I love Tyson. But totally disagree with him on this...
Yes farm animals are 'engineered' but they are engineered via NATURE and NATURAL SELECTION over THOUSANDS OF YEARS.

Putting Jellyfish glow dna into mice is fucked up and would NEVER happen in NATURE.
INSERTING PESTICIDE PRODUCING GENES INTO FOOD IS SOO FUCKED UP FOR ALL OF NATURE.

Bee's anyone ?

Human's, Animals, Plants, we all share essentially the same cells.
So something that is designed to kill insects, if ingested by us, may fuck us up.

Also, WHY DO IT ? GM yields are not that astronomic.

Most of the food we grown is WASTED. Let's fix that first.

I'm glad at least your salient points have some real significance and depth, but I still think you have an unrealistic view of humanity.

Human nature is what it has evolved to be, a complex system of values and emotions dictated by your genes, environment, and life experiences.

That's the origin of your philosophy and mine. As nice as it is to imagine that the world would be a wonderful place if they all had the same compassion you have, it's just not something that can or would ever be a reality because everyone, same as you and me, cannot just dictate their core beliefs to their subconscious.

Even if I agreed that I should think as you do (and I don't), would that mean whenever I have a natural, instinctive opinion about something that doesn't conform to your beliefs I'm supposed to pretend or go to a re-education camp until I really do believe?

There's a place called North Korea where they force everyone to think a specific way or pretend they do, and it just doesn't work. That's not human nature.

In genetics, that is pretty much how it works. The dominant black/dark-haired gene will trump the recessive blonde-haired gene. Punnet squares for the win!

However, as I remember things in the Song of Ice and Fire books, it is presented as though that understanding of genetics isn't really common knowledge in Westeros as it is for us. The books play up the "seed is strong" thing even more, which to me suggests that while people who stop to consider it the most (ie., Jon Arryn) feel that Robert's "seed"/genetics are strong and should be probably be expressed in his "kids" with Cersei, MOST people of Westeros just accept that they "must take after their mother more" and don't think anything is amiss. Ned getting wind of the "seed is strong" idea and thinking about it himself makes him suspicious too, but he doesn't have our understanding of genetics to provide the (nearly) ironclad parentage proof at a glance.

So, you're both right, kinda.

I think our understanding of genetics would make a Jon Snow born of Lyanna (likely carrying double dominant brown/black hair gene BB) and Rhaegar (I think platinum blonde, so guaranteed to be double recessive bb) either have a 100% chance of being dark-haired (BB cross with bb will result in 100% Bb children, carrying the blonde gene but expressing the black) or at most a 25% chance of being blonde IF Lyanna happens to be a carrier of the blonde gene (which seems unlikely).

hahaaaa, NO!
If DNA was made by a "Designer", then he was the worst designer ever.
DNA can be so broken and flawed, carry latent patterns, defective genes and so on. DNA may seem complicated to those who don't study and know it (Me). But it's being studied and we are gaining a huge understanding of DNA. What it's capable of, and what it's not, and where all the flaws and broken parts are.

Sorry Shinyblurry, if your God was the designer, then that would be conclusive proof that your God is far from perfect and in fact not very good at his job of creation..

Forget the part about Brazil
Forget the part about football/soccer
Forget everything here...

Focus on Six digits - Five fingers and a thumb. That's freekin' awesome.
And the fact that it seems to be a dominant gene in the family.
Dare I say *EIA - if this spreads, we could advance to an extra digit per hand.

In dogs, artificial selection gave lots of variety that couldn't have existed in nature. But in humans there's no distinction between natural selection and artificial selection. We intelligently select our own mates by stringent criteria. Females favor good providers, and the cognitive traits that make a good provider changed drastically over the past 10,000 years, so you would expect the frequencies of genes affecting cognition to undergo unusually rapid change.

Seconding Artician. The brain evolved by natural selection, just like the rest of the body. It has built in biases and modules that vary genetically. Look at the wide variety of personalities in dog breeds, for example. In humans, the big five personality traits are estimated to be about 50% heritable based on twin studies.

Gattaca is a good movie and Brave New World is a good book, but they should not be taken as the ends of some slippery slope that any eugenic policy inevitably leads to. I think it's unfortunate that so much fear of eugenics is propagated by dystopian fictions like those. Eugenics can be done in a humane way that respects all individual rights. For instance:

1. a system of incentives for highly successful people to have more children or donate to sperm banks.

2. Universal single-payer healthcare, providing among other things free condoms and birth control pills to all, so that the use of contraception will not be so much inversely correlated with income as it has been from 1850 to the present when the poor often couldn't afford it (and it's a demonstrable fact that on average the poor tend to have lower intelligence partly due to genetics)

Even such modest, individual rights respecting policies, if phrased in terms of benefiting the gene pool, are political suicide because people are still afraid of imaginary slippery slopes leading to Hitler. Most of the US is still in denial of the implications of biological science, for reasons that speak well of them, but it's time to grow up and get over that habit of Godwinizing any attempt to improve the gene pool regardless of whether it infringes individual rights.

Or maybe lots of people people don't actually believe that, but are reluctant to say otherwise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0W9sSqeJnA

I've heard reports from several men who had sex before and after and said there was zero difference in sensation.

I circumcised my boys but not at all because of aesthetics, nor to "look like me", and especially not for any kind of religious reason.

We weren't dead-set against leaving them un-cut. In fact, we initially figured we'd just let them be natural.

One reason we decided to go ahead with it is we heard about lots of uncircumcised men have issues that require them to have it done later in life (e.g., phimosis, etc.), but the bigger reason was recent (at that time) studies showed strong evidence that circumcised men are at substantially lower risk for serious life-threatening diseases such as HIV and penile cancer (that results from HPV).

>> Yep, it's fucking barbaric. It is genital mutilation of children, period.

Talk about misinformation from a bunch of barbarians.

It's more barbaric to be completely close-minded, backward-thinking, and ignorant as to why there might possibly exist valid reasons to provide your children an almost 100% chance to avoid a plethora of penis-related problems and life-threatening diseases for their entire life in exchange for what's really a very minor procedure when done soon after birth.

The reasons against it? "It's fucking barbaric." Because... why again? "It just is," I'm sure is the best possible response.

The reasons in favor of it? Don't be so glib. Read the research.

Science Daily from Jan 2010:

Other epidemiological studies have shown that male circumcision is associated with significant reductions in HIV acquisition in men.

The strongest evidence for a cause-and-effect relationship between circumcision and HIV risk reduction came from three randomized-control trials in sub-Saharan Africa, where the circumcision rate is relatively low and the HIV infection rate is relatively high. All three demonstrated a more than 40 percent reduction in HIV acquisition among circumcised men.

The largest of these three studies -- in Rakai, Uganda -- was led by Dr. Ronald H. Gray, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins and the scientific paper's senior author. Dr. Gray's group collected penile swabs from all of the circumcision trial study participants, which provided the data for the new TGen-Johns Hopkins study.

The new study found that circumcision -- the removal of the foreskin, or prepuce, from the penis -- eliminates an area of mucous membrane and dramatically changes the penile bacterial ecosystem. Significantly, TGen's analysis of more than 40 types of bacteria, using a 16S rRNA gene-based pyrosequencing approach, suggests that the introduction of more oxygen following circumcision decreases the presence of anaerobic (non-oxygen) bacteria and increases the amount of aerobic (oxygen-required) bacteria.

HPV can also cause cancer of the penis in men. HPV infection is found in about half of all penile cancers. It’s more common in men with HIV and those who have sex with other men.

There is no approved screening test to find early signs of penile cancer. Because almost all penile cancers start under the foreskin of the penis, they may be noticed early in the course of the disease.

...

The 2 main risk factors for genital HPV infection in men are having many sex partners and not being circumcised.

The risk of being infected with HPV is strongly linked to having many sex partners.

Men who are circumcised (have had the foreskin of the penis removed) have a lower chance of getting and staying infected with HPV. Men who have not been circumcised are more likely to be infected with HPV and pass it on to their partners.

ahhhh, evolution at work. The shorter bikes drowned. This bike will get to pass his genes forward.

Your video, Jock Scientists Identify Gay Gene In Fellow Researcher Carl, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Gay Gene.

As opposed to Transgender Phillip?

ha! this was fantastic! many people are unaware that walken can shake his groove thing like a modern day gene kelly.

*cimema
*electronica

Not insulting, but this is communism that works!

Communism is not a dirty word, and in small towns and states it works well, promotes a sence of community, you are there for your fellow man and everyone shares freely of their labors.

Where it falls apart is disabled, sick, those that dont want to work partake in the free benefits causing anger, jealousy and split in other community members.

Thats why the old saying about communism works great on paper but will eventually fall apart in ptactice. Without a tyrant to keep it in check.

By the way Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek the entire Earth was communism and had eliminated capitalism in the future :-)

...if only that really happened.
I'm 100% in favor of feeding human meat to animals, if it's safe for them to eat (most is probably poisoned). At least we could give a little back to nature in death, but people seem to want to keep it to themselves for some reason.
I'm also in favor of eugenics, or selective breeding of animals we have control of (including humans). We could have almost completely ended genetic diseases in one generation if only the thought didn't outrage and disturb most people. We could have also stopped the insane overpopulation with strict selective breeding, solving many if not most of the problems facing us today. That is a step removed from offing my little bro to feed the dogs....even I'm not that heartless in real life.
The only arguments I've heard against it are 'only Nazi's would do that', and, 'it's my right to pass on my (low quality) genes to as many mini-mes as I wish'. I disagree with those ways of thinking and see them as throwing out the baby with the bath water or short sighted self centered bad planning (or child abuse, depending on your genes).
Personally, I didn't think my 'better than average' genes were good enough to warrant creating another person to save them. (I have an above average IQ and no known physical genetic flaws, only crippling personality flaws and a broken body!) Perhaps you can imagine how I feel about the likes of Honey Boo-boo breeders negating my choice and then some.
I know, I know...I'm a disgusting narcissistic Nazi freak....but what about the argument I made?

Me thinks not but I guess it depends how you view it.

"This channel is home to videos of people who seem to have a great desire to remove themselves from the gene pool or at least cause great bodily harm to themselves as they slowly work their way out of the gene pool."