -Richard Dawkins
Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice. ~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The Injustice Files

Someone Please Tell how Jeremiah Wright Was Wrong

Ever more appalling economic news, with the AFL-CIO's 2014 online database Executive PayWatch tracking CEO pay - average $11.7 million - that's now 331 times what the average worker makes, and 774 times that of minimum wage workers, thus earning the U.S. by far the world's largest wage gap. Using state-by-state data and cool interactive graphics, it highlights five low-wage companies, for example contrasting WalMart CEO Michael Duke's $20,693,545 pay with the $12,000 earned by a full-time worker who has to rely on public assistance for her kids. Those same companies who whine they can't afford to raise wages are also earning more off workers than ever before, thus "cannibalizing their own consumer base." Last year, they made $41,249 in profits per employee, a 38% increase and more than three times what their beleaguered employees earn for themselves in order to, you know, feed their children. Elsewhere, the news is just as bad: Palo Alto in California's Silicon Valley, where 92% of the homeless lack shelter, just passed a law making it a crime to sleep in a parked car, citing "quality of life" issues, and no not for the homeless. Oklahoma's GOP Gov. Mary Fallin just signed a bill banning cities from raising minimum wages or enacting paid sick leaves because yup that'll save their economy. And, thanks to all these untenable economic policies, members of al-Qaeda are said to have hatched a coordinated plan to "sit back and enjoy themselves" while "America as we know it gradually crumbles under the weight of its own self-inflicted debt and disrepair,” a plot said to be "already well under way." From The Onion.

Consequences of Children as Abstractions

Oh so weary of mindless drone operators dubbing their innocent victims "bug splats" - really - artists and human rights groups have mounted #NotABugSplat, a devastating art/life project in a heavily bombed area of Pakistan featuring the massive portrait of a young girl who lost her parents and siblings in a drone attack. The girl is facing up. She is saying to soldiers sitting at consoles too many miles away to understand what they are so blithely killing: These are not bugs. Not "ground kills." Not video images. Not abstractions. They are us.

Random Acts of Synergy

In the name of peace in Ukraine, a very cool flash mob in the middle of Odessa's beloved, bustling Privoz Fish Market by members of the Odessa Philharmonic and Odessa Opera Chorus, performing in their first collaborative project in many years. “There was no need to choose a piece of music," said conductor Hobart Earle. "Beethoven’s 9th symphony and Schiller’s 'Ode to Joy' are humankind’s hymns for freedom, peace and brotherhood."

-Abby Zimet

Florida Land of Maladjusted Sheep

Florida knows you can never have too much of a good thing, like, say, guns. So even though its denizens already boast over a million concealed-weapon permits, making them the most well-armed in the country, Florida's GOP pols and NRA allies have been admirably busy adding to the state's arsenal: Armed guards in schools! Pop-Tart guns in schools! Stand Your Ground expanded to include warning shots! Now they're hustling through a bill in the House to allow people to carry concealed firearms without a permit during emergencies such as riots, civil unrest or forced evacuations during natural disasters like floods and hurricanes - times, admittedly, when people might be under a wee bit of stress or tempers might be just a tad frayed or situations might pose some tricky questions for a rushed-through, vaguely-worded bill, like if you can carry the gun through chaotic streets does that mean you can also bring it into a shelter crowded with terrified people, or does it count if you're actually going towards the riot to join in rather than away from it, but, anyway, what could go wrong? The NRA loves the bill. Sheriffs' groups say it's "the definition of insanity." Democrats agree, though at least one thinks it might be okay in a zombie apocalypse. The kicker: Before legislators started talking about guns, they were talking about lady parts, and how they want to effectively ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. But before they proceeded with that oh-so-delicate conversation, they led out all the teenaged pages, who were at the House to learn about the business of state government, which evidently includes efforts to regulate women's bodies, which they clearly know nothing about, nor are they likely to learn anything now, thank the good Lord. The young people were kept out until the talk turned to a more appropriate subject for their tender sensibilities: guns. Then they were brought back. The let's-let-everyone-with-a-gun-run-riot-during-a-riot bill will probably come up for a vote Friday. We can't wait.

I Wish I had Said That

“Grades are a problem. On the most general level, they're an explicit acknowledgment that what you're doing is insufficiently interesting or rewarding for you to do it on your own. Nobody ever gave you a grade for learning how to play, how to ride a bicycle, or how to kiss. One of the best ways to destroy love for any of these activities would be through the use of grades, and the coercion and judgment they represent. Grades are a cudgel to bludgeon the unwilling into doing what they don't want to do, an important instrument in inculcating children into a lifelong subservience to whatever authority happens to be thrust over them.” ― Derrick Jensen
“I and the public know what all schoolchildren learn,” W.H. Auden wrote. “Those to whom evil is done do evil in return.” It is as old as the Bible.
“It's no wonder we don't defend the land where we live. We don't live here. We live in television programs and movies and books and with celebrities and in heaven and by rules and laws and abstractions created by people far away and we live anywhere and everywhere except in our particular bodies on this particular land at this particular moment in these particular circumstances.” ― Derrick Jensen, Endgame, Vol. 2: Resistance
“This book is about fighting back. The dominant culture -civilization- is killing the planet, and it is long past time for those of us who care about life on earth to begin taking the actions necessary to stop this culture from destroying every living thing.” ― Derrick Jensen, Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet
“To pretend that civilization can exist without destroying its own landbase and the landbases and cultures of others is to be entirely ignorant of history, biology, thermodynamics, morality, and self-preservation.” ― Derrick Jensen, Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization
“Writing is really very easy. Tap a vein and bleed onto the page. Everything else is just technical.” ― Derrick Jensen