Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Science: it's complicated, in reply to Bart Janssen,
The toxin they refer to is Bt toxin which is specifically an insect toxin and has no effect on animals. It is a protein itself that binds to a receptor in the insect gut. Those receptors are only found in insects and each Bt toxin is highly specific for specific receptors. That’s why Bt toxin effective against corn pests has no effect on bees. Also why there is no effective Bt toxin for aphids :(.
Seems worth noting that Bt toxin is approved in certain forms under organic certification.
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Hard News: Science: it's complicated, in reply to richard,
To quote myself in the same post: “we are trying to figure out how the big bang would have worked if string theory is true, and whether the string theory version of the big bang leads to a universe with distinctive properties which might be observable when we look into the sky.”
How much more do you want ;-)
You didn't explain what string theory is. :-)
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Hard News: Science: it's complicated, in reply to Bart Janssen,
ALL of our modern crops are completely useless competitors in the wild. They all require careful watering and fertilisers and pest control.
And some of them -- e.g. the cereal hybrids -- won't last past a single season. I recall when I researched this (and I use the word "research" in the light and journalistic sense) and heard people complaining that farmers would be prevented from re-using GM seed, thinking, but virtually no one re-uses seed now anyway.
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Hard News: Science: it's complicated, in reply to Sacha,
no evidence that any harm results
I think you’re missing the point of the precautionary principle. Once there’s evidence of harm in the wild it’s way too late.
“As far as we know” is just not good enough if you want to claim perfect absence of risk of harm.
Just going back through this thread for inspiration on question lines. Sacha, about half your answers to Bart boil down to but you can't prove it doesn't! And no, Bart can't prove a negative, and wouldn't try, but he did a very good job of attempting to convey the probabilities as he assesses them.
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Hard News: Friday Fun with Brickface, in reply to matthewbuchanan,
And there you go, inline images for attachments. That’s prettier.
You little beauty! We're an image board!
Hang on ... does this mean we're like 4Chan now?
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Che Tibby,
Orly?
haven’t we being talking about that for years now?
is this an aspirational goal, like catching up australia? <serious now>
The impetus has come from the Law Commission murmuring in a confused fashion about regulation -- and then Simon Power bidding all that up x 10 with all that "wild west" stuff.
I was part of one discussion about a voluntary code earlier this year. The appeal is that it's better than having the gummint do it for you, but also that it's useful for the audience to know who has made a commitment to basic standards.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to DCBCauchi,
And, personally speaking, I also think that I have a clear moral right to use whatever I need to make my work. I will fight tooth and nail against any infringement of that right.
And that right has been stoutly defended in this country. The philosophical battle over the contents of galleries was mostly played out in the 50s and 60s here. There's a "taxpayer's money" set piece, but we acknowledge the freedom of artists. Or, rather, we don't make a fuss about it.
But what we defend as art is not the same thing that we will regard as acceptable in another context. Virgin in a Condom as a work of art was exhibited by a state agency in the face of violent protest -- but a prime-time reality show in which contestants compete to fit the condom over the statue of the Virgin Mary the most times would probably fall afoul of the state regulator, the BSA.
So there really is not a single, simple answer to your questions.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Paul Williams,
But other media might still be? Yet another challenge for any definitive or universal test for the “potential for harm”.
As broadcast steadily loses its Reithian universal reach and the audience fragments, I suspect we will have to reconsider statutory regulation. We have to some extent anyway, in regulating pay TV differently to free-to-air TV.
OTOH, in the print world, the self-regulation practiced by the newspaper industry has waved through some hideous behaviour. There are quite a few MPs at Westminster who want statutory regulation of newspapers now.
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Hard News: Friday Fun with Brickface, in reply to James Butler,
window.png
Concrete prose.
Bugger. Some of these aren't coming through as complete images. Could we try opening them locally before uploading?
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to DCBCauchi,
And, yes, I have read the relevant legislation. To be perfectly frank, I used to work on the stuff. But that’s not relevant to this discussion.
FWIW, I collaborated with Steven Price on a report for the Broadcasting Standards Authority on regulating internet content. My conclusion was that regulation of internet speech was impractical and probably unwise. Steven saw it a bit differently and, from memory, thought measures like regulating a right of reply might have merit.