Only a government mole would say such a thing hoping to embarrass or shame people out of telling the truth!

What you don’t realize is we already know….moles (and gophers) also aren’t real, having been replaced worldwide by government controlled bioengineered cyborg rodents after 9-11 to keep track of may-be-terrorists who already know how to successfully avoid surveillance by “birds”.

Nice try…we’re on to you little fuzzy buddy.

So Newtboy, would attempting to burn all this methane as it is released(converting to CO2) be a possible solution, assuming it was possible from an engineering point of view? Apart from that, maybe bioengineered organisms designed to eat the methane could make an impact.

I'm not hopeful, but I'm pretty sure there are enough ultra-rich people with the resources to save a small portion of humanity while the earth in uninhabitable for 100 years, that humans will not die out. Viruses are hard to kill(according to Agent Smith)

Very little in science is black and white. Big upvote for NDT's follow up though. Here is an extremely thorough rundown of many of the issues at hand written by an unbiased reporter: http://grist.org/series/panic-free-gmos/

In article #2 he writes about FDA safety testing of GMO's, which, while "voluntary" are always performed. According to an FDA policy analyst he interviews, "(I) frankly cannot really envision any circumstances under which anybody placing a ‘bioengineered’ food on the market would have the temerity NOT to consult with (the FDA).”

In the next article, he writes about the perception that GMO's are the product of for-profit corporations and meets with plant scientists at UC Davis; a nonprofit, publicly funded university.

If you don't have time to read the entire series, then at the very least read his final article. His conclusions are well-tempered and thoughful.

Impressive. I'd love to see something like this using artificial muscles
and small scale hydraulics. Bioengineering is cool.

Actually, I'd have to say that from a bioengineering perspective, it's incredibly stupid. What they're really doing is breeding Roundup resistant weeds, and far faster than anyone claimed they would. In consequence, agri-business is dumping many times as much herbicide into their fields...the facts make it damned clear that the only winner in this race is Monsanto. Farmers pay more for the seed and more for more herbicide to apply.

In another 20 years, Roundup will be useless, but Monsanto will happily move on to the next longterm fuckup that is profitable in the short run.

I'm not a politician or lawyer. The patent infringement stuff you mentioned sounds bad, but I don't know enough to make an educated comment.

As far as RoundUp Ready soybeans, what I know about it is that it inhibits an enzyme required for RoundUp (the sprayed pesticide) to work, thus rendering certain crops "immune" to the spray. From a bioengineering perspective it is ingenious and allows developed nations to have plentiful and cheap crops year round. GMO is a product of our (humanity's) need for cheap, plentiful and calorie-dense foods. Sure, we can complain about the fact that we don't want to eat pesticides/insecticides/whatever, but we complain far more when the food we eat is expensive, scarce and calorie-sparse. Before GM (I'll include selective breeding in this category), our food supply was predicated on the vagaries of the weather, insects, viruses, fungi and bacteria. We now enjoy a plentiful bounty year round and still we complain. We cannot have it both ways.

I realize that there is a gut reaction to GM (and irradiated) foods, but people need to educate themselves and ask if they would rather have massive price swings for staple foods or (relatively) cheap food year round that is inherently not the product of evolutionary changes.

Sample: lamentations, lamentations, lamentations worldwide

Watch out (repeated)

LB: In the beginning men and women had an obligation to their children
Lateef: Then there was a real and true necessity in need for building
LB: There was still the discipline and will proliferate the lineage
Lat: Matters of the spirit, mind, and body taken serious
LB: But the way that we became what we became
Somebody please explain
Lat: Well we could tell you if you're curious
Those that reign got the masses in chains
And their minds enslaved
Both: And that's the part that makes me furious

Watch out (repeated)

Both: Cos they're definitely aint no info readily avai'
Lable to the general A (?) people so let me know x2

Lat: It's easily this multimedia crews that feed you to the neediest
It's the greediest trying to cheat us out of our God given right
LB: To a quality education minimal opportunities available
Limited occupations we are not given a choice
Lat: Or given a voice within a political system pimped and gangsta'd out
Wherein the people are the victim sheep being lead about
LB: While the followers and the patrons of any faith outside the mainstream
Are being raided, falsely painted as endangering the way things work
Lat: And the way things are remain
LB: I can't believe that things aint worse
Lat: When all the wicked seeds we've sown have grown
LB: And poisoned all the Earth
Lat: It serves us right
LB: Can't really act surprised when the harvest has no worth
Lat: The curse that's lurking round the corner
Both: Is the product of our work

Watch out (repeated)

Right now
LB: The holy war's growing opposing forces polling of the origins
Of which have been historically been ignored
Right now
Lat: Our foreign policy is mallets of democracy
Upholding an aristocracy of secret terrorist cells
Right now
LB: The global poverty that we accept so commonly
Turns people into property one step away from hell
Right now
Lat: Healthcare battles bioengineering for the worldwide scare
Of the plague the we're fearing
Right now
LB: They got the right to put our lives under surveillance
Right now
Lat: They got the right to lock us up we don't obey them
Right now
LB: Modern education don't prepare the youth
Right now
Right now
Both: Do what you gotta do
Right now
LB: There's people shooting at people that's throwing stones
Right now
Lat: There's a movement of people across the globe
Right now
Both: Right now is where we're at
What goes around comes around
Time for action before the last trumpet sounds

Science fiction can justify anything because almost anything IS possible. Suspension of disbelief plays too much into our own environment and timeline -- think about your own life as a stage play 400 years ago and MAYBE you'll consider suspending it a bit more.

His hands glow when he touches a mobile device, so for crying out loud, maybe he has extra signals planted in his brain (via nanotech) to provide additional motor control via WiFi, thus steering the motorcycle with one hand. I just listened to a PhD in bioengineering at Wonder Con say that the idea of creating new signals in the brain for additional limb control is not so far fetched. ("Science in Science Fiction" panel by the authors of this book.)

However, lack of exposition in any shape or form does not work for me -- it's just fantasy at that point. I don't need to be eviscerated by constant exposition, but I need to at least know the ground rules. I felt like this was a subpar combination of Advent Children, the T2 motorcycle chase scene and every Half Life chase scene. More stimulation for my brains PLZ.

(On a side note: BUT! it was good fun and was made to display technical skill, not simply to be judged by a group of non-industry laymen, so upvote because the team who made this has TALENT.)

I agree with everything you just wrote.

The only thing that I would point out is the media is biased as Jon Stewart put it to be lazy, and to generate conflict, but it will spin what is going on in society either conservative or liberal to get out of real reporting, and to be sensational. Anything they can do to get people to consume said media is fair game. That laziness falls on both sides of the political spectrum media wide. And it doesn't help when society tunes out when the story isn't something that elicits an emotional response, or doesn't have a simple lesson or solution. Nuance and complexity is something most Americans abhor.

Case in point, when is the last time you saw something on the news that showed how many IT jobs are given to people with work visas, and compare that to how many people are graduating college with computer science degrees to illustrate that portion of outsourcing? I don't think I've ever seen that presented in the news. That point is very hard to pin as conservative or liberal because solutions to remedy it could come from both parties. And there's no easily identified villian, either. So instead, let's paint the big bad evil corporations for outsourcing in general because that's easy to report on, throw some basic generalized stats up about number of jobs outsourced, show corporate profits increasing, and do people love to consume that kind of story. I see that left and right in IT. I know friends who see it left and right in other sections of the economy like bioengineering, etc. But it never gets reported on. These are the jobs and sectors that will be growing in the modern economy, and we as a nation are doing a poor job preparing the next generations to succeed in them, no question about it.

Or conversely, if you love you some Fox News, let's focus on the fact that there's this agency called Planned Parenthood, that is in part funded by federal tax dollars, and it performs abortions! OMG! This must be this huge problem! Only, if you're a sane individual, you'd normally then want to know how much of this is going on, and you quickly realize the number of abortions that are performed in these facilities is under 100 annually nationwide, and it's dubious at best if federal dollars actually paid for any of those procedures. But finding those statistics is either purposefully omitted to sensationalize and stir up conflict, or done so out of sheer laziness. But conservative Americans eat that stuff up, because it's easy for them to follow, clearly identifiable villians, and fits their ideological narrative of the US crumbling from disregarding "traditional values". The facts of course clearly show this isn't a significant problem.

Back to the housing crisis, etc, the truth is there's blame to go around with the banks, government, and consumers. I also have a friend who took on a mortgage he shouldn't have. Got an 80/20, he's a single income earner, wife is in the process of getting a degree in nursing, they have two kids. In 2006, they got this big massive house in a brand new neighborhood. It's the American dream. Now, it's not like this guy is dumb. He took out $400,000 mortgages (80/20), very high interest, etc. on a single income, knowing full well his wife was going to school, and he didn't have an emergency fund to speak of.

I don't care what he was told by the lenders and real estate agent - he had no one to blame but himself in the end. He had a perfectly good house in a good neighborhood already. He just bought a new car as well. He had credit card debt. He wasn't putting much money away for retirement either. There's nothing anyone can say but "it's your fault" when the economy tanked in 2008, we both worked for the same company, and they cut our salaries to avoid layoffs. I'd have been sympathetic if he were doing the basics right, had a good emergency fund, could put a good 20% down for the mortgage, had no credit card debt, etc., then got caught later despite his best efforts, or lacked the mental capability to know he was walking into a potential economic deathtrap. But he wasn't putting forth anywhere close to a best effort financially speaking. When the same thing happened to me, I cut back on paying my mortgage off early, and sat on a six months emergency fund if the layoff ever came, and increased my retirement contributions when the market tanked to jumpstart it when the market would inevitably rebounded. There was never a sleepless night.

He's in better shape now, we got our salaries put back, and what did he do? Took that several year "postponed" trip to Disneyworld with the wife and kids, put off contributing to the reinstituted 401k, never has started an IRA for him or his wife, no college fund for the kids, only has one month emergency fund, although he has reduced his credit card balances.

I wouldn't pretend to know which is worse in the US - predatory lending and other abuses by businesses against consumers, or a complete lack of personal responsibility. But I know this - there's plenty of both, but you certainly don't hear it's both from pretty much any media outlet.

*Bioengineering

>> ^kulpims:
^@Pprt: "chinese are bleeding the richest continent in the world dry"...
man, you can't be serious and say those words at the same time, especialy if you are coming from europe or the states, as I assume you do. that's like a bunch of vampires feeding of a dying man and when one more joins in the rest of them shout "murder!"
sure, chinese approach to this neo-colonialism is more totalitarian and not so cleverly masqueraded under the guise of free trade, democracy and market capitalism as was that from their western rivals which I dare say have been systematically killing Africa for hundreds of years now. and don't even get me started on the weapons trade issue, we all know who's the biggest dealer on the block here...
and fuck peter hitchens and other such critics. where are they when american pharmaceutical companies are conducting experiments on african people or over charging them for drugs and vaccines they desperatly need. where are they when millions of people are being killed for some bullshit minerals used in our cellphones or oil or fucking diamonds or some other shit they might have that our corporations are willing and able to steal from them


I sense alot of sympathy (and some guilt) on your behalf. As Pooterius said, I also anxiously await the day Africans will put aside their petty tribalism and begin working instead of loafing about and conducting sporadic warfare. However, I am not so optimistic as to believe that Africans can accomplish this any time soon. And for goodness sakes, it is NOT our duty to fix their countries.

I detect a hint of thought that you believe that Westeners have somehow have taken it upon themselves to eradicate the African peoples with AIDS in order, I assume, to plunder their territory.

You may be interested to know that recent discoveries (last week, actually) suggest that AIDS is far older than previously thought (see here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v455/n7213/abs/nature07390.html), dating from possibly 1908. Decades before bioengineering was even conceptualized.

The stark truth is that Africans have been around for longer than us, and have adapted to their environment accordingly in temperament and constitution. They have higher levels of sexual hormones, a lower gestation period a "thrifty" gene permitting greater retention of nutrients and as ethnomedicine evolves, drugs will further target their distinctive biology.

As for comparing Chinese to Western colonialism, it would be an interesting debate, although I can assure you that the way the Chinese go about in 2008 would never fly in a Western country. They have actually stated their intentions of offloading some of the large Chinese population in Africa. Their latest plan is to dump 10 million excess Chinese by 2050.

Innsbruck? My cousin's family is from Mayrhofen. I spent some time there a few years ago--passed through Innsbruck proper a few times. Great country. Why do you want to go there?

In reply to this comment by LittleRed:
My name is Brianna. The screen name was prompted by my short stature and red hair.

I am a reformed sorority alcoholic. (Moved out and dropped back down to a size 2.) I'm 19 years old and a senior in college, but I haven't stayed anywhere long enough to be remotely close to graduating. Born in Escondido, CA, my parents decided to relocate the family to the frozen north when I was two. I've been in Anchorage ever since, with the exception of a few college stints "Outside."

I started my college career at 16 with majors in Electrical Engineering and Music History, with minors in Dance, Math, and German. I was feeling ambitious. Now I'm a Bioengineering major, with minors in Math and German.

My dream job is to practice medicine in Innsbruck, Austria.

I'm moving to Tempe in August to attend school. If anyone has any ideas on how to finance an education in that area without having a job, suggestions would be much appreciated.

My name is Brianna. The screen name was prompted by my short stature and red hair.

I am a reformed sorority alcoholic. (Moved out and dropped back down to a size 2.) I'm 19 years old and a senior in college, but I haven't stayed anywhere long enough to be remotely close to graduating. Born in Escondido, CA, my parents decided to relocate the family to the frozen north when I was two. I've been in Anchorage ever since, with the exception of a few college stints "Outside."

I started my college career at 16 with majors in Electrical Engineering and Music History, with minors in Dance, Math, and German. I was feeling ambitious. Now I'm a Bioengineering major, with minors in Math and German.

My dream job is to practice medicine in Innsbruck, Austria.

I'm moving to Tempe in August to attend school. If anyone has any ideas on how to finance an education in that area without having a job, suggestions would be much appreciated.