(no subject)

[taratemima]

Warren Ellis on where food really comes from. Cuz jokes about overly earnest hippies are funny.

Funny thing. I am less squeamish about what exactly is in compost and what non-tomato genes are being used in GM tomatoes than I am about this:

"My anti-GM stance is soley in the implementation of GM crops, not the idea of them. The main practice of these companies is mono-culture... fields and fields of genetic twins, all sharing the same strengths- and weaknesses. The right kind of blight shows up and *boom* crop failure.

Second, the companies behind most GM crops are corprofacists. For example, a farmer is not allowed to replant the seeds that his crops yield- it's a patent violation."

I imagine that non-disclosure and patents also get in the way of stuff like talking to other scientists and the general public about genetic modification. That will really screw in the long run.

Better discussion of that here.

(Damn, first you start making fun of hippies and farming, and then you're getting all serious about Mad Cow and shit).



That article has been on my mind for some time. Oddly enough, I don't think anyone would consider me part of the 'creative class,' just a data entry person with weird hobbies. For most of college, I aspired to that. Truth is, I hoped that hard work and persistance would get me there, even if I distract easily and my grades weren't that great. I don't know anymore. Places like R&D and consulting were options if you didn't want to take the academia (or think tank) route and you had an advanced degree. Maybe I will live long enough to see a boom, but I wonder if it will be a smaller one than the previous.

(For a discussion that somehow manages to touch on gentrification and monocultures, go here. Oddly, the person who said something about plenty of Asian and Indian immigrants to take their place didn't pay attention to the bit about dropping immigration rates and Australia's Asian and Indian population)
I managed to connect it to the other article on campus wars. If this continues, I wonder what shape 'campus wars' will take. Will there be harping on 'liberal bias in academia' when incidents like this happens?

We have many brilliant young people, but not nearly enough to fill all the crucial slots. Last year, for instance, a vast, critical artificial intelligence project at MIT had to be jettisoned because the university couldn't find enough graduate students who weren't foreigners and who could thus clear new security regulations..

There is also another possible wrinkle in the ideological divide among professionals, one that would disgust the people not in the fringes.

Then there are the fundamentalist challenge to scientific results they don't like. I know much has been made about postmodernism and scientific research, but gah, these guys are running things?

As one person points out:

"We need to be very careful with this type of stuff. Scientists come to the US because it is a good place to do science. US scientists doing work here, along with foreign visitors, have a profound impact on our economy.

If we make the US unattractive as a scientific center, not only will foreign scientists quit coming, domestic scientists might leave."

Interesting looking blog on science and politics.

"Everybody go look into the International Studies in Higher Education Act and the proposed changes to Title VI. Conservatives feel people in academics are insufficiently patriotic, and are pushing for more oversight to ensure that professors are more supportive of American foreign policy, especially in the Middle East. I've blogged about this about once a week, but there hasn't been much attention from the liberal world at large.

The main conservative site running this is Campus Watch, which is really fun to fisk."

From this guy. I cannot find anything he wrote about. Dammit.



Wait. Why am I doing this? I have a roleplaying game to finish and stuff to print. I am afraid of the cold. Or rather feel guilty that I called in work because I was afraid of the minus thirty temperture this morning. If I called in because I was tired and I was afraid of the cold, why should I go to Arisia?