Worst modifier ever

Dunce cap and a dope slap for R. J. Ellory.

Briefly noted: it's now apparently too large for a specific number

Tossed off, almost as an aside, in an AP bit about Florida (Florida!) being overruled by the liberal activist United States Supreme Court:

... and gay marriages are occurring in about three dozen states.

My heterosexual bachelorhood is being soooo threatened by these people.

Just plain good news

"Good News on Energy," that is. Read it and congratulate yourself for all the little steps you've been taking.

Highlights?

... total energy use in the United States peaked in 2007 and has trended downward since. ...  economic growth decisively outpaced any increases in energy use over recent decades ...  Improvements in energy efficiency over the last 40 years have done more to meet growth in America’s energy needs than the combined contributions of oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear power. ...  Since 2000, growth in electricity use has dropped well below growth in the population ...  Moreover, oil consumption by vehicles, homes and businesses is down more than 12 percent from its 2005 peak ...  More than one-eighth of our electricity supply is now in the “renewable” category, which is growing faster than any other.

Keep up the good work. We've got a ways to go yet.

Fortunately, it was early in the morning when I voted, so I just went with another coffee and cigarette

Fellow in-stater Thers pretty much nailed it last fortnight, though:

For governor I have Andy Cuomo running against some nondescript GOP meathead. "Slab Angioplasty," I think he's called. Or "Buck Fistorino." Something like that. Time was, and it was not so long ago, the NY GOP could have run a similar meathead to the populist left of Cuomo and made this a race, but these are simpler, shittier times. Nobody likes Andy Cuomo, probably even his immediate family; he has all the personal charm of someone who would rather hard-sell you a timeshare than just fucking pass you the salt. Talk of Andy Cuomo aspiring to higher office is absurd; he's not quite as much of a prissy ass as Giuliani was, but he's not really a different person, unless you squint hard. Fuck him. For the House I get to choose between Richard Hanna and nobody. I vote gin.

Line of the Day: 2014-11-13

The essay's other distinguishing feature is a higher-than-usual count of intentional jokes, most of which sound like P.J. O'Rourke failing a competency hearing.
    -- Roy Edroso

Yeah. Kinda mean. Until you realize it's about Jonah Goldberg.

You always knew the Republicans could be summed up in a cartoon, right?

An excerpt from Brian McFadden's latest.

Droll is always good

From a summary of yet another gambling operation that, shockingly, has failed to deliver on its sellers' hype, a brilliant bit of just-the-facts from Jesse McKinley and Charles Bagli, and props to whoever did the layout, too:

The reality has been far less rosy. Seven years after opening, the Mount Airy Casino Resort has fewer than half of the hotel rooms envisioned by developers, and a third of the slot machines promised in news releases. It has generated about half of the slot revenue forecast by Pennsylvania officials, and little economic spillover has occurred outside the resort. Expansion plans have long since been shelved. The much-heralded charitable foundation has raised a grand total of $1, federal filings show.

Those funds have not been distributed.

Not to worry, though! The next four casinos are sure to fix all the things!

P.S. Aside to Gov. Cuomo: Your father was once courageous enough to call legalized gambling -- lotteries, in his case -- a cowardly attempt by politicians to balance the budget on the backs of poor people.

Gotta love the Goog

[ + ]

Try it here.

Deep thought

Did you ever have a friend named Godfrey? What did you call him for short?

(With Leibniz, it might well have been appropriate.)

Gmail search tip -- use the from: and filename: keywords

Just noticed this string that appeared in the Gmail search window after I clicked on one of the thumbnails in the "Recent photos" sidebar while looking at a new message from ... let's say somebody@example.com. It looks like a handy way to find that picture that person sent you that one time.

from:somebody@example.com filename:(jpg OR jpeg OR png)

Works whether the pictures are attached or embedded in the body of the message, despite what it says here.

You might want to add gif and other extensions, of course.

Note the parentheses, the colons and the absence of a space after them, and the capital ORs. Not positive, but I think those might all be requirements.

For further review

The lede didn't grab me ...

WHEN was the last time you saw an anti-smoking ad?

... because my immediate and then also considered answer was "the last thousand times I watched any baseball or basketball game for at least fifteen consecutive minutes."

But apparently, my evident non-membership in the article's target audience notwithstanding, there are all kinds of shenanigans associated with that lawsuit thing a few years ago, against Big Tobacco. I am too tired, right now, to really get what's being described in the article, but superficially, it appears to be: billions of dollars won, then lost, and it's probably only going to get uglier.

As in, way uglier.

Let's hope a night's sleep and then some coffee will make it at least a little better. But I'm betting on nightmares.

[Added] Sadly, related.

Missed this last week, but ...

... wow, just when you thought Peak Wingnut was almost nearly maybe in sight (sorry, JC), it apparently became time to come out of the fort built from couch cushions to bellow about that noted liberal spearhead of political correctness run amok, the NFL brass.

And also, "... because corporate America is, itself, liberal ..."

Bless you and your cast-iron stomach once again, Roy Edroso.

Upon further review ...

... or reflection, I guess ...

... that catch by Nori Aoki might be the greatest catch I have ever seen.

The GIF here will remind you, if you, too, were lucky enough to see it live, but it doesn't come close to doing it justice. I've seen a couple hundred more prodigious feats of sheer athleticism, but I've never seen one outfielder back up another that close to the wall. In any league. And certainly never to that good effect.

If memory serves, none of the three fine commentators even knew who, if anybody, had the ball, until a certain grinning rightfielder was halfway back to the dugout and, off-handedly?, turned his glove the other way.

Not even an ice cream cone. In the web, all the way.

L'esprit de l'escalier

After walking ... upstairs, as it happens, ... I wish I'd titled that last post Pick-up Line.

Acceptance

After three days, I think we can conclude that dead animal in the road in front of the driveway is not playing possum.

Oh, man. Cosby on Colbert?

Two heroes ...

Worried ...

... phew ... better than I had any right to watch. Out of my league. Link eventually.

I felt like I was just in the presence of geniuses.

Hey. Stop living my dream.

Bottom of the fifth, two out. You've been pitching your usual well, but you're down one. Tying run on third didn't get driven in when it was one out. Now you're up to bat. You're leading the division, but your magic number is irritatingly still in existence, and you're playing your contender.

Triple, all the way to the wall, right-center gap.

DAMN YOU, KERSHAW.

[Later] Also, that Yasiel Puig can muthafuckin' throw, can't he?

Oh, you must read this article by E. O. Wilson

Hard not to blockquote every last word of Masters of Earth, Alone in the Universe, but here's a taste:

Human beings are not wicked by nature. We have enough intelligence, goodwill, generosity and enterprise to turn Earth into a paradise both for ourselves and for the biosphere that gave us birth. We can plausibly accomplish that goal, at least be well on the way, by the end of the present century. The problem holding everything up thus far is that Homo sapiens is an innately dysfunctional species.

Chances are, if you visit this blog regularly, that you will find yourself saying, "Yes, I know that" many times during your reading. Read it anyway. He says what you know succinctly and well. And maybe, just maybe, you'll think of someone to pass it on to, who may not yet get the big picture Wilson paints.

(h/t: David Dobbs, who linked to part 1)

Line of the Day: 2014-09-19

Lanny Davis talking about ‘integrity’ is like listening to Bristol Palin lecture on abstinence.
    -- TBogg

Line of the Day: 2014-09-16

What say you about the multiverse?

It’s hard enough to have a theory for one universe.
    -- Peter Higgs

We (if I may be so presumptuous as to include myself with a hero's hero) are being flippant, of course. It's a good article, though. Overbye is worth more than whatever they're paying him, as I hope you already know.

Can you imagine? Never mind fluoridation, this would make chem trails fall right off the radar.

The Uncola

In which it is argued that we should consider adding lithium to drinking water, because, among other things, it might decrease suicide, homicide, and rape (at least among Texans, so who can say?), a fun fact that I had never heard:

Lithium drinks were in huge demand for their reputed health-giving properties, so much so that the element was added to commercial drinks. 7-Up was originally called Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda and contained lithium citrate right up until 1950. In fact, it’s been suggested that the 7 in 7-Up refers to the atomic mass of the lithium. (Maybe the “Up” referred to mood?)

Not as sexy as marching powder in Coca Cola, but still, better living through chemistry, amirite?

(pic. source: Bipolar Planet, you are doubtless shocked, shocked to learn. Many other great pix at the link.)

What could possibly go wrong?

Seen on Ars:

Engineers from Stanford and Berkeley Universities have figured out how to make radios the size of an ant, which have been created specifically to serve as controllers and sensors in the Internet of Things.

The radios are fitted onto tiny silicon chips, and cost only pennies to make thanks to their diminutive size. They are designed to compute, execute, and relay demands, and they are very energy efficient to the point of being self-sufficient. This is due to the fact that they can harvest power from the incoming electromagnetic signal so they do not require batteries, meaning there is no particular lifetime associated with the devices.

Emphasis mine.

[Added] Related.

Ah, jeez

[ + ]

Is it me, or is the Overton Window getting as narrow as it was pre-Iraq invasion?

[Added] Next thing (via @edroso) that I saw after clicking publish. Don't know whether to be comforted that I'm not the only one thinking these things, or distraught that I'm not the only one thinking these things.

Blast to the past

The latest spam comment on this blog just got blocked. From this post.

Does rickrolling seems really long ago to you?

A larger mystery: why spam comments appear on posts from five years ago, and not on the latest ones. (This is usual, and regular if not particularly frequent.) Do the spammers think they'll have a better chance with the old posts of sneaking in unnoticed? But if so, why would they think anyone would ever see them?

The magical free market sparkle pony gives you the bestest cheapest cell phone service!!!1!

Or, you know, not:

“Over the next decade,” Mr. Meinrath said, “U.S. consumers may overpay by over a quarter of a trillion dollars for worse levels of service than customers in other countries receive.”

USA! USA! USA!

Line of the Day: 2014-08-24

Over the course of my work I have come to the realization that it is very difficult to endanger or kill large numbers of people except with a claim to virtue.
     -- Robert Jay Lipton

The piece from which I swiped that is ... I dunno. Either meh, or too much of a 101-level course when I'm looking for 102. It's about shifting attitudes regarding climate change, if you're interested.

But I did like that line.

What's black and white and read all over?

From a piece by Clay Shirky about the decline of printed newspapers:

... and black newsroom humor long ago re-labelled the Obituary column ‘Subscriber Countdown.’

(h/t: David Dobbs)

A first worth noting

Congratulations, Maryam Mirzakhani!

(h/t: Sharon Begley, via Thomas Hayden)

The first thing we do, let's kill all the humans

Not really, obvs, but cheese and rice, sometimes a blurb will make your knee jerk.

Salmon, once nearly extinct on part of the Columbia River, are recovering, to the delight of birds. As a result, those charged with protecting the fish have a new plan: shoot the birds.

(story link)

On the upside, he's now got more time to go on the down-low

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

(h/t: KK, via email and the FB)

Statistically improbable phrase of the day

... I started hanging out at a local pigeon supply store.

Also, is a “pigeon mumbler” like a horse whisperer?

Also, too, would you consider this gentrification? And if so, with all the negativity that that connotes?

John Gotti’s old Mafia headquarters became a pet-grooming center.

Based on the article, that's a book I'd like to read.

Um ... yeah. Well, I certainly aspire ...

Sometimes, throwaway lines make you (me) think. Here's one, from the start (about 4:50) of a Google Talks interview thing with an erstwhile Tibetan monk who seems now to be in the business of ... talking to small crowds of people like the Googlers, which is not a bad thing, something he says one of his teachers told him:

... unless you can improve on silence, it's better not to say anything at all.

I can hear everyone I work with nodding with cocked eyebrows, of course, but that's not the important part.

Nerd food

This isn't for everybody, but I hugely enjoyed it, and I think some of you will, too:

The never-ending conundrums of classical physics
Even today, scientists still try to solve sprinkler brain teasers from the 19th century.

I remember having a discussion with several other bright undergrads, our TA, and one of the physics profs about the sprinkler problem (we were all reading Feynman at the time), and we came to ... no conclusion. (I managed to end the discussion by speculating that the sprinkler would move chaotically, which, while incorrect, at least had the advantage of being a proposal no one else had made.)

I also remember the feeling I had at about the same time -- a few weeks into my Intro to Modern Physics course -- that the message of the course was everything you have previously learned about physics is wrong.

As with most things, it turned out to be not quite that simple.

John McWhorter: "Txtng is killing language. JK!!!"

(alt. video and audio links)

​

I thought this fifteen-minute TED talk was great. I especially liked the bit about the earliest of the language scolds.

I agree with McWhorter's general argument, and have since reading Lewis Thomas (e.g.), but he made a number of points I hadn't thought of, and I liked the little tastes of professional linguistic discussion he added.

(h/t: Jack, via email)

Yazwho!

Congratulations, Mr. Jeter.

If there were ever a number you'd think no one would underestimate ...

“I didn’t know there were that many lesbians in San Francisco,” said Tracey Kaplan, 26, a vendor manager for Google Enterprises who was in attendance.

In the same story, how's this for a name for someone representing the progressive side of the issue?

“We’re starting some good conversations,” said Ms. Neaderthal ...

Welp, we might as well try a little psywar

During a bank robbery ...

Once inside, the robbers cracked one of the two vaults and stole the $290k. The other vault, the Post reported, contained more money.

That'd be the Post's "unnamed source," which I'd wager was from the police. Or the bank.

Line of the Day: 2014-07-08

Anyone got a Thomas Aquinas facepalm gif?
    -- Roy Edroso

Thought balloon

OMG. NOBODY TOLD ME THERE WOULD BE CAMERAS.

</Timmy>

Guest artist

A sequence of comic strips: one | two | three | four | five.

Back story.

(h/t: John McQuaid)

Such a good new word!

Ammosexual.

First seen on the Raw Story Tumblr, h/t TBogg.

Google says about 44,900 results at this moment. Google Trends says, "Not enough search volume to show graphs."

Yet.

Lines of the Day: 2014-05-28

A couple of passages from a great and horrifying book I just finished, Patrick McGuinness's The Last Hundred Days, a novel set in Romania at the end of the Ceaușescu regime.

... I grew to hate, and it energised me. But I couldn’t make a life out of it, or not a life that was my own. So I discovered forgiveness, and the secret malice of it: people forgive not out of grandeur of spirit but as a way of freeing themselves. The forgiver always floats free, the forgiven slides a little further down the soft shute to hell. Maybe that’s why so many religions use forgiveness as a secret weapon.

__________

‘Ah, Monsieur Midwinter? Gilbert, isn’t it?’ Ozeray loomed up between us and closed his fingers around Wintersmith’s hand.

‘Er… Wintersmith, Giles.’ The Belgian had him in a diplomatic half-nelson.

‘Ah yes, quite so. I could not help overhearing your wise analysis. I remember when I was just beginning my diplomatic career.’ Ozeray paused and closed his eyes, inviting us to join him in a prehistory where diplomats and dinosaurs roamed the same mirrored banqueting halls, ‘my mentor, Baron Henri Nivarlais, – a great diplomat – oversaw fifty years of the most radical change the world has known without batting an eyelid – the Baron, he said to me: “Young man, in diplomacy there are two kinds of problem: small ones and large ones. The small ones will go away by themselves, and the large ones you will not be able to do anything about. The biggest challenges in your career will come from the temptation to act. The test of your mettle will be how nobly you surmount it.” Very fine advice, Mr Midwinter, do you agree?’

On this Memorial Day, I would like everyone in the blogosphere to ...

... spend a few moments reflecting on Doghouse Riley.

I've never come close to being able to write a proper send-off (see Roy (and pretty much all of his commenters) for something I endorse), so I can only offer a quick search around this place for a few of the things that struck me, over the years.

Mr. Riley had some words about Memorial Day, from time to time, if you'd rather start there.

Line of the Day: 2014-05-18

And an especially apt name.

“Americans,” Mr. Worthy said, “have a right to know what’s going on in the world in their name.”

Anyone have Dennis Lehane's email address?

Also, please forge the From: field to read "Jeff Bezos."

[ + ]

(text source: Moonlight Mile)

Line of the Day: 2014-05-06

Oh, sorry — I forgot that I wasn’t writing jokes for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
    -- Paul Krugman

A somewhat alarming piece of litter

When fully zoomed in, at least.

[ + ]

Wallflowers

[ + ]

[ + ]

We got better

[ + ]

(previously)

Rough night

[ + ]

[Update: follow-up]

Line of the Day: 2014-04-05

Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.
    -- Robert Bloch

Line of the Day: 2014-03-24

But he talks, a lot. It is a wind concerto played entirely on dog whistles ...
    -- Adam Weinstein, describing Michael Hill, in "Inside the
    American Id: Chilling With the South’s New Secessionists"

Hard times at the checkout line

Got a fairly gushing compliment from a customer today.

On the ... uniformity, I think she meant ... of my "salt and pepper hair."

Might have hurt a little less had she been, say, fifteen years younger than me.

Ah, no. Probably not that, either.

Let us all describe him thus, forevermore

Bill Donohue, the president and probably sole member of the Catholic League, ...

That was from Dok Zoom's Weekly Derp Roundup. Item seven. Although how anyone will make it that far after first finding our how outraged we need to be at Honey Maid graham crackers, I have no idea.

[Added] Follow-up on the horror, the horror, that the PaPSM narrowly avoided.

Line of the Day: 2014-03-11

Still, I guess this ["hunger=dignity speech"] is a further nail in the coffin of [Paul] Ryan’s reputation as Serious, Honest Conservative. But I am of course a shrill bad guy, because I was guilty of premature anti-Ryanism — you weren’t supposed to figure out that he was a con man until 2011 or 2012.
    -- Paul Krugman

(previously in shrill)

[Added] More debunking of Ryan's speech from Jon Stewart, et al.

Line of the Day: 2014-03-04

If we are going to decide big issues, like eating genetically modified food, fracking for natural gas, responding to the prospect of drastic climate change, exploring space or engaging in ambitious science research, we are going to have to start from some common experience.

As Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the longtime senator from New York, once said, everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts. So where are we going to get them?

In science, as in other areas of our culture, there is no dearth of voices, but are we paying attention? In the new New Age, it’s all about which cable channels you watch or whom you follow on Twitter.

We could use a national conversation that is not about scandal or sports. If everybody watches the new “Cosmos,” we can talk about it the way we once argued about “The Sopranos” every Monday morning.

And perhaps that will happen. The early reviews of the series are glowing, and an adoring profile of Dr. Tyson recently appeared in The New Yorker. And we are not talking about tweedy PBS here; the show will be on Fox, home of “24” and “American Idol.”

It’s hard to imagine a better man to reboot the cosmos than Neil deGrasse Tyson.
    -- Dennis Overbye

Things that make your shoulder creak

A caption from an (otherwise) enjoyable report from someplace in spring training:

The Rockies’ LaTroy Hawkins, left, is the longest-tenured player, debuting in April 1995.

Come on. That's like, what, nine years ago?

</senior moment>

Not even making this up

Or, typo of the day.

Jason Collins' jersey skyrockets to No. 1 on sales list

Happy headline! But then, an opening sentence. A lede, if you will.

Jason Collins' signing with the Brooklyn Nets as the fist openly gay professional athlete has been described as ...

ARRRRRR, CBS Sports.

(h/t: Lisa Needham)

Line of the Day: 2014-02-25

A Goldman spokesman, after being told that @GSElevator had been unmasked, said in a statement, “We are pleased to report that the official ban on talking in elevators will be lifted effective immediately.”

Who knew a PR flack for a firm like that could make a joke in public?

(source | @GSElevator)

An animated puzzle

Swiped from Jake VanderPlas:

"... an impressively well-adapted resident of New York City."

The flying squirrel (Glaucomys volans) does not actually fly — it glides. When a squirrel leaps from its perch in a tall tree, it spreads its limbs, stretching out its two patagia (thick, furred membranes that extend from its wrists to its ankles). In this way, a squirrel less than 10 inches long (including a tail almost half that length) can, in a single bound, cover 150 feet or more, gliding through the treetops effortlessly.

Emph. added.

(source | more)

What?

Also, I was shocked, shocked that Facebook offered no obvious way to report a misleading ad.

Oh, let's just throw this line in at the end

Apparently, there is a gas cloud that about to be sucked into the black hole at the center of our galaxy. (Well, it happened 26,000 years ago, but we're just about to see what ... will have happened?) This gas cloud is expected to form (to have formed) a halo around the black hole.

And?

Deviations from the predicted shape of the halo would indicate that Einstein’s theory of gravity needs revision.

That would seriously be something.

No room at the inn?

Never fails to amaze me how pedestrian are the concerns of people who see themselves as among The Chosen of a deity they claim is so powerful he transcends time and space.

I mean, loaves and fishes, anybody? And that wasn't even the real Messiah!

(h/t and post title: TC)

Smells like SOCIALMALISM!!!1!

And that smells gooooood.

Go, Liz Warren.

Shyster, please

Check out the big standard on Steve!

The question is, Are we prepared to say as lawyers that a man who is no longer considered moral enough to be a journalist is moral enough to be a lawyer?

In fairness, Steve is described as "Stephen Gillers, a law professor of legal ethics at New York University." So maybe, you know, ivory tower, and so forth.

Yes, we can all wail about the partisan divide

And sure, it's easy to agree that primaries for Congressional seats tend to be dominated by small groups of activists, and that this can lead to outcomes like Senator Ted Cruz. This is the dark side of that Margaret Mead line.

But if your best supporting example is that in a state without a "sore loser" law, Joe Lieberman was nonetheless able to get reelected after losing in the primary . . .

Well, I will just say that your argument is unpersuasive, Mickey Edwards, and so here is a cat riding a Roomba, wearing a shark costume, chasing a duck.

(alt. video link)

The problem is not extremists getting elected, because of the primary process. The problem is Republican extremists getting elected, and that is something the GOP is going to have to figure out for itself. Meanwhile, as you do point out, you can hold up Christine O'Donnell as a counterexample to Ted Cruz -- come the general election, democracy sometimes works.

Also, points to you, sir, for this:

For one thing, the political “center” is not always the right place to be (it certainly wasn’t in the pursuit of civil rights and women’s rights, or on issues like slavery and child labor). Compassion toward candidates who find their political prospects cut short is also of little interest to me.

Follow-up to earlier tweet

Shortly after posting this ...

Reminder: taxes pay for charter schools. But we get less oversight. Thus: a big win for Texas edumacation! http://t.co/br9oUZreSg #wingnuts

— bjkeefe (@bjkeefe) January 19, 2014

... I happened across Dok Zoom's latest "Sundays with the Christianists." In a change of pace, this week he has published some emails from readers who were "educated" with the sorts of textbooks he usually reviews in that space. Definitely worth a read, if only to lament how many children don't recover from the early brainwashing.

A very fine photo

Go see what M. Bouffant took.

And after some moments of examination of the embedded pic, don't fail to click it for a bigger version.

(This is far from the first very fine photo appearing on that blog, by the way. But for whatever reason, this one really spoke to me.)

Help stomp out robocalls [updated]

(Update at bottom of post.)

TC sent along an article about a free service called Nomorobo that claims to block robocalls. He wondered how it worked: "If you're not bundled with everything together, how is your computer going to answer your phone when it rings? There's no connection between the two as far as I can see."

So I looked into it a bit, and I figured I'd post (a mildly edited version of) my reply to him, since it seems like potentially useful information.

MORE »

Well, if I count all of the different brands of leftover shampoo ...

I turned 66 last week and started worrying that maybe I really was getting older, but whenever that sort of thing happens I hold my head erect and whistle a happy tune.

Just messing with you.

What I did, actually, was walk into my bathroom and take the Wadler Sure Fire Accurate Aging Test, which I hope to be marketing soon. It goes like this: You count up the number of hair products you own, then you count up the number of digestive aids, and if the hair products are in the lead, you are still young. (I understand this test may not work as well for men; I’m open to suggestions.)

I do not actually own any digestive aids (I buy bourbon and cognac for other reasons, although admittedly they do tend to settle the stomach), so I guess I'm still infinitely young, amirite, Joyce Wadler?

__________

Also, I call men get to count razors and shaving cream as hair care products, especially if they're opting to Be Like Mike.

(pic. source)

lolzebras

-- or --
Had Photoshop been around when Gary Larson was a boy ...

(Swiped from Christian Heilmann)

*snicker*

Dhananjay had posted his problem on StackOverflow and promptly got an answer that wasn’t really solving or explaining the issue, but at least linked to W3Schools to make matters worse ...
    -- Christian Heilmann

Bad day for the snarkosphere

Looks like we won't have Liz Cheney to kick around anymore.

Good riddance.

[Added] TBogg is already in mourning.

[Added2] Yr Wonkettes, also.

"... a subject in which popular beliefs often do not reflect scientific evidence."

I've had this same thought myself:

Some compare the hostility to G.M.O.s to the rejection of climate-change science, except with liberal opponents instead of conservative ones.

And I've shared this despair:

Popular opinion masqueraded convincingly as science, and the science itself was hard to grasp. People who spoke as experts lacked credentials, and G.M.O. critics discounted those with credentials as being pawns of biotechnology companies.

A longish article, which I have not yet finished, but which I do wish to share based on the opening paragraphs: "A Lonely Quest for Facts on Genetically Modified Crops."

Related: if you're still not persuaded to be a bit more open-minded about GMO food, how do you feel about modifying a plant so that it produces more low-carbon biofuel?