Can gentically engineered foods help feed the hungry? Are anti-GMO activists and over-zealous environmentalists standing in the way of the hungry being fed? The hope that GMO foods might bring solutions to malnutrition and world hunger was never more dramatically illustrated than when Time magazine ran a cover story titled "Grains of Hope." The article joyfully announced the development of a genetically engineered "golden rice." This new strain of GM rice has genes from viruses and daffodils spliced into its genetic instructions. The result is a form of rice that is a golden-yellow color (much like daffodil flowers), and that produces beta-carotene, which the human body normally converts into Vitamin A. Nearly a million children die every year because they are weakened by Vitamin A deficiencies and an additional 350,000 go blind. Golden rice, said Time, will be a godsend for the half of humanity that depends on rice for its major staple. Merely eating this rice could prevent blindness and death. The development of golden rice was, it seemed, compelling and inspiring evidence that GM crops are the answer to malnutrition and hunger. Time quoted former U.S. President Jimmy Carter: "Responsible biotechnology is not the enemy, starvation is." Shortly after the Time cover story, Monsanto and other biotechnology companies launched a $50 million marketing campaign, including $32 million in TV and print advertising. The ads, complete with soft focus fields and smiling children, said that "biotech foods could help end world hunger." Other ad campaigns have followed. One Monsanto ad tells the public: "Biotechnology is one of tomorrow's tools in our hands today. Slowing its acceptance is a luxury our hungry world cannot afford." Within a few months, the biotech industry had spent far more on these ads than it had on developing golden rice. Their purpose? "Unless I'm missing something," wrote Michael Pollan in The New York Times Magazine, "the aim of this audacious new advertising campaign is to impale people like me -- well-off first-worlders dubious about genetically engineered food -- on the horns of a moral dilemma ... If we don't get over our queasiness about eating genetically modified food, kids in the third world will go blind." The implication of the ads is that lifesaving food is being held hostage by anti-science activists. In the years since Time proclaimed the promises of golden rice, however, we've learned a few things. For one thing, we've learned that golden rice will not grow in the kinds of soil that it must to be of value to the world's hungry. To grow properly, it requires heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides -- expensive inputs unaffordable to the very people that the variety is supposed to help. And we've also learned that golden rice requires large amounts of water -- water that might not be available in precisely those areas where Vitamin A deficiency is a problem, and where farmers cannot afford costly irrigation projects. And one more thing -- it turns out that golden rice doesn't work, even in theory. Malnourished people are not able to absorb Vitamin A in this form. And even if they could, they'd have to eat an awful lot of the stuff. An 11-year-old boy would have to eat 27 bowls of golden rice a day in order to satisfy his minimum requirement for the vitamin. I'm sure that given enough time and enough money, some viable genetically modified (GM) crops could be developed that contain more nutrients or have higher yields. But I'm not sure that even if that were to happen, it would actually benefit the world's poor. Monsanto and the other biotech companies aren't developing these seeds with the intention of giving them away. If people can't afford to buy GM seeds, or if they can't afford the fertilizers, pesticides and water the seeds require, they'll be left out. Poverty is at the root of the problem of hunger. As Peter Rosset, director of Food First, reminds us, "People do not have Vitamin A deficiency because rice contains too little Vitamin A, but because their diet has been reduced to rice and almost nothing else." And what, pray tell, has reduced these people to such poverty and their diets to such meager fare? In the words of the British writer George Monbiot: The world has a surplus of food, but still people go hungry. They go hungry because they cannot afford to buy it. They cannot afford to buy it because the sources of wealth and the means of production have been captured and in some cases monopolized by landowners and corporations. The purpose of the biotech industry is to capture and monopolize the sources of wealth and the means of production ... GM technology permits companies to ensure that everything we eat is owned by them. They can patent the seeds and the processes which give rise to them. They can make sure that crops can't be grown without their patented chemicals. They can prevent seeds from reproducing themselves. By buying up competing seed companies and closing them down, they can capture the food market, the biggest and most diverse market of all. No one in her right mind would welcome this, so the corporations must persuade us to focus on something else ... We are told that ... by refusing to eat GM products, we are threatening the developing world with starvation, an argument that is, shall we say, imaginative ... With rare exceptions, genetically engineered crops are being created not because they're productive or because they address real human needs, but because they're patentable. The biotech companies have invested billions of dollars because they sense in this technology the potential for enormous profit and the means to gain control over the world's food supply. Their goal is not to help subsistence farmers feed themselves. Their goal is maximum profit. While Monsanto would like us to believe they are seeking to alleviate world hunger, there is actually a very dark side to the company's efforts. For countless centuries farmers have fed humanity by saving the seed from one years crop to plant the following year. But Monsanto, the company that claims its motives are to help feed the hungry, has developed what it calls a "Technology Protection System" that renders seeds sterile. Commonly known as "terminator technology" and developed with taxpayer funding by the USDA and Delta & Pine Land Company (an affiliate of Monsanto), the process genetically alters seeds so that their offspring will be sterile for all time. If employed, this technology would ensure that farmers cannot save their own seeds, but would have to come back to Monsanto year after year to purchase new ones. Critics refer to these genetically engineered seeds as suicide seeds. "By peddling suicide seeds, the biotechnology multinationals will lock the world's poorest farmers into a new form of genetic serfdom," says Emma Must of the World Development Movement. "Currently 80 percent of crops in developing countries are grown using farm-saved seed. Being unable to save seeds from sterile crops could mean the difference between surviving and going under." To Monsanto and other GMO companies, the terminator and other seed sterilizing technologies are simply business ventures that are designed to enhance profits. In this case, there is not even the implication of benefit to consumers. I wish I could speak more highly of GM foods and their potential. But the technology is now held tightly in the hands of corporations whose motives are, I'm afraid, very different from what they would have us believe. Despite the PR, Monsanto's goal is not to make hunger history. It's to control the staple crops that feed the world. Will GMOs help end world hunger? I don't think so. John Robbins is the author of many bestsellers including "The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World," the classic "Diet For A New America" and "The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less." He is the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award and Green America's Lifetime Achievement Award. To learn more about his work, visit www.johnrobbins.info This Blogger's Books from The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less by John Robbins Food Revolution, The: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World by John Robbins Many supporters of GMO seeds, are Monsanto supporters. Who is in charge of the USDA-Agricultural Research Service ? I believe it was Tom Vilsack,who is now a member of the cabnit our current Secretary.Who is Tom Vilsack?Google him and find out. Our Supreme Court Justice,Clarence Thomas,,,Used to Work for who> Monsanto.and several top positions in the Food and Drug Administration,and the Department of Agriculture,all filled with former Monsanto Lobbyist, do you really want to believe any thing these people say? I can post more articall s,but I will not, enough has been said,if you are interested at all, in what you, your children,and grandchildren are eating, do your research,,make up your own mind,in the mean time,keep saving your seeds.You might want to google, how many seed saving banks are left here in the U.S., compared to how many there used to be, and why. cAROL

I decided on the Owens corning systems not so much on the price per square foot but more or less what the system is specifically designed for= which is extremely humid and or wet basements; which I have. My home is a 110 year old Queen Ann Victorian with a 7 foot basement ceiling. The walls of the basement have constant effervescence= (water seeping through) and yes I have 5" gutters and the foundation is graded. So, the floor has occassional pooling water during Major sustained downpours even after I had a new concrete floor poured throughout the entire basement. This system has paid fo itself many times in the last 13yrs. For example the water main coming into my house broke at the foundation 3 inches of water filled my entire basement floor soaking all the walls and everything else in the basement at the time. I removed the fiberglass panels (1200 sq ft of them) let them dry in the sun then put them back; done! --> If that were drywall the bottom 18 inches or so would have to be cut off and re-installed, retaped, and spackeled and repainted!! This clearly was an anomaly and a worst case scenario one in which many homeowners would've had to use homeowners insurance to mitigate. So it depends a lot on what you want to do with your basement if it is a recreational area that you are going to watch movies and entertain and play games, home office etc? Also the ability you want to have color choices for painting etc.(AND!!!!) humidity and moisture are NOT that much of a concern; then drywall is the way to go. if you have an old basement that has tons of moisture issues and you want it to be clean and look way better than a root cellar this is the best way to go. All I had to do to help out what was here was instal a Humidex system= (dehumidifier of sorts) which you could make yourself with pancake fans and a humidistat. --->Moist air is heavier and sits closer to the floor so the humidex system sucks this moist air sitting low to the ground out and exhausts it out of your house like a dryer vent. + you leave the door open or cut a vent in the floor to create an warm airflow from above I have two of them and they rarely ever go off. The reason for this versus your classic dehumidifier is pure cost I live on the island in the Northeast with a kilowatt per hour is the highest in the country I bought a humidex system ($1K) and then after examining it built my own for $100 (not kidding->my hand to god) this is why the expression knowledge is power exists I knew running a standardized humidifier I would need two or three of them for the sizeof my basement + constantly emptying buckets so after doing the math made that unaffordable. So that is all of the GOOD news or the positive things to say NOW the UGLY the one major negative I have is the vinyl floor (which after several years) I now have a constant issue with glue coming up through the seams?? This is driving me crazy constantly trying to clean it and be rid of it but it is constantly coming back so I am now contemplating putting carpet over it? The cheapest this will be at my square footage is about $1000 installed by me!!... For the record ALLURE here on Long Island which is one of the companies the TV show EXTREME MAKEOVER; HOME EDITION uses.

dabunch: "I'm talking about people WITH MONEY who just don't want to pay the mortgages because their houses are not worth today what they were worth 2 years ago... " A foreclosure is a foreclosure is a foreclosure. It doesn't matter WHY someone didn't pay the mortgage, only that the bank foreclosed on the property. As a matter of fact, how would (or could) you differentiate between someone who stopped making mortgage payments because they couldn't afford to, and someone who stopped making payments because they just didn't want to anymore? I don't think the bank is going to try to make that determination (correct me if I'm wrong Dave or Tricia), they're just going to take the property back after X number of missed payments. Of course, I could be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time. ;-)

1) are you a quilter? do you know anything about quilting? I'm a new quilter; just finished my first quilt top last month. It's my newest obsession and I love it. Programming is my other obsession, so it would be fun to meld the two :) 2) what's in this for you? are you going to make a commission on any sale? will you be charging members to list their items for sale? I'd probably have to charge a nominal fee to cover my web-hosting costs. Part of why I'm asking questions is that I'd want to know what people thought was fair -- an upfront fee? A small percentage of the final sale price? I wouldn't do both, just one or the other, so my question would be, what would you, as a seller, consider the most fair way to do it, and how much would you think is acceptable? 3) will there be a set time limit of how long an item can be listed? will there be a charge for relisting an item? Nope for the first one. And the second one is moot, since listings wouldn't expire, so no need to relist. My only concern about letting listings not expire is that people may sell things through other venues, and then forget to remove it from my site -- so I'd probably have something in place where if the item has not sold after say, 3 months? 6 months? then the seller has to take some sort of action to make it stay active (like, click a button to renew the listing for another 3 months). If they don't, it becomes "archived" (no longer searchable), but the seller can come back and unarchive it at any time. 4) how many images per item will be allowed? I imagine I'd make it unlimited. 5) will you offer different methods of payment? I'd probably have to leave payment up to the seller; I would have ways for them to indicate which payment methods they'll accept, but I don't want to personally be dealing with payment between buyer/seller. The site's intended to be more like a...quilting classifieds that brings together sellers and buyers, rather than a "click here and buy it now" kind of thing. Doing the latter would require more legal involvement than I'm interested in dealing with -- I'm one person, not a company. 6) will there be separate areas for new quilts and antique quilts? Yes. 7) how would you handle listings for cheap, foreign-made quilts? Having never bought or sold a quilt myself, I wasn't aware of this being a problem. Do you have any suggestions yourself on how to handle this? My preference would be to keep such listings out altogether -- mass-produced quilts isn't really what the site is intended for. I could probably limit the IP addresses of people selling to only those within the US & Canada, although I'm sure the foreign sellers would find ways around that... Excellent questions, Teresa. If you have anymore or have comments on what I've said above, please throw them at me.