jeskill

I personally don't care if the world is better off without humans. When humans go extinct, life will continue to go on. I'm more concerned about how we're going to keep humans from going extinct.

Not the only female!

I know many women who did not have a hymen when they first had sex. Dancing, horseback riding, gymnastics can all stretch the hymen into non-existence before sex. If you are gentle and if the woman is relaxed and willing, I doubt there'd be much blood, if any. Not really an official source, but I've seen this in other places too: http://www.islamicga.../mythhymen.html The probability of a woman dying from pre-marital sex is the same as her dying from marital sex. You ask him. You should seek a relationship that is based on mutual respect and friendship. If it's an amorous relationship you seek, then there should also be mutual attraction. It is my personal opinion that sex within a committed relationship is way better, so I would answer yes to that question. If you seek to be emotionally and physically intimate, my suggestion is to be honest and caring to your partner, take precautions to be safe.

To add on to what immortal was explaining .... Mutations occur via a random process (e.g. mistakes in DNA replication). However, the main processes that cause a mutated trait to be selected for or against are NOT random. I'm talking, of course, about natural selection and artificial selection. (Mutation = random; selection = not random) There is one evolutionary process that randomly causes a change in allele frequency over generations (i.e. evolution). It's called genetic drift, but genetic drift tends to only have a strong effect on small isolated populations.

Yeah, I kinda disagree with you. In truth, my issue is not so much about the planes themselves, but the assumption that regulating institutions and data collectors are more expendable than planes. A government needs to balance protecting its citizens from both internal and external threats, and it needs to balance immediate needs with long-term needs. I have a hard time believing we're going to use those fighter jets for anything useful -- who is going to attack us in the near future? But reduced water quality, air-borne pollutants, and environmental damage to our fishing and timber industries are actually real and current threats to Canadians. We need to regulate and protect our water, food, and health, and environment, and we do need to understand the risks to our health, food, water, and base industries. Harper is actively (and seemingly deliberately) reducing the amount of available data and evidence-based analysis (i.e. cutting the ELA, cutting Stats Canada, cutting fisheries). He is gutting environmental protection -- showing that he's more concerned with short-term gains than long-term sustainability. These actions have a higher chance of causing harm to Canadians that any external military threat. If we have no capacity to regulate the oil and gas industry, then we're going to have more pollution-based health problems. And if we have no data to show that something, such as gas fumes, or some water-borne pollutant, is causing a health problem, then we can't actually do anything about it. Edit to say: I'm glad to hear you don't know who Rick Santorum is. Suggestion: don't google him.

It's objectivism gone wild. Seriously. It's interesting, because Harper (the prime minister of Canada) won't touch health care with a 10-foot pole. He knows that it would cause an uproar. But science? Most people don't have the scientific background to care or even understand how these decisions are going to affect them. For example, I bet Canadians know more about Rick Santorum than they do about the effect of shale gas extraction on the environment.

Did you know that with every new living individual, be it human, plant, fungi, or bacteria, there are new mutations in the genome? That's because the DNA replication system is imperfect. For example, the enzyme that duplicates DNA would accidentally add an A where a T should be, causing a code that was originally GATTC could to be changed to GATAC. (That would be a point mutation, by the way). This has been well-studied. We know mutations occur because we can, with expensive technology, extract the DNA sequence from a cell, and then we can compare the DNA of ancestors (moms and dads) to their progeny (sons and daughters). The point of this, is that the enzyme that allows Flavobacterium to degrade nylon did actually come about because there was a mutation in the genome that changed the structure of an enzyme. This new nylon-degrading enzyme then allowed the bacteria to eat new stuff that other organisms couldn't, so it was able to reproduce fast on food that no other organism could eat. Hence, why we now see populations of nylon-degrading Flavobacterium. You know, proper grammar and spelling go a long way here. It's hard to evaluate someone's arguments when they're difficult to read. (I hope you don't think grammar and spelling are indoctrination too!)

I just read in the news today that the Canadian government has decided to stop funding the experimental lakes. In case you didn't know, these lakes have been used since the 1960s to study ecosystem-scale questions. Groundbreaking research has been performed here and is still being performed, including studies on the effect of acid rain, eutrophication caused by pollution (research from this project was used to successfully remove phosphorus from detergents), and studies on endocrine disrupters, to name a few. And what's the government spending its money on instead? Oh, new fighter jets. It's just another example of the anti-science/anti-data shenanigans of the Conservative party in Canada. PM Stephen Harper has halved Statistics Canada and gotten rid of the long-form census (because who needs data when you have God to help you make policy decisions, right?), he's slashed Parks and Services Canada and decreased the number of officers responsible for regulating the oil and gas industry (because they can totally be trusted to do the right thing). And then, of course, there're the whole shale gas and asbestos problems. I actually emailed Gary Goodyear a year ago, asking him why we're still producing asbestos. His response was that: TOTAL B.S. I sent him some peer-reviewed papers that said the exact opposite, and he didn't respond. Of course. To top it off, they get away with this crap because apathetic Canadians are too busy being blinded by the bloody circus down south. Like I really care to watch a drawn out primary and election that costs trillions of dollars when the rest of the world is falling to pieces. AHHHHHHH!

Report them? Seriously? Have you ever been to Mexico? The police don't get paid a living wage -- they survive off of bribes. Besides which, the workers in the coffee farms are Guatemalan (many ofthem illegal immigrants). We wouldn't be doing them a favour. As stated previously, the definition of organic that I'm using (and you have to be specific because there are many definitions, as you well know) is a set of farming techniques that rely on crop rotation, green manure,compost and biological pest control. That means avoiding biocides, if possible. So no, it's not prejudice. This particular farm didn't use ANY biocides when it was "organic". It used ecosystem services created by the shade trees to limit pest and weed outbreaks. Yes, he followed bad advice. Funny that these bad farming practices happen to be the conventional wisdom of industrial coffee production. I was told that he told the loan providers the farm would continue to be organic. When he started using biocides, the farm was still considered "organic". No, I don't. But I'm not advocating switching one pesticide for another. As stated previously,"organic agriculture" to me, means using the least amount of capital inputs (pesticides, fertilizers, etc.) and the most amount of ecological knowledge. If you want, we can use the term "ecological agriculture", which is perhaps more appropriate. If the health of the farm workers were the only issue on the table here, I might be inclined to agree with you that this would be the ideal fix. But it isn't the only issue. There are also the ecological, economic impacts and overall long-term sustainability to consider. 1) Evidence of improvements in yields due toagroecological practices (which improve caloric intake): 2) Improvements in caloric and protein uptake due to agroecological practices: 3)Improvements in yields due to agroecological practices: 4. Improvements in food production and household food security due to sustainable agricultural practices: There were other mitigating factors, of course. There's an excellent article on the Irish Potato Famine here that discusses all the economic and ecological factors that combined to cause the Irish Potato Famine. And in fact, yield wasn't really a determinate factor. The Irish were working on farms to grow other things, but all the food except potatoes was being exported to England to foster industrialization. Do you really think it's a smart idea to subsidize the over-production of a product that costs a lot in non-renewables, just to flood other international with free (i.e. USAID) or cheap corn, thus destroying their agricultural systems, while at the same time creating an obesity epidemic with said product? Cheap in the short-term means nothing if it's not sustainable over the long term. Clinton destroyed long-term sustainable farms in Mexico for short-term profit. So you think that international politics can be separated from agricultural policy? According to the United Nations, you are wrong. Ha ha. The important word was "magical". I should have probably used a synonym of "unlimited", but it's hard to use that as an adjective. "Oil and phosphate rock unlimitedly appears from the ground"? Naaah, doesn't flow. Probably could have written that better, but assumed you would get the point. In case you didn't, the point is that both are non-renewable, and both are at peak output, if not close to it.

When you say, "take things personally", what do you mean, exactly? And are you trying to get at something specific with the second question?

OK, I admit it. I just read the Hunger Games Trilogy. And I loved it. Mostly because Katniss is totally bad-ass.

The problem with your last sentence there is that pesticides and herbicides are often mishandled, even if many are only licensed for professional use. For example, the coffee farm where I did research (which was organic, when I started, but is no longer do to ownership change) recently started to use fungicides and herbicides. They gave no safety training to the farm workers because, quite frankly, the new owner doesn't care about them. Some grad students from my research group actually ended up having a covert safety discussion with a few workers because they were obviously not following safety procedures. Kind of off topic, but I'd like to point out that the switch from organic to conventional caused a decrease in yields. The new owner made some bad business decisions and so had to get a loan. The loan stipulated that he had to cut down half the trees in the finca, because it was thought that would increase yield. Funny enough, this caused sun-loving weeds to start growing like fiends, which, as stated previously, reduced yields. But I digress …. There are areas in Central America where planes cover fields with pesticides and herbicides --- and also coat the communities that live within or nearby. Chronic sickness, neurological disorders, mental development delays are the result. http://www.panna.org/resources/cotton Yes, because the areas with highly mechanized /industrialized farming can afford to subsidize the cost of fertilizers, biocides, and hybrid seeds. The places that lack industrialized farming can't afford to subsidize these capital inputs. Hence why many are now turning to agroecological farming techniques, which relyon ecological knowledge and labour moreso than expensive inputs. This really frustrates me. The pro-industrial ag people keep on saying this, but IT'S NOT TRUE. Did you read any of the links provided in my previous post? Or are you just focused on winning as opposed to learning? There are numerous examples of malnourished communities that are using ecologically sustainable techniques to grow enough healthy food to feed themselves RIGHT NOW. I linked to a number of them in the previous post and in various other discussions on this site. There are some interesting studies out there that strongly suggest organic agriculture can produce enough to feed the world. There are also numerous examples of industrial agricultural failure – we have not stopped world hunger with industrial ag, we have increased sickness of disenfranchised farm workers, and are overusing resources. Putting more of our public research funding into low-impact sustainable agricultural techniques would benefit us, not make it worse. I think the answer to that question is complicated. Farming all over the world didn't all of a sudden change from "organic" to non-organic, and the reasons for adopting certain techniques weren't identical. To take the long view, agricultural techniques have been evolving ever since humans started farming. Many farming techniques that were sustainable at one point in history are no longer used due to various factors such as climate change, economic change, or social change. For example, all corn in Mexico used to be grown in Mexico (many were traditional varieties on small plots) until Clinton's Free Trade agreement, when Mexico was flooded with US corn. The Irish had a diverse vegetable/barley/animal husbandry system until the English stole all their good farming land and introduced potatoes, which can grow in substandard soil. I'm sure you know the rest of that story. Neither of these changes occurred because the people couldn't feed themselves with current technology. In other words, they didn't change the technology because of increased yields. There were social and economic factors that changed farming economics. In Mexicos case, those farmers lost their jobs, and, well, you all know where they migrated to. In general, you seem to make the assumption that industrial farming became the dominant farming paradigm because it is superior to other forms of agriculture. I disagree with that assumption. I mean, yes, we can grow more corn per acre in the Mid-West and other breadbaskets of rich countries due to industrial agriculture. But globally, industrial agriculture clearly has not improved malnutrition, clearly has had negative effects on the ecosystem, and clearly has had negative effects on communities in the Global South. Soon, unless you believe that oil and phosphate rock magically appears from the ground, we will not be able to grow using industrial agricultural techniques anyways.

OKAAAAAY, so Phi said: And Justin's response was Justin... really? I agree with Phi. There is no point in debating this with you. If you truly believe that Phi's response means he thinks government control is always the solution, if you truly believe that a democratic government has no ability to enable certain freedoms, then you're way too hopelessly partisan to ever properly analyze this issue.

I don't mean to be supercilious, but it's quite frustrating to read these types of comments -- your opinions seem to be born out of ignorance. Specifically, organic agriculture is not just about 'growing natural and organic products", it's about growing food in an ecologically sustainable manner and not using health-harmful products to grow foods. Lest you not understand my assertions, let me be clear: 1) Industrial agriculture is NOT ecologically sustainable. Evidence More Evidence: superweeds; superbugs; eutrophication 2) Contrary to your assumption, many of the pesticides and herbicides used ARE harmful to human health. Evidence 3) Industrial agriculture IS NOT currently feeding the world even though we currently grow enough food for everyone. The assumption that we need to grow more intensively is a WRONG assumption because hunger is not caused by a lack of production, it's caused by a lack of distribution. Evidence

And now for something completely different..... The concept "organic agriculture" can mean many many different things. I'm going to assume that here, it means "ag relying on crop rotation, green manure, compost and biological pest control." Personally, I like the "ecologically sustainable agriculture" concept a bit more for a variety of reasons, but will not discuss that here. My take: The main problem that organic agriculture solves is the issue of the pesticide treadmill. Basically, farmers (for example, Nicauraguan cotton farmers in the 70s; all farmers growing RoundUp Ready corn and wheat) that grow monocultures have to use stronger pesticides and more pesticides every year because over time (and this time can be as short as a few months) insects evolve resistance to the pesticides being used. Edit to add: This creates an economic cost for the farmers, an ecological cost for the surrounding ecosystem, and a health cost to the farm workers (farm workers are more likely to be poisoned by pesticides and herbicides than the people eating the food.) The second main problem that organic ag solves is malnutrition in developing countries. Most impoverished peasants can't afford the capital inputs that go into conventional agriculture (e.g. pesticides, hybrid or GM seeds, fertilizers) and so low-tech alternatives such as polycultures that integrate N-fixing legumes; seed-saving; and locally-known drought-tolerant crops (as opposed to corn), tend to improve the health of said peasants. I've discussed examples of this ad nauseum on this site already, but you can look up the research group Soils, Foods and Healthy Communities as one if you like. With that in mind, I completely disagree with mississippichem and insane alien: organic ag does not always have lower yields per acres compared to intensive farming. In many developing countries, organic ag completely outstrips conventional in yield due to the issues mentioned above (See Bagely et al.'s seminal paper discussed here). Also, given the lack of scientific research into organic cultivars, some researchers are arguing that organic cultivars have the potential to have better yields than conventionals if we start focusing on breeding them. Finally, it's been long understood that you can grow more food (pound per acre) with a well-constructed polyculture than a monoculture. (EDITED to make more clear) The drawbacks are that: organic ag requires more manual labour, and large seed corporations cannot make as much money off of it. Some organic farmers grow "biodynamically" because they get a higher economic rate of return. I personally think it's bunk -- the biodynamic protocols are totally giggle-worthy, if you ever get a chance to read them. There was a peer-reviewed paper (I can't find it right now) that compared biodynamic and organic ag and found no difference. The Ecology of Agroecosystems. (I may be biased as this was written by my advisor.)

A woman's ability to control her sexuality and her rate of reproduction should be, in my opinion, a right.

Add salt water: the precipitate is struvite, which can be used as a fertilizer: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20980038 http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/pee-power-recycling-urine-to-powder-makes-superior-fertilizer.html

Rigney, All of us at one point or another have done the exact same thing. I very much doubt you offended anyone.

The statistics from the above post come from an old urban legend. See the Snopes article: http://www.snopes.co...ot/athenian.asp and the FactCheck.org article: http://www.factcheck...reported-stats/. The professor in question also has written on his website: In short, it's always a good idea to fact check amazing statistics, even if they agree with your worldview.

So, are you saying that if we were somehow able to procure genetic data from an ancestral crocodile, or G. biloba, or sturgeon, we wouldn't see any significant difference, even in, say, genes that code for disease resistance or junk dna?

I apologize for interrupting an interesting conversation about hybridization, but this discussion got me thinking about Gingko biloba. This tree is often called "a living fossil", with the implication that this species has been around for a long time (much like lake sturgeon). However, I wonder, was G. biloba around millions of years ago (since the Cenozoic, right?), or just its genetically and phenotypically different-yet-similar ancestor that happens to have the same species name because there's no distinct speciation event in the fossil record? Ditto for lake sturgeon.

You don't need to copy Canada's system -- there are a lot of good two-tier healthcare possibilities that have both universal health care and private care for those who wish to pay top dollar. It should be noted, however, that if your concern is that a government bureaucracy will decrease quality and efficiency, it should be noted that the US's health care system spends A LOT of money on bureaucracy, especially when you compare it to Canada: From the New England Journal of Medicine: A universal health care system, even if it were administered by the state governments rather than the federal government, would likely decrease a significant proportion of the bureaucratic costs because you'd be dealing with one pool instead of multiple.

Question to pornophiles: are you ever concerned that some of the women in the videos are not doing this of their own free will? The reason I ask is that there seems to be a lot of human trafficking, with women getting caught up in the sex industry with no escape.A link to a blog on the subject, if you're interested. I'd feel a lot more comfortable with pornography if there were some sort of guarantee that the actors have free will and are getting paid.

I am not a vegan, but can completely understand the environmental reason for going vegan (although there are some environments in which grazing animals has a smaller environmental impact than growing irrigated crops). As someone with an ecology background, I still struggle with the ethical one though. I mean, I am definitely opposed to CAFOs and the like, and have reduced my meat consumption so I can afford to eat locally produced meat and eggs from farms that treat their animals humanly. But, I don't see the killing of animals for food as unethical, I guess because if we didn't corral the cows and chickens in safe environments, they would be gobbled up by other predators as fast as you could snap your fingers anyways. (Especially the chickens.) Food chains are an integral part of ecological systems on Earth, and humans are also part of those ecological systems. Why is it ok for a tiger to eat a gazelle, but not ok for me to eat a chicken?