" It's natural for man to splice genes, so these most certainly are natural processes." There is a massive difference between hybrids in nature and cross breeding, and splicing in bacteria and non "native" genes. " but natural selection will do it's work, even on GMO's." Thats the problem. Monsanto says their crops are "sterile", yet there is no such thing as 100% sterile crops. Even triploid cavandish banana has been known to set fertile seed. Pollen has already escaped in oregon, and as far as I know we have no idea how it will act in natural populations. ""I would certainly favor using GMO to eliminate a threat to the sweet potato supply, say, but I think grains inherently damage human health, and one nutrient thinking is also a failure, as this case illustrates where A is addressed but K2 is not."" Yup, it isnt solving the problem at all. When we started farming out body size went from 6 feet in males to 5 foot 3. Our diet went from hundreds of food sources to a dozen or so. Grain enabled us to survive in post ice age europe, as well as our domesticated animals (whom most if not all shouldnt be fed grains as a staple food). We should be eating large amounds of cooked fruits and veggies with meat a few times a week. Love stock should be fed scraps or pasture. ""My point about mutations wasn't that it is identical in process, only that it is just as dangerous. When Monsanto releases a product that turns out to be nearly as deadly as aids, or at least the swine flu I will be convinced of dire consequences."" Im more worried about some random genetic mutation, which have been recorded in GMO food. Genes can randomly swtch, unpredictably. What if it produces some disease which ends up like chestnut blight which wipes out corn? Farfetched? possibly, but far from impossible. We have too bad of a habit of doing environmental destruction, and figuring out how bad after the fact ( passanger pigeon or the carolina parakeet) ""My pet fear is that climate change is going to make agriculture increasingly difficult or worse, """ Our civilization was born in climate change. From the time the eastern african mountain chain was raised, which dried out africa which forced us to walk on 2 legs, to the time 70 000 years ago when sahara africa got wet enough to allow us to move north and out of asia, to the melting of the ice sheets in beringia which allowed the secondlarge wave of human migration into NA. It also drove the development of domesticated plants and animals. There is one stark difference - Then they had natural resources to fall back on. They could walk into their forests and pick out food if needed. Most of us cant or will not. The Ironic thing is that farming is part of our problem as well. It degrades soil, encourages monoculture and eliminates natural habitat for plants and animals. Either way I a not worried about our food and climate change. WHat I am worried about is our inability to want to change our diets and adapt o our local conditions. Would i tbe econimically feasable to grow rice in china if rainfall dropped by 1/4? Probably not, but they can get away with other grains. The growing zones in the planet will be moving north. Rainfall patterns will change, the seasons will change (they already have), migration patterns will change, so will growing seasons. Does it make sense to grow food in california where there is no water, and in that fact allocate water so much that it drops one of the largest watersheds on the planet by 80%? We can adapt to climate change the way we always have. The problem is, back in the day we could just get up and move. We cant do that now. We are generally stuck in our cities. IT isnt easy for a city like phoenix to just pack up and move. "Glib, I think the explosion of the human population can be entirely tied to the technology brought about by non DNA cultural "evolution". To sustain it will almost certainly require more of the same, even if the process doesn't fulfill your ideological requirements."" Out population can be linked to 2 things: Trade (more so back in the day) and as recently as the 1900s, oil. The oil production and human population graphs are almost identical. OIl enabled less human power for labour, faster production and better technology. One engine on oil can replace a dozen workers and even more animals. IT increases the speed at which crops can be planted, harvested and sold, therefore speeding up profits. IT also made fertilizer cheaper (at the time), which forces the plants to grow and can exhaust soil organisms. This is why we have such bad soil depletion (on top of deforestation) Oil production enabled medicine to accelerate, which brought about penecillin. By the 1950s there were about 40 medications on the market. This sped up our population growth that was fed by oil production. For 10 000 years or more we have been cultivating plants. Crossing them and hbridizing them to the point we cant even tell where many originated. Most of our cultivated crops have more if not double the amount of genes a human has, and this is without any real knowledge of DNA and genetics. Pluots were created by the old fashioned way - hand pollination and selection. our post dust bowl hybrid corn was created the same way. The cavendish was a natural hybrid cultivated to perfection, same with the gros de michel banana, which was almost wiped out in the 50s (The only reason why we eat cavendish is because the michel banana was wiped out by the same virus that is wiping out cavendish today). Why try to grow corn where it wont grow, just because thats what we are used too?

Chris Gilcrest is a total fraud. He should be in jail. He stole my money. He is a lier, calls you names and steals from you. He disconnects his phones from time to time and then adds another address to his business. He bounces around from place to place after he got kick out of Tulare country. Now he is in Ventura Country. This LOSER, LIER, THEIF should be in jail. Someone needs to put a stop to him. NEVER USE GROWQUEST GROWERS AT ALL. BE CAREFUL HE HAS MANY WEBSITES OUT THERE. WRITE TO BBB AND THE FBI LIKE I DID. When you call his bluff or write something bad, he will get very mad at you, call you names and treats you like a child. Something is totally wrong with him mentally. Seriously many people have stated this. The trees that Chris LOSER sold me were diseased and DIED. I had them checked out by a true professional. The trees he sent had too much salt, bugs and was root bound. I found out that he never grew this himself. These are knock off trees from a discount place. Basically, these trees were trashed and he sold them to me. He doesn�t even ship them to you, but throw them in an old crappy van laying down in the hot sun. He damaged these trees. It is on purpose. Check out BBB. Don�t buy from him!! HE CHARGES YOU FOR UPS SHIPPING BUT NEVER SHIPS THEM. THIS IS BAD!!! He has many you tube videos that shows his plants, DONT believe it. Look at all of them, every video is from a different nursery. He goes around taking videos, post them on You tube as his own, which is a crime and then he sells you crap. He doesn�t sell you these trees at all that you see on the videos. What a TOTAL JERK AND SCAM. HIS BUSINESS IS MAINLY FROM YOU TUBE SO PLEASE DONT BUY FROM HIM AND IN FACT CHECK OUT WHAT TRUE CUSTOMER POSTS. I KNOW HIS GAME. WHAT A TOTALL LOSER AND JERK. I know his game well and here is the story. You can confirm everything by going to you tube and reading all the negative things about him. None of this is made up at all by me. THIS IS THE TRUTH. READ ON. This guy is a thief big time. He has no nursery at all. He works out of a garage with an apartment. He drives around from nursery to nursery taking videos and then post them online to sell you items. His wife left him. His family is mad at him. His children, well, I won�t go into that. Recently his brother is in trouble. Chris Morgan Gilcrest has been in jail, and has to pay a fine. He was required to cease and decease order by the FBI. Now he is being investigated by the FBI and BBB. BBB also has alert out on his business and name. Please look online, you will find everything. I am not making any of this up. He will either send you trees that will die or not send you anything at all. My job is to stop him and post whatever and whenever I can. There are many customers doing the same thing. We have the right to as freedom of speech. In fact what he is doing is breaking the law and is a federal crime, since he stole over $1,000.00 from customers. I hope he is jailed. I have called the FBI and BBB. CHRIS LOSER GILCREST, I HOPE YOU READ THIS, LOSER. YOU KNOW ALL THIS IS TRUE. DONT DENY OR LIE. BE HONEST AND BE A MAN. YOU ACT LIKE A CHILD.

haven't read everything, just can't bear to read it all at once, but wanted to chime in. My mother was a sociopath, a narcissist, & an abuser. Narcissistic mothers sometimes, I'd guess almost always, hate their daughters because the daughters are rivals. I was the oldest, & I had 2 younger brothers. My mother did the same thing yours did: She'd work herself into a rage, storm down the hall to get the razor strap, storm back, by which time we were all crying & I was hysterical, grab her favorite son & hit him about 4 times, toss him aside, grab the next one & hit him about 8 to 10 times, toss him aside.. & grab me & beat me, as you said, arm fully extended, until she collapsed, exhausted, panting, & sometimes sobbing. It's no accident that it happened that way. 1) I was made to watch her beat my brothers, building up her rage, knowing that I would be beaten much longer & much harder...so the terror was magnified & prolonged. 2) To this day, I feel guilt & shame that my brothers were beaten; it was always my fault-for not stopping them from doing something, for not making sure that they did do something. anything was a good enough excuse, *& all 3 of us believed it*. My brothers believe it was all my fault. To this day, I have no concept that I was ever cute or smart... because those traits belonged to my mother, & she punished any encroachment onto her domain. I've also learned that it doesn't stop with the adult abuser; my brothers both take it for granted that they're superior to me & that whatever happened to me (us) was my fault. & girls who 'tell someone' are often not believed; narcissists/sociopaths are intuitive chameleons. Even my father never knew, & I marvel at the threats/intimidation my mother must have used on us to keep her secret. When I finally, in my late forties or early fifties, realized that this was horrific abuse, & I talked to my aunts & cousins about it, they were thunderstruck. My aunt even told me that she sometimes thought what a lucky girl I was, to have a mother who loved me so much & was so proud of me. This is the first time in a while that I've thought about this or communicated about it, & my shoulders are already tight & my head is beginning to throb. I wish you the very best.

Wood - the Sarton book was "The House by the Sea" which was written when she was older and had moved away from the small town where she had lived. As I mentioned before, I found it to be an interesting meditation on life... I have put Maeve Binchy to the side for right now (temporarily) and in its place picked up "The Understudy" by David Nicholls (he who wrote "Starter for Ten" and "One Day" which I know other RPers have read)... "The Understudy" is another winner. A good plot involving an English superstar actor, his understudy (the hero of the book), and his friendship with both the star and his wife. Great fun to read -- one of those rare books which suck you in and he has his characters doing things that you (i.e. me) would do. For example, the protagonist is in his agent's run-down office and is sitting on a chair with the yellow foam sticking out and he has to remind himself not to pick at the foam... Maybe not the best example, but I honestly felt that I had known his characters by the end of the book. Anyway, if you like his other work, you'll like this one. (Also found out that David Nicholls was one of the creators of the tv series Rescue Me which has a great sly sense of humour in it...) Then picked up a NF book about extreme weather events, but the author has such a drive to talk about his agenda and take on global warming, that "everything" is put into "quotation marks" and it gets a bit "irritating" after a while. Additionally, he sucks the "interesting" out of any of the weather situations he talks about. How can you make a tornado boring? I don't know, but he does. Not too sure what to read next... but isn't that half the fun of reading?