Would you eat a hamburger that was grown in a test tube? How about a chicken nugget from a petri dish? Sometimes called “shmeat” (as in, a sheet of lab-grown meat), in vitro meat might someday be an option for people with carnivorous inclinations who aren’t wild about the idea of killing and eating real…Continue Reading…
A scientist lays it out in the Guardian: The term “genetic modification” provokes widespread fears about the corporate control of agriculture, and of the unknown. However, results from 25 years of EU-funded research show that there is “no scientific evidence associating GM plants with higher risks for the environment or for food and feed safety than conventional plants and organisms”. This…Continue Reading…
If you had to pick the human influences most responsible for altering the earth, what would they be? Half a century ago, this question was (dispassionately) addressed in a landmark symposium called, “Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth.” A 2005 retrospective review of the volume of interdiscplinary scholarship that emerged in 1956 notes that the syposium was…Continue Reading…
Andy Revkin has a post related to a conference I (and numerous other journalists) also attended this week. Due to computer challenges (my laptop died on Tuesday) and other obligations, I haven’t yet been able to post on any of the sessions. But I’ll get something up by Monday. I’m still digesting it all. Meanwhile, for those who…Continue Reading…
I have no idea what an editor does over at ScienceBlogs. I doubt they do any actual editing of blogs. But evidently they get to choose their favorite posts, the way a clerk advertises his top ten flicks at your local movie rental store. So my eye drifted to a recent number one “editor’s pick”…Continue Reading…
You won’t find any “green” tributes to the father of the “green revolution.” That’s a shame, but not surprising. What’s shocking are many of the comments from so-called progressives at the Huffington post. One disgusted reader scanning the mass display of moronic ignorance nails it: Environmentalists attacking Borlaug’s work are like creationists attacking Darwin’s work,…Continue Reading…