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Miscellanea
Things I need to remember:
• Asking for help is not, as it turns out, fatal.
• Laughing is easier than pulling your hair out, and doesn't have the unfortunate side effect of making you look like a plague victim.
• Even the biggest tasks can be defeated if taken a bit at a time.
• I can write a paper the night before it's due, but the results are not all they could be.
• Be thorough, but focused.
• Trust yourself.
• Honesty, always.
Historians are the Cassandras of the Humanities
no subject
Date: November 29th, 2015 05:40 pm (UTC)I don't disagree for the most part, and of course we have been tinkering with species for eons. However, we're talking apples and oranges here (almost literally). I think we must admit that there is a difference in crossbreeding species which can be crossbred, and introducing completely unrelated DNA. Last I checked tomato-shark hybrids are damned rare in nature.
It should also give us pause that we are increasingly reliant on crops whose yield is infertile. I know we all like to think that our technological empire will never diminish, but we have yet to realistically address crises like peak oil and climate change. To imagine a giant like Monsanto failing is hard, but consider the ramifications of our near dependence on newly purchased seed every growing season if it did. We are losing species, and we are losing our global stores of viable seed. This is not sound long term planning.
While I agree swearing off pesticides isn't an answer, overuse isn't either. And while certainly manure and compost create runoff, I'd take that runoff in my water table over RoundUp any day. And finally, manure and compost don't exterminate or drastically interfere with bees and other vital parts of the ecosystem. Neo-nicotinoids for one are devastating bee populations, and if we end up wiping them out, we're fucked. Again, it's about a lot more than this year's crop, or next. It's about ten, twenty, fifty years from now.