Helsing posted:

In the real world this is a great set up for loving over some of the world's most vulnerable populations by transforming them into 21st century share-croppers.

Touchdown Boy posted:

Excpet if they cross pollinate with normal seeds or you have some in amongst your crop by accident you are breaking their copywrite and will be hosed every which way possible.

Enjoy posted:

The farmers who can pay will outcompete the farmers who can't or won't, and then they'll buy their competitors out to help their profit margin. This is how capitalism spreads efficient technology, and why the dichotomy between use value and exchange value cannot be resolved within capitalism.

duck monster posted:

Easier said than done. Monsanto actually go after people who don't comply with the program with lawsuits that whilst might be baseless can't be defended against by people with no cash. Food INC pointed out the US example where Monsanto just sue the poo poo out of companies that provide seed saving services where theres even a remote possibility on of their clients was a monsanto customer. Its enough to have put most out of business.

quote:

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that a permanent injunction issue pursuant to 35 U.S.C. §283 and Rule 65 enjoining the following activities of Maurice Parr d/b/a Custom Seed and Grain Cleaning:
1) Cleaning or conditioning crop seed that contains the Roundup® Ready trait;
2) Parr will make no statements or distribute information suggesting that it is legal or otherwise permissible to save, clean, and replant Roundup Ready® soybeans, or acquire Roundup Ready soybeans from an unauthorized source;
3) Mr. Parr will inform his customers that it is illegal to save, clean, and replant Roundup Ready soybeans, and that doing so constitutes infringement by placing a notice on his seed cleaning equipment stating the following:

Do Not Ask to Clean Roundup Ready Soybeans.
All Brands of Roundup Ready Soybeans Are Patented.
Replanting Is Prohibited.

4) Mr. Parr will require his customers to certify in writing that the soybeans that they are cleaning do not contain the Roundup Ready® trait. Parr will provide Monsanto with the written certifications, along with a sample of the seed cleaned, within thirty (30) days of each load of seed cleaned. If any sample tested is positive for the Roundup Ready® trait, provided that Parr has relied upon the grower’s written certification in good faith, then Monsanto will not seek to enforce this injunction against Parr in that instance.
5) Judgment is rendered in favor of Monsanto for the sum of $40,000 in compensation for past infringement. Monsanto agrees that it will not collect its Judgment for $40,000 so long as Parr honors the terms of this Order. In the event Parr violates any terms of this Order, then Monsanto shall proceed with the collection of this $40,000 judgment, and seek any other damages and relief to which it may be entitled.

duck monster posted:

Its not the outcomes that have been the problem in these cases, it was the actual costs of the litigation itself.

quote:

In 2002, Monsanto sent a letter by certified mail to Parr explaining that it was the owner of the ‘605 patent and that Roundup Ready crop seed was covered by the ‘605 patent. This letter also explained that a limited-use license was required to use the crop seed and that saving a crop grown from the licensed seed for planting or selling for replanting was an infringement. The letter stated that Monsanto had information that Parr’s seed cleaning business facilitated seed replanting, and further that Parr encouraged and induced growers to clean and replant soybeans which he knew contained Monsanto’s patented technology. Finally, the notice requested that Parr cease any actions that induced infringement of the ‘605 patent and specifically asked Parr to stop:

§ cleaning any seed containing Monsanto’s patented Roundup Ready biotechnology; and
§ advising growers (either orally or in writing) that they are entitled to save and replant seed containing Monsanto’s patented Roundup Ready biotechnology.

In response, Parr communicated with Monsanto by letter, expressly stating that he
would give all of his customers a copy of the Monsanto notice, and ask them to sign a statement confirming that they are not asking Parr to clean a commodity containing the Roundup Ready technology.

quote:

At some point in 2003 or 2004, Williams testified that he asked the defendant about cleaning Roundup Ready soybeans, and was informed by the defendant that it was permissible for a farmer to save Roundup Ready soybeans for his own use. After this discussion, Williams felt that it would be safe to save, clean and replant Roundup Ready soybeans. Williams saved some of his 2005 Roundup Ready soybean crop, had it cleaned by the defendant, and planted that saved seed in the 2006 growing season.

quote:

Fred and Jim Inskeep testified that they were convinced by Parr that it was permissible to save Roundup Ready soybeans and replant them on their farm.

ShadowCatboy posted:

The man also claimed that "terminator technology" could potentially sterilize creatures up the trophic chain, like bees or birds or your babies. There are legitimate concerns regarding GMOs, but the most prominent ones that are tossed around are utter bullshit.

Mr. Self Destruct posted:

Its almost as if the ability to hold a patent on such things is in and of itself considered immoral by some people? Nobody is arguing that they are breaking the law, that is of no concern. The ability to commit all sorts of malicious acts is often enshrined in our legal systems, the problem is institutionalized injustice.

Mr. Self Destruct posted:

I would say that contributing to the continued suffering and starvation of millions of people for profit is pretty disgusting and at least "comes close" to the problems with police in my opinion.

karthun posted:

Ok, can anyone explain to be why any farmer would want to use future filial of hybrid seed instead of continuing to use new F1 every year? The entire point of using hybrid seed is because the F1 seeds all have the same traits that you find desirable. The F2 on seed to no have the consistency of those same traits. F3 and on are less consistent. And that removes the goal of ever using hybrid seed in the first place.

karthun posted:

The "pure" (what ever that means) seen from the genetically-modified plant is called F2 hybrid. Assuming that the genetically-modified traits that you want are domoniant 25% of that F2 hybrid do not have that trait that you want. Once when you have two traits that you desire, only 56%, the 9 of the 9 : 3 : 3 : 1, of the F2 plants will have both of those traits.

duck monster posted:

Unless you've now got entire sections of some of the poorest farmers in the world under your thumb and paying you rent to do what they had done for free for countless generations.

Strudel Man posted:

Well, except that you can always go back to using regular seeds.

It sucks that the benefits of genetically-engineered crops are limited to the farmers who can pay (and keep paying) for them, but it's hardly a "try once and you're hooked" situation.

karthun posted:

Why wouldn't you would use the homozygotic trans-genetic plant to backcross with the non TG elite parent.

Mr. Self Destruct posted:

I don't give a flying poo poo about profits, I care about feeding people. Its entirely possible for such things to be owned collectively and freely shared for the actual benefit of feeding as many mouths as possible. The profit motive necessitates a conflict of interest, and personally I place priority on the well being of the global population over that of More Money For Rich Fucks. Agribusiness profits don't go into the pockets of scientists, the same research could be conducted the same way but more benevolently elsewhere.

a lovely poster posted:

Much like healthcare, utilities and public transportation, it's generally a good idea to have your food production managed by entities that aren't trying to make a profit. Monsanto should be nationalized and destroyed.

Helsing posted:

I'm by no means an expert here but my understanding is that in addition to buying the seeds you need to buy all sorts of fertilizers and equipment in order to get a sufficiently high yield from your crop to justify the switch-over.

quote:

Of course in Econ101 land this isn't an issue, but in practice its easy to invest in GM seeds based on unrealistic expectations about crop yield only to find yourself locked into a dependent relationship with the person who sold you the seeds.

quote:

Plus if you use modified seeds one year and were unhappy with your performance then I assume it'd be virtually impossible to switch back to traditional seeds the next year without inadvertently allowing for at least the possibility that some of the GM seeds will get mixed with some of the "regular" seeds.

duck monster posted:

If only was it that simple. See buying the seeds and pesticides isn't cheap. So monsanto loans the farmers money to invest in the infrastructure in return for mortgages on the farms. The problem is, the contracts dont necessarily allow for the farmers to just pull out when the debts start piling up too high. We're talking functionally iliterate farmers without business smarts in dealing with mega-corps here lured by travlling salesmen, and flashy adverts featuring top bollywood actors and the like.

The end result is, if they stop participating, monsanto takes the loving farm.

quote:

And keep in mind, in places like india , for certain crops like cotton, you cant actually GET non GM seeds, meaning that its not possible anymore to avoid monsanto unless you've kept seeds from your traditional crop, which you probably havent if you have switched to monsanto.

karthun posted:

I do not know the exact process that Monsanto uses to decrease thei yield drag but I do find it unlikely that the current-gen GM hybrid seed are homozygotic.

karthun posted:

I only work with grains so I cant speak with personal experience with BC5F4 cotton. What I can say is that RRFlex is a stack of the and BT. It looks to be an early generation (Filial 4 to be exact). It does seem like the Roundup Ready Flex does have some significant yield drag. To reduce that yield drag Monsanto will have to cross the BC5F4 with an elite variety.

computer parts posted:

I'm arguing with someone who is denying that peak oil is real and/or that "shale reserves" can supply the demand for oil. Can anyone link some articles to refute this?

quote:

The global resource of oil shale base is huge—estimated
at a minimum of 2.9 trillion barrels of recoverable
oil [55], including 750 billion barrels in the
United States, mostly in Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado
[56]. Deposits that yield greater than 25 gallons
per ton are the most likely to be economically viable
[57]. Based on an estimated yield of 25 gallons of
syncrude from 1 ton of oil shale, the U.S. resource, if
fully developed, could supply more than 100 years of
U.S. oil consumption at current demand levels.

Bruce Leroy posted:

Thanks for the sources.

I think there are two big issues with the problem of energy, and one is that it seems like many people frame it as a false choice. They view it as "which energy source are we going to use for our needs," rather than "which energy sources are we going to use and how will we best utilize them."

evilweasel posted:

I believe, though I can't find the link, oil shale has less energy density than a potato.

Implants posted:

Suggesting that genetics are a predominant factor in the constuct of "intelligence" is phenomenally overstating the case in the context of modern neuroscience. Neuro isn't really my field but from my undergrad years, the current consensus is that genetic factors in neural structure are largely overwhelmed inside of the first few years of life by the neuroplastic adaptation of the brain to external stimuli (i.e. social factors). So, while smart parents seem to tend to raise smart kids, this is actually more likely to do with the package of behaviours that tend to characterise "smart" in our society and the effect of those behaviours on the child's development, NOT the fact that ma & pa produce smarty zygotes.

duck monster posted:

With all that said, how does one tease out environmental from genetic factors in IQ with this whole heritability jibba jabba. Surely having smart parents just means you grow up in a household that values and encourages intelligence. How is that variable teased apart from genetics?

V. Illych L. posted:

IQ also does not equal intelligence. Like, seriously. It just doesn't. I don't think any professionals use it as a measure of intelligence. It can be a good marker for cognitive impairments or brain damage and suchlike, but calling it Intelligence Quotient is something of a misnomer.

Implants posted:

I wasn't suggesting that there is no genetic factors to intelligence, or that it isn't a heritable trait etc. More talking about the fact that your brain after a comparatively short period of time is radically different at a structural level than what your DNA is programmed to create, which suggests a strong social or learned component to intelligence, rather than just born smart/born dumb. Like I said tho I haven't really looked at this stuff since undergrad so ymmv

quote:

Our results unequivocally confirm that a substantial proportion of individual differences in human intelligence is due to genetic variation, and are consistent with many genes of small effects underlying the additive genetic influences on intelligence.

V. Illych L. posted:

Right. You're going to have to do better than that, I'm afraid - the concept of the g-factor does not demonstrate practical application of the concept by professionals. The reason for my skepticism is that I'm actually sort of familiar with the practices in this area, having neuropsychologists in the family (and colleagues of said neuropsychologist at some gatherings), and this debate keeps coming up and they keep saying that you basically use IQ tests to check for abnormalities connected to brain dysfunction.

To clarify: I'm not saying that IQ does not correlate with what we call intelligence at all, I'm saying it's a very unreliable factor and claiming that the relatively high heritability of IQ (at least some of those studies have some problems with regards to the sample selections, too) equals to any significant degree heritability of 'intelligence' is problematic at best.

quote:

Universal positive correlations between different cognitive tests motivate the concept of “general intelligence” or Spearman's g. Here the neural basis for g is investigated by means of positron emission tomography.

quote:

General intelligence (Spearman's g) accounts for over 50% of the reliable variance in a battery of mental tests in a sample of the general population. In a “differentiation hypothesis” originally suggested by Spearman it is hypothesized that the degree to which g pervades performance on mental tests is greater at lower ability levels. In addition to providing a critical review, the study presented here tests the differentiation hypothesis: (a) at different ability levels and ages; (b) when groups are selected on the basis of a wide range of criterion abilities; and (c) by developing new statistical techniques for sampling groups of different ability levels.

quote:

The g factor is common to all cognitive abilities and to measures of academic performance. An important question in the research on cognitive sex di€erences is whether, on average, females and males differ in g. This question is technically the most diffcult to answer. Furthermore, it has been the least investigated. In the present study, two samples of young adolescents solved several cognitive and scholastic (achievement) tests. The samples were a total of 1565 young adolescents (797 girls and 768 boys). Sex was considered to obtain separate g factors. The congruence coeffcients between the g vectors extracted for each sex suggested a near identity. Then the sex difference in g was represented on each of the subtests in terms of a point-biserial correlation. These correlations were included with the full matrix of subtest intercorrelations for factor analysis. The results reveal the factor loading of sex on g, which in the present study suggest a null sex difference.

V. Illych L. posted:

Psychologist, not psychiatrist. But I'll read this and get back to you if I remember, cheers!

internaut posted:

Intergenerational Social Mobility:The United States in Comparative Perspective (spoiler: the US worse than Norway when it comes to social mobility)

Vermain posted:

For competition to take place in any meaningful sense, growth has to occur, since it will denote winners and losers and allow inefficient resources (the businesses that lose) to be absorbed by those using resources efficiently.

V. Illych L. posted:

Unless the widgets all break after one year, this situation would still involve growth, you realise

namesake posted:

The idea of permanently fixed sales assumes a neverending pattern of buyers collecting widgets and sellers collecting money, which is also completely nonsensical if that's all they do.

quote:

infinite money in the purchasers hands to continue purchasing widgets

Totally TWISTED posted:

Thanks for this.

For those interested, here is the testimony to Congress from which the graphic is derived (I'd tell you the page number that the data is on - since it's not the same image - but there are no page numbers).

http://www.economy.com/mark-zandi/documents/Final-House-Budget-Committee-Perspectives-on-the-US-Economy-070110.pdf

SSJ2 Goku Wilders posted:

You could say that for practically all neoliberal economic models ever conceived

Install Gentoo posted:

Also a gold standard is terrible for anyone who invests in gold since the whole idea of it is "gold is now a fixed price; no more massive returns in investment". So that's funny when you see people who have invested in gold but also want the gold standard.

gaan kak posted:

Yea, the study fails to account for a liberal article criticizing a conservative thinktank's position and vice versa; it's interesting but I think incomplete as a whole. Are there are any more methodological details available about the 4th estate infographic?

quote:

Sentiment of statements is broken down by each candidate. Explicit statements of praise or criticism toward a candidate are marked as Positive or Negative to that candidate, respectively. Statements that affect the reputation or alter the image of a candidate are also marked with sentiment. Other statements that do not contain opinion, or do nothing to help or hurt a candidate are marked as Neutral. If a candidate speaks positively about himself, that can also be marked Positive.

Timo posted:

Now, can you tell me how incredibly wrong I am? I know I'm missing a lot.

eSports Chaebol posted:

I know America does try to mark military aid as ODA but I'm not sure what the magnitude of it is.

Zeitgueist posted:

They're on the whole wrong because they assert that men are an oppressed demographic. That's just silly.

You need to list specific points, it's too broad.

I'll try and dig up a source but men actually win more often when they contest custody. Most men don't because (presumably) they don't want to take care of the kids and thus don't try and get custody.


edit: Blog post detailing this: http://www.villainouscompany.com/vcblog/archives/2012/04/child_supportcu.html

Golbez posted:

Why is "women have children" considered different than "men go to war"? How many CEOs were female when all the young men were off at war and there were much fewer women popping out babies during WW2? If we had a draft, I would be far more concerned about my all-male workforce disappearing to Eurasia one day rather than my all-female workforce getting pregnant at the same time.

So no, it's not solely about pregnancy, far from it.

Golbez posted:

Judakel posted:

Earlier we discussed why the notion that women rearing children should cost them career opportunities is as sexist as it gets.

Judakel posted:

Edit: It is about 3 pages back.

quote:

This may be true if "productivity" is measured only in wage labour. Housework and child-rearing, which women still disproportionately bear the burden of, are not waged labour and are not measured in productivity measures like GDP, but will have an impact on women's ability to do waged labour. Block knows this and says it openly, but does not consider it a problem, instead claiming that employers are within their rights to assess potential employees based on their gender because women will marry and lose status/working time. He doesn't go completely down the route of saying that women have inherent inferiority in some aspect like intelligence or that within a job they will be less productive, more that a woman's typical social role leads her to eventually forfeit waged productivity for non-waged productivity (and indeed, that she will WANT to do this), and this means women will, as a group, be out-competed by men. Bafflingly, his supporters don't see this as a sexist problem:

Judakel posted:

I am not really sure the matter becomes any less sexist when we take out the "anticipation" angle and simply base it around choices made. This duty has traditionally fallen on women, and this is precisely why viewing such labor as a necessary sacrifice of financial independence should be seen in a sexist light. Only recently has it begun affecting men on a larger scale, but the genesis of the problem is nonetheless sexism.

Judakel posted:

Given that the labor is important/necessary to the stability of a society, I am not really sure why I should concede that it is insane to expect anyone to give their financial independence in order to pursue it.

Judakel posted:

I don't think you have a good enough understanding of the issues at hand to discuss this intelligently.

Judakel posted:

Edit: Then you edit some half-assed response in after the fact. Here is my response to that...

State remuneration would be the answer, along with a culture that does look at time spent away from work as a reason to not return someone to their former position or a position around the same paygrade.

Judakel posted:

If private enterprises cannot be relied on to do this, then you've just found another reason to be against such a thing.

Zuhzuhzombie!! posted:

Yeah, that's what I was curious about. % of people who receive SNAP and housing benefits AND also have a full time job. Thanks.