OT science question

[J. Clarke]

Seems to me that you have good grounds for a lawsuit against somebody then.

[J. Clarke]

Once again, patents have to do with LAW, not SCIENCE. If you don't like the patent laws then blame the POLITICIANS not the SCIENTISTS.

[dpb]

Robatoy wrote: ...

What, specifically, do you think Monsanto has done that is unethical?

Invent one of the best combinational herbicide/production crop systems known to the history of man? That, somehow, is unethical to feed more, less expensively, w/ fewer inputs (water, fuel, etc., ...)?

Strange set of ethics it seems to me... :(

--

[J. Clarke]

There are only so many boards that you can fit in a room.

And every step in the derivation you have to write all those extra letters and multiplication signs.

Your suggestion may sound fine from your viewpoint but from the viewpoint of someone who at one time in his life did mathematical analysis for a living it's a horror.

[Morris Dovey]

Or you could do what my favorite math prof did: as he wrote with his right hand, he erased with his left...

...and never ran out of board space. :-)

[Limp Arbor]

Best line of this thread.

[B A R R Y]

Do you know Stoutman?

Yes, Stoutman, the engine is still sitting on the workbench!

[B A R R Y]

Not on my BIL's organic farm.

[B A R R Y]

The Sterile Seed thing is a biggie in my book.

Genetically engineered plants to prevent a farmer from saving seed...

There's only one reason for that, and it's not to enhance world food availability.

[Limp Arbor]

then you should have been worrying for years now, and its not one fish but 600,000

"Since 1996, almost 600,000 Atlantic salmon have escaped from net pens in Washington waters, and at least 60,000 into Canadian waters." source:

[Han]

dpb wrote in news:g5nf09$6e5$ [e-mail]:

Yes and it works more often than not .

[Lew Hodgett]

WE must have had the same prof

Lew

[charlieb]

This pendulum swings. As a result of World War II, there was an explosion in science and its accompanying technology (the application of science to practical, commercialized consumer products). The results of all the research money that The War Department pumped into the scientific community produced not only technologies which helped the War Effort, but also created production capacity which could be shifted to making consumer, as opposed to military, products. The GI Bill also made it possible for returning vets to go to college, and industry was in need of engineers and scientists to either adapt and improve military products to consumer products. And in the late 40s and early 50s there was an epidemic of a horrible disease which struck acrossed racial and socio-economic boundaries - polio - which our most popular president happened to be a victim of.

And the new crop of scientists, along with some from the previous generation had a significantly different approach to why they "did science" - Jonas Salk being a wonderful example of this way of seeing things. Salk made polio basically a thing of the passed, not for fame and fortune, but because it needed doing.

Then along came Sputnik, the Space Race and John F. Kennedy's "We shall go to the moon by the end of decade" speech. Colleges and Universities cranked up their science and engineering departments and high school counselors started encouraging students to become scientists and engineers. The Boomers went either into "business" or "science and engineering". The latter meeting Kennedy's challenge - by mid 1969. The spinoffs of the Space Program never really got heralded - the semi-conductor industry whose products now permeate our society, satellites with all their capabilities - and don't forget TANG.

Then Pat Buchanon and Richard Nixon got together. Two very ambitious, and to my mind, ruthless, politicians. It was Buchanon who came up with a Divide & Conquer / Win At All Cost / Us vs THEM strategy for getting - and keeping - Richard M. Nixon in the White House. And one of the major elements of that strategy was to silence or marginalize the Ivory Towers Academics, the thinkers - the scientists and engineers swept into that garb of THEM. Another prong of the strategy was to bring those guided by "faith", which, by its very nature doesn't lend itself to critical thinking, or opposition to authority, into the new Big Tent being created. And they went after "liberal intellectuals" and ACADEMIA with avengence.

Now remember the context of Nixon's presidency. We were in a "war", though congress, which according to the Constitution, is the only branch of government which can "declare war", never did. And that "war" was "unpopular", especially with the college students who were about to be forced to become an active participant, and perhaps a victim, of that "war". There was a lot of oppostion to that war, and most of it was centered around "academia" since that was were future cannon fodder were concentrated. There were also two other movements coming into being - the Feminist Movement and the Environmental Movement. The latter had two major opponents - "industry" which wasn't happy with laws which prevented them from polluting the environment - for free - and what would become known as The Religious Right, now called Evangelicals, who weren't real thrilled with the idea of Feminists or Women's Liberation - "cause GOD said so"

So Pat put together a "coalition" of "minorities" and got Nixon elected and re-elected. To his credit, though Republicans blame it on Democrats and Tree Huggers, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created

- by Nixon.

Now Pat's Divide and Conquer / Them vs US approach to governing - or at least getting and keeping, power sort of got over shadowed by Nixon's paranoia - and the Plumbers and break ins and we got Gerald Ford - briefly - along with Dan Quail, who one could describe as the Anti-Intellectual, he not being able to spell potato - at a Spelling Bee.

And as is typical of such times, the country swung in the opposite direction from Law and Order - towards - a peanut famer - who actualy had been a governor AND a nuclear engineer as well. Carter came at governing from an engineer's perspective, not a politician's perspective

- especially the New Politicians - the What's In It For ME?! folks. Not a good strategy within The Beltway.

The China Syndrome that nearly took place at Three Mile Island didn't do much for how people saw scientists and engineers - and Carter, being a nuclear engineer, it didn't help him much either. Nor did the Iran Hostage Crisis.

Which gets us to Ronald Reagan - and Star Wars - which the scientific community kept pointing out couldn't work 100% or even 80% of the time, if at all. Reagan kept saying it could and must in order to sell the voters on spending billions on what became The Strategic Defense Initiative - Star Wars being way too Science Fiction. Faced with facts, Ronnie ignored the scientists and engineers and trod right along, poo-poohing those nay sayer scientists. (This was another part of Pat's strategy - when faced with creditable oppostion, who have facts on their side, discredit them, not with facts, but with smear tactics. What do those dumb scientists know - this is AMERICA and WE can do any god damned things we chose to do - no matter what. And if that didn't work, call them Unpatriotic and Un-American - or - ATHEISTS!

Fortunately the Soviet Union went bankrupt before we did - and Gorbechov happened to want to change the Soviet System - which conveniently is overlooked in the American Version of The Fall of Communism and The Reagan Victory. And unlike the scientific community, which has a built in peer review process to act as bullshit filters, politically motivated authors can say anything they want about a historical event and aren't required to provide verifiable evidence to support their claim.

So given the politics of the last 30 years, and this administrations contempt for scientific evidence - is it any wonder scientists are not respected - or believed? You have heard of Intelligent Design right?

[J. Clarke]

engineered salmon are being raised on Prince Edward Island. The

600,000 salmon that have escaped escaped into the Pacific ocean. Since Prince Edward Island has the whole of North America between it and the Pacific Ocean one is hard pressed to imagine how such an escape could occur.

Clearly a case of fear-mongering, juxtaposing two unrelated events to lead to a false impression that they are related.

[J. Clarke]

OTOH, Einstein often ran out of board.

[Charlie Self]

Actually, IMO, it is the way religion has been politicized. Scientists don't object to anyone's belief in a god. Religionists do object to anyone believing in scientific findings. It has been that way throughout history.

[Charlie Self]

program at a local community college and one of the

Uh, sure. An example, please?

[Charlie Self]

Where do you live, Frank? I can take you into a series of churches around here where everyone from the preacher on down (or up, given the parlous state of today's preacherdom amongst fundamentalist Protestants) espouses a hate for the results of scientific inquiry. You know, they're all good Christians, so they have to have something to hate. Science works for that, because they can't understand the difference between scientific theory and their theories that Saturday night dances are nothing but good, clean fun.

[Charlie Self]

Food manipulation began many centuries ago, and has generally resulted in better foods, better choices and other benefits. Oddly enough, today's attempts to more speedily make changes in foods are drawing the ire of the under-educated because "their food is being messed with." Maybe we should go back to Mendel and his fruit flies, drop all the modern improvements.

One thing for damned sure, though. Without science, the world wouldn't have its current over-population problems. Probably 85% of the population wouldn't have been born, or would have died of some extremely nasty disease at a relatively early age. Think of the problems having only 1/5th today's population would solve. Plenty of oil. Plenty of food (oops, no, we have to do a give-back on that, too). Well, hell. Plenty of oil. People can always drink that.

I wonder if what we're seeing today is a result of piss poor education in, or about (probably more important), the sciences at an early level. My science education wasn't good, but the education about science was. I'm not scientist, but I do appreciate the methods used, and try to understand some of the results. Gallumphing off into the territory of the raucous never seems to have helped. Letting emotion interfere with understanding is something no accountant would do in his work, but many of the public seem to believe that scientists should let their emotions interfere with their work. Let's face it. If it looks or sounds "icky", then don't mess with it.

[Rod & Betty Jo]

Europe is pretty much leading the charge in rejecting(fear) genetically modified foods.....The U.S. is leading the charge in developing such foods.....are you claiming that Europe is under- educated? Rod