Frankenfuck Yourself

Science is attempting even more ways to make healthier crops with larger yields. Naturally, people are terrified.

This is a topic that has driven absolutely bat-shit crazy since I was a wee lad.

A quick background tale.
My dad, (as some of you know) is a nuclear engineer. He's wicket-smart with the science and the engineering and the the gaheeeeey!
When I was growing up, dreadlocked "progressives" would show up at our front door every year or so with a petition. They always wanted my mom to sign something about the dangerous emissions and ground poisoning happening...where my dad worked. She would politely tell them to fuck off.

I asked my dad one time why the smelly people wanted his work shut down.
"Because they failed science class" was his answer.

Actually, after his joke he was fair to their claim and told me that if his workplace was careless, they could damage the land, etc, etc. But basically, he said they're scared of something they don't understand.

20 years later, people aren't any more comfortable with science.

In brief, they've spliced human genes with rice. The new rice is more resistant to a larger variety of pesticides (which is a whole other ball of wax, I know). Thus, they can rotate the types of pesticides they use on the rice and fewer critters destroy the crops and we get more, healthier rice.

The response? "It smacks of cannibalism!"

How about I smack you around and then ship the rice to some skinny brown people. That' the type of thing you jerk off to, isn't it?

OK, somebody will claim I'm flirting with an idea that Rob talked about involving only "experts" having legitimate opinions on a given subjects.
Those people, to paraphrase a friend of mine, can suck my cock.

While I don't think somebody has to be an expert on the Middle East to have an opinion about the war, they should certainly agree that the argument is one of foreign policy, politics, morality, and the validity of pre-emptive actions.
It's not a discussion about racism.

And I see these types of arguments all the time. Case in point, the questions that should be laid at the feet of genetically altered foods are ones of safety and science.

Yet all the questions being asked are essentially political.

AND, what I find MOST interesting, is this is a topic that finds both "sides" (the left-right distinction makes less and less sense to me as time goes on) saying things contrary to their litany.

Progressives from the left are supposed to embrace new ideas and new solutions. They're supposed to poo-poo most things traditional.

At the same time, one would think that sections of the religious right would be weary of genetically-altered foods since it dabbles in God's domain.

But all the luddite noise comes from the anti-corporate/anti-racist/anti-war/anti-fur/vegan/animal rights movement, which is an AMAZING piece of political orchestration by the way. I must found out who tied all that together. (Penn and Teller's Bullshit shed some light on that subject, but I digress).

At the same time, to the best of my knowledge, the religious right is too busy keeping like, I don't know, a few thousand gay couples from paying higher taxes (which would rule, because the meaux's do VERY well) to make any noise about man playing God with grain and rice.

Obviously, the fat cats in the um...Industry-that-makes-money-from-there-being-healthier-food got the the Bible Belt. They made a deal to keep them quite.

"If you religious folk keep it down on the frankenfood front, we won't point out how you actually do all the mission work in those countries with the brown people and thus sully your "racist" image".

Or maybe I'm just sick of all of them.

Next, Kung Fu filmy goodness double-shot.