What a wonderful concept, to manipulate the basic building blocks of life to improve nutrition, make medicines, make people healthier! Unfortunately none of these things is being done. The only genetically engineered crop plants are plants which tolerate higher levels of herbicide. This sells more herbicide as higher levels are applied and leaves higher levels of toxic residue in the food WHICH YOU EAT. Didn't want that little ancillary conclusion to slip by you.
We don't need genetic engineering to increase nutrition and truthfully it will NOT work. Why? Because your body needs a huge, diverse array of nutrients each day. Oxygen is the most necessary - hold your breath and try to tell me different when you are done - and the average person uses 35 pounds/day. There are major minerals and trace minerals. Major minerals are those like Calcium which have over 600 known biological functions in the body and are needed in relatively large amounts. The trace minerals are needed in small amounts although large amounts can be toxic. An example would be selenium; a study examined over 200 bodies that died from myocardial infarction (heart attack) and found that every single body had a selenium deficiency. Similarly copper; a similar study studied victims of stroke and found that every single body had a copper deficiency. Copper makes the blood vessels elastic so they expand under increased pressure instead of blowing and damaging the brain. Both of these trace minerals are toxic in large amounts.
We can theoretically engineer plants to be loaded with vitamins, enzymes and other good aspects of living food. The problem is that if you don't have any selenium in your soil, if your growing medium has no calcium, you will not obtain any of these items through eating them, and in fact every vitamin, enzyme, or healthy biological function requiring missing minerals will fail. The plant may survive. It may even look green and healthy. But it will be more tempting to bugs which tend to prey on sickly plants. It will not fulfill your biochemical and nutritional needs.
We don't want medicines in our foods. Do you want to take prozac with every bite of lettuce? Oops, you had a potato and it is having a horrible medicinal synergy with your carrots, you die. Or you are constantly being forced to take medicines which you may not need or almost certainly are harmful to you.
Now pretend that Barney is in the lab working on the latest project. He is developing a flower and he wants the purest colors he can attain in the petals, stamen, pistils and calyx. The appropriate enzyme is injected and the sequence he wants is removed. Next he injects the "desired dna strand" . Unfortunately this (according to the last time i'd studied the process) is a crap shoot. A group of dna is injected which includes but is not limited to only the theoretically desired sequence, and something grabs hold. (or not?)
Barney doesn't know it, but he just made a dna sequence which makes the cell reject chlorophyll. No more green to muddy the colors! Hallelujah, science has again worked a miracle! Yeah, and that simple flower goes out and the Chlorophyll killer dna starts spreading. Quickly, and the planet is dead within six months. Slowly and it may take years. Our oceanic algae dies out killing the krill. No fish food. No whale food. No fish, no crabs, no ocean life. The trees die off. The grasses are gone and the little bunnies that eat them. The livestock which used to make up your primary protein source. No lettuce or radicchio. Soon there is not even enough plant material rotting to feed the mushrooms but long before that happens people are dead.
Oh, there are a dozen in the biosphere and in quickly constructed biospheres around the world wherever one could put one together, but the seals will fail. The windows will crack. The framing will corrode or rot. and not one has enough plant diversity to re-establish life on the planet. Goodbye.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Brave New World
Since i last wrote the tsunami has devastated Japan. The Tunisians, Egyptians, Lybians and other Arabic people are rebelling against their strong-arm leadership, and many Americans are implying that we need to do the same.
So let's start a new revolution. This revolution has to be unlike any revolution before. The Russian Revolution which put Lenin in charge was financed by Loeb and Sons, a bank. When the state took control the person's who ran the businesses had no competition and a select few people got ridiculously wealthy along with their political face-pieces.
The Greatest Generation fought the Second World War and dropped us into the Cold War. This is where the Greatest Generation screwed up: they made the world subservient to corporate rule. This has left us in the present state where the businesses, the largest, wealthiest, and most corrupt, have bought the votes of congressmen and senators. Through revolving door policies they populate the regulatory agencies which support the industry they are supposed to protect us from. They are literally killing the environment, people, and hope.
As a result we need to be wiser in this new revolution. Instead of creating mayhem in the government or doing stupid things like assassination (notice it is an ass twice), what we need to do is to dismantle the people in the largest corporations who are pulling the strings and making our "public servants" dance to the corporate tune. Yes, our senators, congressmen, and all the administrations whether dems or repubs are foolish, unwise, stupid, and harmful; even dangerous.
It is the superwealthy who need to be taken down. It is the stockholder wealthy enough to make decisions which line their accounts at the expense of the greater good. Cynical wealthy will ask how to define the common good as they muddy waters, try to divide and dilute anger and action, and attempt to maintain the status quo. The common good is NOT a simple thing. However we can easily see some things are not in the best interests of most people on the planet but only in the financial interests of a wealthy few.
Things like genetic engineering of plants. Things like nuclear power. Things like toxic chemicals being applied to foods (real clever just looking at it from that standpoint) which then wash down the rivers, drain into the oceans, and kill off algae which is the primary planetary oxygenator. This and the other toxic spills are why the planet is literally missing more than a third of it's oxygen. You need oxygen. The only way to make oxygen is from plants. There are methods of concentrating oxygen, and technically one could make oxygen sans photosynthesis by electrolytically separating the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water. Practically speaking that would leave massive amounts of explosives in the wherever while still having the separated particles combine back into water relatively quickly. Not a viable planetary oxygenation solution.
Next; Genetic Engineering.
Then; Nuclear Power
So let's start a new revolution. This revolution has to be unlike any revolution before. The Russian Revolution which put Lenin in charge was financed by Loeb and Sons, a bank. When the state took control the person's who ran the businesses had no competition and a select few people got ridiculously wealthy along with their political face-pieces.
The Greatest Generation fought the Second World War and dropped us into the Cold War. This is where the Greatest Generation screwed up: they made the world subservient to corporate rule. This has left us in the present state where the businesses, the largest, wealthiest, and most corrupt, have bought the votes of congressmen and senators. Through revolving door policies they populate the regulatory agencies which support the industry they are supposed to protect us from. They are literally killing the environment, people, and hope.
As a result we need to be wiser in this new revolution. Instead of creating mayhem in the government or doing stupid things like assassination (notice it is an ass twice), what we need to do is to dismantle the people in the largest corporations who are pulling the strings and making our "public servants" dance to the corporate tune. Yes, our senators, congressmen, and all the administrations whether dems or repubs are foolish, unwise, stupid, and harmful; even dangerous.
It is the superwealthy who need to be taken down. It is the stockholder wealthy enough to make decisions which line their accounts at the expense of the greater good. Cynical wealthy will ask how to define the common good as they muddy waters, try to divide and dilute anger and action, and attempt to maintain the status quo. The common good is NOT a simple thing. However we can easily see some things are not in the best interests of most people on the planet but only in the financial interests of a wealthy few.
Things like genetic engineering of plants. Things like nuclear power. Things like toxic chemicals being applied to foods (real clever just looking at it from that standpoint) which then wash down the rivers, drain into the oceans, and kill off algae which is the primary planetary oxygenator. This and the other toxic spills are why the planet is literally missing more than a third of it's oxygen. You need oxygen. The only way to make oxygen is from plants. There are methods of concentrating oxygen, and technically one could make oxygen sans photosynthesis by electrolytically separating the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water. Practically speaking that would leave massive amounts of explosives in the wherever while still having the separated particles combine back into water relatively quickly. Not a viable planetary oxygenation solution.
Next; Genetic Engineering.
Then; Nuclear Power
Sunday, March 6, 2011
The Coming Revolution?
Well, i am not shy about pushing people's buttons on the economy and political scene, and something interesting has happened in the last two weeks. It is not that people are disgusted with the "leadership" and the wealthy. It is not that they feel inadequately represented in gov't. People have consistently felt this for as long as i'd asked them questions reflecting their opinions and feelings since the economy was shot by the wealthy and their idiot lap-dogs in the legislatures of nation and state.
It doesn't matter if the person asked is republican, democrat, or otherwise. No one trusts gov't. and no one feels hopeful about their future. People don't believe in the old American Dream, or the new subverted american dream - to be rich no matter how many have to be hurt to get you there.
What is vastly different is that in the last couple of weeks, basically since the news has talked about the unrest in the muslim world and the revolutions in Libya, Egypt, and the middle east, people have been saying things like; "someone needs to burn down the homes of the oil executives.", or several variations on the theme of "we are not going to take this much longer."
That is a huge change. People of the upstanding middle class are mad. They are seeing the futility of getting an appropriate response from our gov't., and they are seeing the possibility of an uprising against the injustice that is now prevalent in America, the U.S.
Wake up, big boys. It doesn't matter if you are a trillionaire; if a farmer doesn't sell you your food you will starve. Perhaps rightly so.
It doesn't matter if the person asked is republican, democrat, or otherwise. No one trusts gov't. and no one feels hopeful about their future. People don't believe in the old American Dream, or the new subverted american dream - to be rich no matter how many have to be hurt to get you there.
What is vastly different is that in the last couple of weeks, basically since the news has talked about the unrest in the muslim world and the revolutions in Libya, Egypt, and the middle east, people have been saying things like; "someone needs to burn down the homes of the oil executives.", or several variations on the theme of "we are not going to take this much longer."
That is a huge change. People of the upstanding middle class are mad. They are seeing the futility of getting an appropriate response from our gov't., and they are seeing the possibility of an uprising against the injustice that is now prevalent in America, the U.S.
Wake up, big boys. It doesn't matter if you are a trillionaire; if a farmer doesn't sell you your food you will starve. Perhaps rightly so.
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