Vegans kill infant

WHEN Crown Shakur died of starvation, he was 6 weeks old and weighed 3.5 pounds. His vegan parents, who fed him mainly soy milk and apple juice, were convicted in Atlanta recently of murder, involuntary manslaughter and cruelty.

I was once a vegan. But well before I became pregnant, I concluded that a vegan pregnancy was irresponsible. You cannot create and nourish a robust baby merely on foods from plants.

Indigenous cuisines offer clues about what humans, naturally omnivorous, need to survive, reproduce and grow: traditional vegetarian diets, as in India, invariably include dairy and eggs for complete protein, essential fats and vitamins. There are no vegan societies for a simple reason: a vegan diet is not adequate in the long run.

One of the big reasons poverty is so difficult to overcome in devoping countries is simple - proper nutrition early in a child's life requires animal protein, which is expensive relative to the starchy staples of all societies. Without it children are malnourished and do not develop to their full potential. This is why it is dangerous when eco-fundamentalist zealots try to force on developing countries their moral viewpoint that eating animals is wrong and a waste of resources. Children are malnourished and die because of this kind of activism.

Never mind. Go back to what you were doing.

Blood for oil

Many on the left accuse GW Bush of sacrificing the blood of our young men and women for oil - "no blood for oil!" they shout, followed by a stream of profanity. However, as Steve Milloy points out, it is the left that wants blood for oil - your blood and the blood of your spouse, children, and parents. They refuse to allow drilling in the oil-rich off-shore continental shelf of America so we can get more of the oil we need domestically, then use the ruse of "energy security" to demand stricter mileage laws, laws that endanger all of us.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has estimated that since CAFE was implemented, more than 46,000 traffic deaths would have been avoided if people had been driving heavier cars. Many tens of thousands more, of course, have been needlessly injured.

The NHTSA concluded in an October 2003 report that CAFE standards are even deadlier than the agency previously thought.

Every 100-pound reduction in the weight of small cars (those weighing 2,950 pounds or less), for example, increased annual traffic fatalities by as much as 715, according to NHTSA. For larger cars and light trucks, the agency estimated that each 100-pound reduction in weight would increase annual traffic fatalities by as much as 303 and 296, respectively.

Improving wheat with biotech- Pt. 1

Back-crossing is a plant breeding process to remove unwanted genes, but it is a time consuming process of raising successive generations of the progeny. The release of an improved variety usually takes 10 to 12 years.

With modern biotechnology, plant scientists can choose a specific trait and move only the genes for that trait into the target variety. The unwanted or detrimental genes are not transferred and the time until release of the improved variety is reduced to the period required for yield trials.

Clean chemicals better than poo'd on food - duh!

Who wants nasty chemicals in their food?
Uh, food is made of chemicals.
Oh yeah, right... um I mean organic is better, right?
Well, all food is organic - as in living.
Oh yeah... but isn't it better to spread poo on our food than... okay, maybe that's not such a good idea...
Uh, no.

The following is from Toppling the organic house of cards, a book review of "The Truth About Organic Foods," by Alex Avery. The review was published in Nature Biotechnology May 5th 2007.

Avery challenges the common claims in chapter after chapter. Is organic food more nutritious? Is organic healthier? Is organic safer? Does organic means pesticide free? Are approved organic pesticides benign? Does organic food taste better? Does buying organic support local family farmers? Is organic farming better for the environment? Avery documents (and cites comprehensively) the independent scientific studies addressing these questions and concludes there is no scientifically credible evidence to support organic foods or farms being categorically superior to conventional in any respect. Organic does not mean 'no pesticides', because organic farming does allow certain 'natural' pesticides. And 'natural' does not mean 'healthy' or even 'benign', as those natural organic pesticides can be very hazardous, even more so than the proscribed synthetic chemicals. Even if one discounts Avery due to his personal bias, it is hard not to accept the apparent consensus of the scientific studies showing, for example, no categorical or meaningful nutritional differences between organic and regular foods.

According to Avery, those few reports claiming an advantage for organic have almost invariably been paid for or conducted by those with a vested financial interest in selling organic products. Consequently, few such studies are published in peer-reviewed journals. He then critiques these organic-friendly reports, exposing the logical or technical problems explaining why the flawed studies remain unpublished. Avery is not alone in disparaging the organic industry. When Sir John Krebs, then head of the UK Food Safety Authority, announced that no scientific evidence supported the claims of organic superiority, he was met with dismissive rhetoric from the organic industry followed by ad hominem attacks on his ethical integrity.

The source of evil in eco-fundamentalist religion

The Eco-Radicals' Real Motives

The driving force behind the eco-radicals’ fierce efforts to strangle the free market with environmental regulations is their virulent hatred for a free, prosperous economy. Yet behind this hatred is an even deeper one. To understand why they try to wreck our economy, you have to grasp the shocking fact that many eco-radicals hate the human race and Western civilization. They hate the fact that you, your family, your friends, and millions of other human beings live and prosper on this planet.

Most of us are naive about the environmental movement. We believe that when eco-radicals say we should “protect the environment,” they mean we should protect it for people. What they really mean is that we should protect the environment against people. People are the enemy. Rats, swamps, and old-growth forests must be protected against you, your family, and the rest of the human race.