Neil deGrasse Tyson

[coffin_dodger]

I'm not that sensitive. I'm just tired of the obscurantism.

well, let me be less obscure - you're sensitive to obscurantism, at the least!

I guess I'm an obscure person, but at least I now know it. Thanks!

[stefano]

Stefano wrote....

You really actually love your dichotomies, don't you? Decline to jump on the anti-science bandwagon? You are a propagandist enabler!

You would love it if you could paint me on the anti-science side of your fantasy dichotomy.

Who were you calling a propagandist enabler? I thought it was me, and I defy you to say how anything I wrote can be construed as propagandist enabling. And you did write this:"we can be assured that [Tyson and his peers] are simply well paid globalist shills. Or stupid, your call." A bit absolutist to decree in that way that there must be something ethically or intellectually wrong with him.

Really, Stefano, how not far off are you? Thanks for your honesty on the 'suspected it was some made-up thing', but it does reveal your stance as being less than objective.[...]So now let me get this straight, I earlier called it junk science, yet now you use it and claim it as being my ‘source’ on this issue.

I certainly wasn't objective after I saw the kind of site that pushes the glyphosate-shikimate thing. The typical site that I looked at on Wednesday after googling it is something like Research Reveals Previously Unknown Pathway by which Glyphosate Wrecks Health, the top result, which is a shop window for health foods and products. All the articles I read on Wednesday about glyphosate's impact on gut bacteria cited Seneff and Samsel.

Can we discriminately condemn [GM crops]?

We can and should, yes.

And I’m not sure, but I don’t think that IR8 is a GM product.

It's not, as it wasn't engineered at the molecular level, but it was very intensively bred to have the same characteristics of compatibility to fertiliser and pesticide as later GM crops; some of the genetic aspects will be the same.

The Planning of "Miracle Rice"

That's very good, thanks for that.

Also, GM's per-say are not the problem.

The problem is a system that inherently reduces personal autonomy via requirements of high inputs, namely agrochemicals.

It is western exceptionalism run amok.

I absolutely agree with you here. Which is why I got irritated at over-the-top condemnation of a public figure to whom I'm sympathetic after he gave his view on GM as a technique in the broadest sense, and agree with Tyson that the issues that are important are the legal and economic ones.

[Sounder]

Stefano wrote...

certainly wasn't objective after I saw the kind of site that pushes the glyphosate-shikimate thing.

I do understand your predicament, and apologize for being so rude.

The typical site that I looked at on Wednesday after googling it is something like Research Reveals Previously Unknown Pathway by which Glyphosate Wrecks Health, the top result, which is a shop window for health foods and products. All the articles I read on Wednesday about glyphosate's impact on gut bacteria cited Seneff and Samsel.

Yes indeed, the internets is one big crap fest. I do not keep much of an archive or reference material myself, so when I needed an answer to your query, I searched: ‘How glyphosates work’. Then the facts presented were used to make my case.

Prior empirical and antidotal evidence suggests to me that we have a serious contamination event here. And yet, leading edge thinkers seem pretty much blind to the issue, excepting Vandiva Singh, OK maybe others, but I can’t think of them offhand.



My two brothers-in-law were in town last week. They are great guys, sensitive but not adventurous in their thinking and with little care for deep politics. Still the one brother, maybe from watching a banker exposé vid, was relating the Wizard of Oz characters with various roles in the social structure. All well placed. The second brother then said that he had seen a vid about this also, but the characters had different roles than the ones described a minute before by his brother.

I then suggested than unless a person has a nose for this sort of thing it’s probably best to steer clear or at least to never take any one thing to seriously. I explained that any time there is a ‘popular’ meme floating about, that PR companies have a field day making a dozen variations because (they figger) confused people are easier to manipulate.

You make your last point well, thanks.


This earlier response to Dr. Evil addresses poison pill abuse, (perhaps your case is one of use rather than abuse, those things are hard to pin down sometimes.)

Given that you chose to settle on a non-element of the story, by bringing up a known fraudster, suggests that said well known fraudster is serving his purpose, and quite well.

This class of ‘activists’ are worth their weight in gold to the big PR firms.

They are dual purpose, first to allow peripheral news hounds to bury their cognitive dissonance so as to not have to consider disturbing implications regarding the probable truth of at least certain elements of some stories.

Then of course there are the saps that look to these actors to fix their own cognitive dissonance, only to be led into blind alleys with an eventual result of another beaten soul settling back into straight normative thinking.

[Sounder]

Stefano wrote...

certainly wasn't objective after I saw the kind of site that pushes the glyphosate-shikimate thing.

I do understand your predicament, and apologize for being so rude.

The typical site that I looked at on Wednesday after googling it is something like Research Reveals Previously Unknown Pathway by which Glyphosate Wrecks Health, the top result, which is a shop window for health foods and products. All the articles I read on Wednesday about glyphosate's impact on gut bacteria cited Seneff and Samsel.

Yes indeed, the internets is one big crap fest. I do not keep much of an archive or reference material myself, so when I needed an answer to your query, I searched: ‘How glyphosates work’. Then the facts presented were used to make my case.

Existing empirical and antidotal evidence suggests to me that we have a serious contamination event here. And yet, leading edge thinkers seem pretty much blind to the issue, excepting Vandiva Singh, OK maybe others, but I can’t think of them offhand.



My two brothers-in-law were in town last week. They are great guys, sensitive but not adventurous in their thinking and with little care for deep politics. Still the one brother, maybe from watching a banker exposé vid, was relating the Wizard of Oz characters with various roles in the social structure. All well placed. The second brother then said that he had seen a vid about this also, but the characters had different roles than the ones described a minute before by his brother.

I then suggested than unless a person has a nose for this sort of thing it’s probably best to steer clear or at least to never take any one thing to seriously. I explained that any time there is a ‘popular’ meme floating about, that PR companies have a field day making a dozen variations because (they figger) confused people are easier to manipulate.

You make your last point well, thanks.


This earlier response to Dr. Evil addresses poison pill abuse, (perhaps your case is one of use rather than abuse, those things are hard to pin down sometimes.)

Given that you chose to settle on a non-element of the story, by bringing up a known fraudster, suggests that said well known fraudster is serving his purpose, and quite well.

This class of ‘activists’ are worth their weight in gold to the big PR firms.

They are dual purpose, first to allow (more discriminating) peripheral news hounds to bury their cognitive dissonance so as to not have to consider disturbing implications regarding the probable truth of at least certain elements of some stories.

Then of course there are the (less discriminating) saps that look to these actors to fix their own cognitive dissonance, only to be led into blind alleys with an eventual result of another beaten soul settling back into straight normative thinking.