Genetic Engineers Barking Up the Wrong Trees? 336
Rick the Red writes "In a commentary titled 'Genetic engineering for better suburbia', Vincent Barnes says, 'Cures for diseases and feeding the world with genetically modified foods is well and good but the real money is in solving the problems of homeowners, the vast silent majority of Americans who toil away every spring and summer fighting pests and every fall injuring their backs and falling off ladders.' Should Monsanto bring us designer maples that don't shed leaves? Would you buy designer grass that grows two inches and stops? Even if you won't eat GM food?"
Personally... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Personally... (Score:2)
Re:Personally... (Score:4, Insightful)
sheesh, i can't help but despair at the utter decadence of some people. whats wrong with cutting the grass? its a grand activity, supposed to remind you of the vigors of life.. same with chasing snakes! i do that for fun!
honest, are we all becoming cyborgs? ew!! get a life!
Re:Personally... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Personally... (Score:4, Funny)
Agreed. Nothing like a warm Sunday afternoon with a beer in one hand and a katana in the other, chasin' after gophers. Hell, not even the damn Jehovah's Witnesses pester me anymore! 'Course, my lawn is littered with baseballs, frisbees and other toys that the neighbors kids are too afraid to come and get...
Re:Personally... (Score:2, Insightful)
2 hours of your life is nothing, dude. while you cut that grass, give thanks that you can. every blade of grass you tread on should represent one of the billions of people alive, at the same time as you, who can only dream of such luxury.
get your head out of your ass! its what cutting grass is good for!
Re:Personally... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Personally... (Score:3, Interesting)
Less maintenance once it's going (In fact, the modern grass lawn oringinally became desirable because it is so hard to maintain... it required a lot of xervants, and so showed off wealth.)
Eliminates the need to water during drought
Decreases erosion
Provides habitat and food for wildlife
Looks a whole lot better than uniform blades of grass, in my opinion.
If you want a place for your k
Re:Personally... (Score:2)
The genetic code for the mass suicide of the lemming could be introduced to the most dangerous species of mosquito
What mass suicide? That idea is based on a stupid Disney film. What genetic code? Lemmings aren't programmed to all die simultaneously.
He has some interesting ideas, but not much science. I think people would be willing to pay a bit more for not dying.
Re:Personally... (Score:2)
One word... (Score:2)
It's really that simple.
Re:Personally... (Score:2, Informative)
First of all, IAAGE, (I'm a genetic engineer)
Whether the article is facetious or not, I think it brings up a valid approach
OK, let me relate this in historical terms: During the space race, the U.S. spent billions trying to put 3 guys on that big vaccuous rock in the sky. In the end, they got all the glory, but more importantly, they got a world of new technologies that benefitted all mankind (and girl-kind too).
This technological bootstrapping would have never happened without t
One of my pet peeves... (Score:3, Informative)
For example, the Americans spend millions to design a pen that will write in zero-g, the Russians use a pencil. The russians have an elegant solution, but the Americans now have a new understanding of chemistry, a new understanding of flow-dynamics, perhaps a new manufacturing process for fine detail, plus detailed experience of zero-G. The Russians have invested nothing and gained nothing in their solution.
I know you didn't state it, but you implied it, and it's not true - NAS
Hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Idiotic.
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? We already produce about 5 times the world's caloric intake with current agricultural techniques. This is one of Monsatan's huge lies: that people are starving because not enough food is being made.
Lack of food production is not why people are starving. People are starving because corrupt government use food as a weapon against their own population. Increasing food production won't help that; it may even make it worse because the food supply will be even more centrally controlled.
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
I wish people wouldn't bring up this lie. It's not that we're stingy with our aid that people are starving. In fact, at some point, the more aid we give, the worse the situation gets. It undercuts local businesses, driving them away, and making the ones that stay incapable of producing. In the long term, that ruins an economy.
(Please note that I am not against giving aid altogether.)
One problem Theatetus didn't address is subsidies. When we subsidize our own agriculture too much, it drives the pric
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Informative)
I beg your pardon, but Bush unconditionally supports psychopaths like Rashid Dostum of Afghanistan and the truly horrendous Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan. And if you hate having your fingernails pulled out or your genitals electrocuted for political dissent, then by all means stay away from U.S. client states like Egypt and Jordan.
While I laud your
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Informative)
We should be weaning the agricultural community off of this, but instead our tax $ pay so that we can have more expens
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
Because your GM short grass and nice trees pollinate my real grass and real trees and screw up my ecosystem.
Barking?! (Score:5, Funny)
If those scientists are going up to trees and barking, I think they've been doing a little genetic engineering on themselves on the side. Woof!
Re:Barking?! (Score:2)
Not to mention secret manipulation of certain basement dwelling slashdotters.
Re:Barking?! (Score:2)
Wishful thinking of the under educated. (Score:5, Insightful)
For example:
Surely some genetic feature of a non-deciduous tree could be implanted in maples so that one may enjoy all the reds and yellows but not the stupefying task of raking and cleaning out gutters. In the spring, the leaves could turn green again and the cycle would repeat so that a sense of seasonal change isn't lost, only my backache.
He obviously understands the process by which die, causing them to turn colors and fall off, since he knows that if leaves don't die and turn colors then plants would loose devastating amounts of water durring the winter period. However, he somehow wants those leaves to come back to life when spring hits. I don't care how many genes shift around, it's going to take nothing more than voodoo magic to both kill the leaves so they change color, and make them come back to life.
The best you could do is get a nice waxy coating on the leaves so they can stay green all year without drying the tree out, or make them stick tighter to the brances so they fall off slowly throughout the winter rather than all at once in the fall, with stragglers falling out like loose teeth as new leaves budded underneith them.
From this point the article goes completely downhill. He doesn't even mention actual possibilities, like removing the gene that causes cat to produce dander people are allergic to (something that already is recieving lots of research money.)
Re:Wishful thinking of the under educated. (Score:2)
we got plastics already if you just want a) plastic-like lawn or b) forever green trees.
fuck, they don't even have to look like real trees.. add some pest killing slow-release chems and voila - no more fucking pests either.
sure it isn't natural but i wouldn't care that much - and zero possibility for the trees to spread to neighbouring forest and me getting sued by monsanto for farming their trees without a license.
Re:Wishful thinking of the under educated. (Score:2)
Re:Wishful thinking of the under educated. (Score:5, Informative)
I think you miss the irony of the column. The last paragraph says it all:
Surely it would not be difficult to shift this gene here and that gene there and come up with permanently blooming azaleas, rhodies, and camellias. Then, the only difference between winter and spring would be the temperature. But not to worry. Global warming will take care of that, too
This was a subtle satire of the suburbinite mentality about technology. It was not ment as a serious set of ideas.
Re:Wishful thinking of the under educated. (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe, but I like the idea of a grass that only grows two inches and stops. Where I am from there is a native grass that only grows four inches and stops. It is also the first to turn green in the spring and the last to turn brown in the summer. Unfortunately it is a prarie grass and does not form much of a turf. It does a pretty good job of choking out weeds, but cannot compete with turf grasses like bermuda. Even so my parents hav
Re:Wishful thinking of the under educated. (Score:3, Interesting)
Grass around the world stops growing - ruminants have nothing to eat - so they strip the leaves off every bush and tree - then they die. Six months later, we all die of starvation.
G
Got grass? (Score:2)
Re:Wishful thinking of the under educated. (Score:3, Informative)
In nature, one teeny tiny grass plant somewhere gets the mutation. It takes thousands of generations of the animals that feed on it for that mutation to spread far enough to be important. That gives the animals plenty of time to evolve to keep up with the change.
When humanity introduces a genetically engineered plant, it emerges as hundreds of thousands of acres of the stuff - all planted within one growing season, fed with the best nutrition, watered with mathematical p
Re:Wishful thinking of the under educated. (Score:2)
I used to believe this was the reason that trees lose their leaves as well, until one season it snowed in late September and every tree in the city suffered damage. If the tree's don't lose their leaves their snow carrying capacity will easily overshoot the weight thier branches c
Explain red oak (Score:2)
I'm not biologist, but I know you are wrong. Red Oak is fair common in the north, and it holds onto (dead) leaves until spring.
Dust (Score:2)
Re:Wishful thinking of the under educated. (Score:2)
It would be nice if we could avoid stuff like this pest [emeraldashborer.info]. Or maybe this one [fs.fed.us].
Random thought:
I recently lived in a Michigan subdivision that was built in the 50s and 60s. The developer, back then, thought that it would be a good idea to litter the subdivision with Ash trees. 50 years later, it appeared to be a wonderful idea, as the streets of this subdivision were now canopied by beautiful ash trees. And then the emerald ash borer became a problem. The trees were all clearcut and dispos
Re:Wishful thinking of the under educated. (Score:3, Interesting)
or the frogs, chipmunks, birds, salamanders, butterflies,
How many people know what a firefly is these days? We've decimated our ecology by removing the natural vegetation from our front and back yards in some stupid quest for the perfect lawn: uniform, monoculter, weed and pest free.
Then we wonder where all the wildlife went (we killed their homes and removed their food) or why the summers keep getting hotter ever
Re:Wishful thinking of the under educated. (Score:3, Insightful)
Congratulations. You just re-invented the mulch pile.
Re:Wishful thinking of the under educated. (Score:2)
This could be a boon for B-horror-movie producers... "You thought it was safe to walk in the yard. You thought the only hungry thing in your lawn was the earthworms. You thought Colonel Scruffles ran away from home. You thought wrong. [SCREAM!] Coming This July. Steven Seagal. [GET OUT OF THERE!] Angelina Jolie. [THIS IS BAD] 'Keep Off the Grass'"
Re:Wishful thinking of the under educated. (Score:2)
Re:Wishful thinking of the under educated. (Score:2)
The problem with genetically-engineered cats is that we have so many friggin' feral cats [feralcat.com] in the world. It's an epidemic, it's a drain on your tax dollars -- follow that link if you don't believe me. The world would be a better and cheaper place if every cat owner adopted a feral cat instead of a custom-engineered or purebred one.
Yes, this probably means extremely allergic people shouldn't have cats. It also means people who are afraid of cats that don't give off lig
If you're clever, you don't (Score:2)
Already, little or no research is done in areas where little or no profit is expected (malaria e.g.), thereby killing millions every year.
Re:If you're clever, you don't (Score:2)
I think civilization is doing just fine.
Re:If you're clever, you don't (Score:2)
Humans are part of the environment, if species can't deal with the fact we do impact on things then they deserve to die out. Don't say humans are different, a lot of species mould their environment to suit.
Missing the point (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Missing the point (Score:2, Insightful)
Risking contaminating the gene pool of Maple trees with leaves that don't fall could have devastating ecological effects. It could reduce the survival and reproductive effectiveness of wild maples if it out-crossed thus drastically changing the food chain and species composition of effected eco-systems.
This seems to be a general problem with GM people don't think of the consequences of what would happen if t
Re:Missing the point (Score:2)
Screw GM food ... (Score:5, Funny)
Get them working on producing a GM human-female that thinks that stanky basementgeeks are supersexy. They can come in several variants -- the scrawny goth, the buxom blond, the dominatrix redhead ... They'd make a billion....
No (Score:5, Insightful)
The answer is still NO. The issue with GM plants is that GM corporations have proven time and time again that they are not being in the remotest bit responsible for what they are producing. They take GM plants that have not been anywhere near adequately tested, and let them out in the wild, where they crossbreed with other plants freely. They have absolutely no clue if they are about to create the next kudzu, and they don't appear to give a damn if they do, either. (Heck, they'd probably see one of their plants getting out of control and taking over everywhere as a gold mine! [bbc.co.uk]) And don't forget that it's Monsanto that gave us the Terminator Gene.
No thanks. My life depends on plant life, so I'd prefer if people didn't wantonly muck with it. What was that old saying about people who live in glass houses throwing stones?
Please get a small clue (Score:2)
Re:No (Score:5, Interesting)
The plan was that you could introduce plants with the gene in an area, let nature do its thing, and suddenly have all the farmers in the area be forced to buy seed from you every year instead of using seed from last year's crop.
Yes, Monsanto has publicly said they will never release their sterile-seed technology to the market, but only after major international outcry, the fact that they even gave this plan serious consideration, let alone fleshed it out and let the world know they were thinking it, shows that there are some exceptionally evil people at the controls of that corporation.
Autumn Anyone? (Score:5, Funny)
I love to wade through the leaves that cover the sidewalks, you insensitive clod. If they remove my town's glorious autumn splendor, I'm moving to Canada.
Re:Autumn Anyone? (Score:2)
Mr. Bush has made this place quite popular. Used to be in this very rural neo-artic wasteland that I live in the first thing you'd say to somebody moving in was "So what part of tronnoare you from?" but now we're getting peopele from Georgia, Indiana, Maine, you name it.
Oh and bring Euros. Your dollar is near worthless now.
world hunger is not caused by lack of GM food (Score:2, Insightful)
its not caused by 'we dont have a magic melon'
if u can genetically engineer humans with emotional health, then you would stop world hunger a lot faster.
Re:world hunger is not caused by lack of GM food (Score:2)
A. killing a LOT of people and causing a LOT of disruption in hunger-stricken areas. Even if those governments aren't distributing food properly, they are doing things like trying to keep people from running down the street shooting everybody.
B. Fundamentally changing human nature. Sorry, if threat of hell and promise of heaven by a thousand different prophets didn't do it, you're not going to.
Now, however, the idea of GM food for these areas is some
Re:world hunger is not caused by lack of GM food (Score:2)
Re:world hunger is not caused by lack of GM food (Score:2)
Quite understandably, and for good humanitarian reasons, we try to 'cure' hunger. That results in more people surviving - which results in even more hunger in subsequent generations.
Like any other species, humand breed until they hit the limits of their environment.
What is needed is birth control of one kind or another (education, condoms, drugs, laws) to keep the population below what the environ
Yes! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you refuse to eat beef because of moral reasons (I understand that there are lots of legitimate reasons not to eat beef--but I'm concentrating on the "oh, poor cow" reason), then would you be willing to eat beef grown in a cow body that was born with no brain whatsoever and kept alive by machines? You'd be eating beef, but it would've been grown like a vegetable. Most of the vegetarians I've asked say they would sooner eat a real cow than my genetically engineered monster. But why? How is it really any different from any of the food products we're created for ourselves over the centuries?
Personally, I'd much rather have GM food than beef that has been fllled to the brim with hormones to to make the "natural" animal perform better. And I'd be first in line to buy trees and grass.
The lameness filter is complaining about junk characters. What are junk characters? Did that question mark just count? Will this block of text make this message ok? ---------------------
watch funny commercials. [tubespot.com]
Re:Yes! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with GM food has has nothing to do with fear of mutant food. The problem with GM food is the introduction of this horrific system of intellectual property.<sneer/>
America has become less and less of an industrial producer and more and more based on the service industry. How does a service industry nation support itself? By living off of other industrial nations. How do we get them to support us? By convincing them that our ideas are worth paying for. We've been doing this with TV, movies, and music for some time, as well as technological ideas, but as these industries are maturing in other nations, we need more things that foreign countries will pay us for.
This is why the U.S. is so insistent on giving G.M. food as aid. Once it's in the country, the poor farmers will have no choice but to be beholden to the IP owners for the rest of their lives, something which I find particularly disgusting.
Monsanto (a Canadian company) has been trying the razor/blade model (GM food/pesticide), but they've hit the jackpot! They've invented a razor that turns all neighboring razors into the same kind of razor!
Once you drop the IP restrictions on GM food, there are no complaints, but there are also no reasons to try and force it on anyone either, and it becomes a moot point. Life IS open source, and most people want to keep it that way.
Re:Yes! (Score:3, Interesting)
Bullshit. You can selectively breed humans to be stronger, or whatever. You cannot selectively breed humans to grow 10 arms and be green.
Selective breeding is "natural". In many ways that's what nature does as well with natural selection. In many species only the most suited do breed.
Sticking spider genes in people so they piss cobwebs is not natural and only attainabl
Re:Yes! (Score:2)
The difference between the two is only a matter of breeding generations, or if you prefer, time. I can selectively breed a bacterium into a human, given enough time - so I don't see what's so impossible about something as trivial as skin colour or limb count.
(Unless you were trying to start up a micro/macro evolution debate, which I don't think was the case)
Re:Yes! (Score:2, Insightful)
Butterflies and hurricanes. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Won't stop the luddites (Score:2)
Personally, I have no problems with genetic manipulation of things. Howerver the sort of people who whine about GM food, will probably throw a fit about any GM product. Example: 'GM grass will be bad because goats will eat it ant grow tentacles!'
Re:Won't stop the luddites (Score:2)
Just think of all the poor little victims of these new grass eating tentical monsters!
Would the perfect height grass be edible? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are oodles of ethical questions to be answered BEFORE releasing a GM product into the wild. Profit is not the bottom line in the real world.
Microsoft is well known for making software that is popular in suberbia, but it's also known for being insecure, and a scourge on the Internet if plugged in unpatched. Releasing "perfect height" grass into the wild is much more dangerous than releasing an unpatched operating system. The consequences to the ecosystem aren't as simple as unplugging every Windows computer from the Internet and cleaning the worms off of them, or blocking ports.
Re:Would the perfect height grass be edible? (Score:2)
Perhaps. But it is probably much less likely to do so than a wild-type plant simply transported from one part of the planet to another.
People who worry about engineered plants taking over and displacing natural varieties have an exaggerated notion of the prowess of engineering. The likelihood that some plant that a human engineer has mucked with for some special
Re:Would the perfect height grass be edible? (Score:2)
Neither is protecting the environment (pardon me for calling suburban desert "environment").
However, scientific and technological development are the bottom line. If we can learn something and if it's cool, it should be done, and damn the torpedoes.
Not if its patented (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't have a problem with uning genetic technology for anything, what I have a problem with is that if someone controlls a specific piece of genetic technology - then they have a strong incentive to push/impose it even if it is not in my best interest. People are what they hold themselves accountable to, if Acme company has a patnet on a technology that sucks - they will push that technology even if they have the capability to make something far safer or better - that's just the way it is in a patent world. You can see this hapening in the pharmacutical industry all the time nowdays.
Re:Not if its patented (Score:2)
No one is going to drop 300 million on R&D to produce something, only make no money off it because people are just trading the seeds around. There needs to be SOME economic reason to invest that kind of capital, and the YEARS of HARD WORK. I realize all the /.ers who whine about IP aren't going to understand that that is what it is, but perhaps they can understand that overwhelming majority of GM technology WOULD NOT EXIST if not for people throwing billions into it. So you can pick a world with patent
Forget designer, I'll take resistant (Score:4, Insightful)
No, but I'd be the first on my block to buy an Elm tree resistant to dutch elm disease or an American Chestnut tree resistant to blight.
Don't we have enough of a disconnect w/ Nature? (Score:3, Insightful)
In an evermore artificial world, a person can go an entire day without seeing the sky, a tree or any animal, or touching cotton, wood, or anything *real*.
I know that there are kids that live in cities that have never seen the stars, and have no clue to the connection between the stuff that magically appears in the supermarket and the dirt that it's grown in. Gen-modding everything for the sake of fattys who don't want to care for their living landscape is only going to leave us with plants and animals that are not adapted to the natural world, and a weakened ecosystem.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back on my horse so I can cry at sunset when somebody litters.
Yup, and don't forget fear (Score:4, Informative)
That said, I do not believe for a single second that genetic engineering will reach the home owner any time soon. Having to do something in the garden can actually be enjoyable, you know. But seriously, however useful it may be, you can betcher sweet *ss that green activists (Greenpeace comes to mind) will sow such fear and hate that GE organisms will not be available for common use for a long time to come. Who do you think came up with the term "Frankenfood"? Go tell to the poor kids who eat Golden Rice that genetic engineering is bad. And, to any fanatic who might be reading this post, before you embark on yet another hate-trip, please check here [disasterrelief.org] for a well-balanced discussion of the issue. Hunger is caused in large part by issues other than innate defects in Nature's gifts, but many of those are issues that are not going to be solved any time soon. You can be fundamentalistic about this or you can be realistic. Poor people loose in the first case.
Re:Yup, and don't forget fear (Score:2, Insightful)
And you wonder why people oppose GM?
Re:Yup, and don't forget fear (Score:2)
Because they don't like profit?
Re:Yup, and don't forget fear (Score:2)
the real solution (Score:3, Insightful)
So, instead of raking leaves for an hour... (Score:3, Insightful)
I lived through this crap back in 1995-96 (I think) in upstate New York when there was a heavy early snowfall. There was much damage, both to trees and to buildings.
Genetic Marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
Absolutely! (Score:4, Funny)
Should Monsanto bring us designer maples that don't shed leaves? Would you buy designer grass that grows two inches and stops?
Yes, and um, yes. Please even. While they're at it, lets get some trees that make more oxygen so I can stop feeling bad for cutting down the rain forest. I'd also like a dog that doesn't have to eat or poop, ferns for the house that I don't need to water so often, and a gerbil that can power my PC as long as I give it some sugar every now and then.
Nope. (Score:3, Interesting)
they have all been replaced with stands of a variety of indigenous plants, shrubs, grasses and trees.
My brownstone-townhouse has a 'small' corner lot, but ive got mayapples, ferns, jackinpulpits, many trees, shrubs, etc etc etc etc.
not in a million years would i buy such stupidity. Im trying to diversify the plant life to support a greater diversity of insects, birds and animals.
This idea is as stupid as the moron who waters, fertilizes and mows his kentucky-blue-grass wasteland.
Absolute stupidity.
I already did... (Score:5, Insightful)
I already did - it is called "Buffalo grass" [google.com], and is a native grass of the midwestern region. Once established, it needs little water, and will not grow very tall.
In this particular case, there is little need for gengineering, just for people to realize that the brilliant green of fescue grass is not needed, and the more muted green of buffalo is just as good.
Don't trust the drug companies (Score:4, Informative)
Do you want more info? If so, just google for "Starlink", the marketing name for Monstanto's chemical resistant crops.
They could have created a crop that would have reduced the amount of poisons we dump into the environment. Instead, they created one that allows us to use more poisons. Why? Well, you don't expect a chemical company to help us reduce the need for chemicals, do you?
Grass that grows 2 inches (Score:3, Informative)
Buffalo grass varietal called "Tatanka". Great grass for lawns. Left to its own, it will grow about 3 inches in a season, so it usually gets mowed once or twice a year.
Alternatively, we could always get the good folks in Ca, Nev, AZ, and NM to realize that they are living in Deserts and blue grass just doesn't belong there.
Umm...couldn't that destroy life as we know it? (Score:3, Insightful)
If leaves didn't fall, wouldn't that eliminate a lot of the nutrients in the ground that come from them? Even if any new trees grew from the deprived soil, all the herbavores would be eating their young shoots instead of the itty-bitty grass blades. Once all the young trees are gone, the plant eaters'll die off and there'll be no meat for the carnivores! And then society will fall into disarray as we battle each other in post-apocolyptic wastelands for rations and gasoline with our superpowered death cars, seeing only by the light of cinematic explosions!
Yeah. Think about it.
Re:Umm...couldn't that destroy life as we know it? (Score:2)
There's always someone who can Bill Joy any thread about science, these days.
Then again, maybe mods with senses of humour could start showing up on Slashdot
Grass is ugly (Score:2)
I've never understood peoples desire for a "perfect" green lawn. Its a uniform ugly. One color, not variation. They rarely use it for any other activity, it doesn't support as much nature, yet they must have it.
Grass is fine on a golf course or a ballpark. It is worthless in front of your home.
Re:Grass is ugly (Score:2)
That patch of grass has traditionally been the perfect place for kids to play, romp with the dog/friends and camp out on summer nights.
Even if you don't have kids, surrounding your house with grass has a measurable cooling effect on hot summer days (non-humid climates, of course).
It's also, on an hour per square foot basis, one of the lowest maintanence groundcovers. Yes it has to be mowed weekly and weed-and-fed a couple times a year but consider the alternatives:
Decorati
It depends... (Score:2)
That all depends...
Will Monsanto sue me if I don't use their brand of glyphosate, that cost 10x as much?
If it does grow to more than 2", just very slowly, will they sue me for not using their brand of lawnmower blades, in their brand of lawnmower, running on their brand of gasoline, all of which cost 10x as much as normal?
If I go away for the summer and this grass actually goes to seed, with they sue me for millions
No, and for good reasons (Score:2)
To everyone who thought this article was serious: (Score:2)
The fact that so very many people, presumably intelligent and educated people, could not realize this article is satirical bodes ill for the ability of geeks to digest and influence popular culture and opinion.
GloFish (Score:2)
I want one, but they're banned in California. Gah!
Re:GloFish (Score:2)
We already have trees that don't shed leaves. (Score:2)
Just make sure your GM shit (Score:2)
This reminds me that "lead is OK" stuff pushed by the oil industry, or "asbestos is fine", or "chlorine and benzene are not a danger", or "PCBs don't cause cancer", or "cigarettes aren't addictive". Quite frankly after all of this I'm surprised that some slashdotters place so much tr
Grass Varieties Banff (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes I once had a full lawn of it and it does grow to 2 1/2 inches and pretty much stays there. And it is a pretty, fine wonderful barefoot grass to boot!
Re:Monsanto. (Score:2)
Re:Oh yes... (Score:2)
Medical research is extremely slow and cumbersome. If the level of genetic engineering in the world were such that we had all sorts of genetically engineered products for the home garden, then the state of the art in genetic engineering would be improving far faster than if we were devoting our
Re:How about... (Score:2)
Because the grass will pollinate normal grass, too. Then we'll have no weeds anywhere. No weeds mean we suffer about 25% extinction among hymenopterans and lepidopterans. That translates into a 10% extinction among avians. You see where this goes?
Re:How about... (Score:2)
Although I would like some GM crows that sound like peacocks for my neighbor (the one with the weed whackere that only works at 7:30 AM)