*fluorescent
I know, the spelling rules are weird.

Neil "The Grass" Tyson is a pretty cool guy, even if he does piss off evolutionary biologists from time to time.

Well done, Ms Bogezi, in all things. I wish her success in her well-deserved funded study on wolves and conflicts with people. It's a topic and a problem that is going to keep coming up as wolves become better established. By studying how the issues are perceived by citizens and stakeholders alike, she can go a long way in helping to find a way to coexist.

Unless you forage your own wild foodstuffs there's very little in our contemporary diet that ISN'T GMO to some extent. The difference is that historically humans have used the "slow modification" method which essentially means traditional crop cross-hybridization; crude and can take a great deal of time to achieve the desired results, but still a form of genetic macro-manipulation. "GMO" in the current vernacular simply refers to food that has been hybridized directly at the genetic level.

@3 Additionally, you can use mutagenic chemicals or ionizing radiation to induce higher rates of mutations. What's really interesting is that these aren't ever considered GMOs, and folks who argue against GMOs never, ever mention these organisms.

In fact, what some companies do is design an organism quickly using GM techniques, then try to replicate the effort with the techniques mentioned above. It takes a whole lot longer and is a great deal more expensive, but with enough tries you'll get it eventually. Yet you'll get it without the GMO label. Even though you essentially have the same plant.

That's how batshit crazy the vast majority of complaints against GMOs are.

@4:

Absolutely. Really, my only personal beef with GMO's is the frigging copyright component: Monsanto suing farmers who plant non-Monsanto crops adjacent to fields sown with patented stock, and then reap the benefits of natural cross-pollination. If you're so effing smart Monsanto, teach your "Frankenseeds" a little "abstinence edumacation" so they don't have plant-sex with non-patented plants.

Or should I be addressing that whinge to Bayer now?

See numbers one and two. http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012…

@4: Case in point, seedless watermelons. You take a watermelon plant, hit it with a spindle poison (like colchicine) to induce tetraploidy by fucking up the segregation of the chromosomes during meiosis, and then cross it with a regular diploid plant to produce triploid offspring. Because three is an odd number, gametes produced by the progeny end up badly aneuploid (essentially, with two copies of some chromosomes and one copy of others) and any resulting seeds do not develop. It's a pretty drastic alteration of the melon vine's genome, but it's not considered genetic engineering because it's not a precision effect I guess.

@8: I'm Rick Harrison, and this is my pawn shop. I work here with my old man and my son, Big Hoss. Everything in here has a story and a price. One thing I've learned after 21 years - you never know WHAT is gonna come through that door.

@10: I have a morning ritual that I need to share. I call it "the terminator".
First I crouch down in the shower in the classic "naked terminator traveling through time" pose. With my eyes closed I crouch there for a minute, visualizing either Arnold or the guy from the second movie (not the chick in the third one because that one sucked) and I start to hum the terminator theme.
Then I slowly rise to a standing position and open my eyes. It helps me to proceed through my day as an emotionless, cyborg badass.
The only problem is if the shower curtain sticks to my terminator leg. It ruins the fantasy.

@10: What outcry have you uttered about my person, you oafish brute? I shall cordially remind you that I was the best scholar in my law class in Oxford, and I have been involved in several frivolous tea parties and courtroom disputes, and I have over 300 boxes of Earl Gray. I am proficient in the Simian school of diplomacy and I am the top linguist in my book club. Know that you resemble nothing in my eyes save for yet another uncultured mind. I will hasten your undisputed expiritation of the world with grace and finesse. The thought that you can retreat after jesting of such matters over the internet is laughable. As of this moment, I am telephoning a mutual friend to negotiate a swift and sure rebuttal to your argument so I would implore you to prepare yourself for the upcoming verbal deluge. The deluge that will no doubt saturate your life with discomfort. You are well and truly wrong, my good sir. My abilities of travel are unmatched, and I can recite over 700 lines from Shakespeare, and that is just from Hamlet. The amount of knowledge that I have acrued is vast, and I shall use it to firmly state my authority on such matters, you rapscallion. Truly, I wished you had some semblance of knowledge on the matter you have brought up and it's repercussions. Alas, you did not, and now you will suffer a fate most dire, you plebian. I shall defecate concentrated dislike upon you and you shall struggle to survive in it's waters. Pistols at dawn, old boy.

I think I just [something*]gasmed.
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* Tumbler? Nerd? Reddit?

@8, I look forward to your drugs.