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Sep

09
2010

First Update In Forever
Posted in Poker | View Comments (62)

All my loyal followers know I don't blog when I am not doing well in poker and that is the reason for the lack of updates. I'm trying to figure out how to win at rush poker and it's going pretty marginally.

On to more important stuff...

I have watched a couple documentaries recently on food and corporations and what I learned was pretty disturbing. I will just bullet point some stuff that has been done or is currently being done according to what I have watched.

* This corp called Monsanto has patented corn and soy bean seeds making it illegal for farmers to save seeds. Farmers could use other seeds that are not patented but if their field is contaminated by Monsanto seed they have to pay fees for it. Pretty big issue when 90% of farmers use this seed and all it takes is a little wind from a nearby farm to get contamination.

* Monsanto genetically modifies their seeds. When modifying seeds they use viruses to get the new gene to integrate itself into the receiving cell. They have also spliced on antibiotics. The latest thing Monsanto has done with seeds is to genetically engineer suicide seeds. These plants produce seeds that will not grow after one crop so you have to re buy seeds and are unable to save your own seed. In america it means this company owns this type of food from the seed to the store. In developing countries there is a potential for famine or at least global enslavement to an American company that has successfully patented life.

* High level employees from this company routinely flip back and forth from working there to appointments in the supreme court (Clarence Thomas),the EPA, and other agencies that are charged to regulate the industry they are so deeply entrenched in. After they serve in the government role they flip back to the company for a high paid job that is there waiting for them. This is largely why there is no regulation whatsoever in this industry.

Away from the seed industry there are other pretty weird things corporations do. Here are a couple that come to mind although there are other examples.

* Coke could not be seen selling beverages to Nazis so they created Fanta Orange soda in order to keep making profits from the millions of people over there and maintain their company image here.

* Killing all those Jews was a logistical nightmare. There were no computers but there was the IBM punch card system. IBM is partially responsible for enabling the efficiency of the Nazi killing machine and they got paid after the war was over.

If someone knows more about this or thinks any of these points are wrong please let me know. I am not saying they are right, just what I learned watching a couple documentaries.

the docs:

Food Inc

The Corp

Comments 62

Comments

09-09-2010

IcarusJam

sounds so sad i don't want it to be true

09-09-2010

thisbetom

Food inc was worth the watch.

09-09-2010

LT22

If 90% of farmers are using Monsanto (which I would guess is accurate based on what I know as an Iowan), then only the 10% have to worry about it. Of those 10%, how many are actually going to have seed in their field? Very few. Of those very few, how many are going to get attacked by Monsanto? Very few. Very few of very few=relatively none

In other news, I sucked out on you preflop while messing around tilted at NL50 rush. I can haz your all-in EV

09-09-2010

Probability

Hey LT, I would suggest taking a look at the Doc food inc. I believe your view to be wrong and uninformed but I don't have the knowledge or energy to debate it. Sigh. I guess I will say a couple things..

* If everyone uses seed from one company and is unable to plant anything without infringing on patents then it's not something that only those people have to worry about but something we all have to worry about.

* It's not only 10% because the other 90% are super happy working with Monsanto but rather because they were forced into this arrangement through litigation and strong arm tactics.

* All farmers are being attacked by Monsanto. They have 75 people that roam around and do random tests to see if non Monsanto farmers have "contamination" as well as a hotline so people can call and provide tips.

I would challenge you to watch food inc or another doc of your choice on the subject and still take the side of the argument you have chosen. It is absolutely criminal what this company is doing and it's absolutely amazing how few people know whats going on.

If you are the guy that called the shove with JK then screw you.

09-10-2010

aejones

That's a loose-passive usage of 'forever.'

09-10-2010

Laser Show

Sounds about right. The older you get, if you are paying any attention at all, reality is pretty disturbing.

That's why I think if you bypass college you are actually doing alright and maybe better off as a whole (fyi, I'm a graduate). Some guys really sweat this decision but a lot of pretty lies get planted in your head about fairness and equality and idealism that will just hold you back if you think the world at large is operating on those principles. When money or power are at stake, you just have to assume whoever has gravitated towards the positions of key decision making is a total bastard.

Now I'm gonna go throw a puppy in the river.

09-10-2010

klink-

Monsanto gets terrible press and most of it is b.s. crap that is exacerbated by extremely biased organizations, and its also a bit pretentious of you to make such bold statements after watching a documentary and not actually reading any of the scientific literature on the issue (and no monsantosucks.com does not count as scientific literature).

there are a couple of huge factors you forget:

1. genetically modified crops upsides by far outweigh the downsides and its not a close discussion. Crops can me engineered to be more nutritious, be less susceptible to damage from weather, incests and other harmful factors that could greatly limit output. There have even been cases of modifying crops to produce certain antibodies and nutrients that some people are really need. Also it doesn't really matter what random interests groups or documentary's say, you can always just look to empirical evidence that shows advances in agricultural technology increases output. Obviously this process isn't going to be perfect, but a company like Monsanto has done far greater good than evil when it comes to the agriculture industry. With Monsanto specifically, i actually worked there over the summer in high school and know great deal about the R&D programs but ill talk about this later...

09-10-2010

klink-

2. The whole patent argument is silly, at the end of the day Monsanto is a business and needs to protect its initial investments. The same is true for certain industries like the pharmaceutical industry, the video game industry etc. I don't get why people have some unfounded assumption that there is 0 money that goes into R&D and that companies are just greedy. A company like Monsanto spends millions of dollars of research, development and additional tests to make sure their product is ready which includes initial research and development, getting through fda trails, etc. Not only is this process extremely costly and time consuming, but a large majority of projects they have never make it past stage 1 or 2 of development and even more or rejected in the future due to safety tests, fda regulations etc. So for every 1000 initial research ideas, only a couple actually make it to the market for consumers.

Now that you know this, its obvious that Monsanto has to protect their investments. Why would it allow others to use the technology that undercuts their overall profit? Getting angry at Monsanto for hunting down farmers using their technology is like getting angry at the Sony for tracking down people selling pirate copies of movies and music. The entire concept of suicide seeds is the exact same as the reasons Leggopoker.com uses DRM to protect their videos

09-10-2010

klink-

3. i have no idea where you get some of this info but i think a lot of it is pretty incorrect.

"Pretty big issue when 90% of farmers use this seed and all it takes is a little wind from a nearby farm to get contamination."

first the link that you put up cites random newspaper sources pre 2000 and technology and the industry have changed a lot since then. Regardless, even if those claims are still correct, there is no reason that "a little wind" could contaminate an entire crop. Seeds aren't parasitic, they develop into a single organism, so if a "contaminated" seed fell into a crop of say 10,000 normal seeds, it wouldn't contaminate the entire crop, but there would be 10000 normal plants and 1 contaminated one, which is impossible identify on random field tests. In fact, the only way that contamination shows up on field tests are if there are large amounts of these seeds placed onto a field which is more likely from illegal activity than from pure coincidence.

"In america it means this company owns this type of food from the seed to the store. In developing countries there is a potential for famine or at least global enslavement to an American company that has successfully patented life."

If would only be true if Monsanto had a monopoly on the industry and ill talk about this a bit more later, but there is nothing that prevents anyone in the world from reverting back to their previous cycles of crops or seeds from another manufacturer. The reason that they don't is because Monsanto's seeds are clearly better.

09-10-2010

K_Man

I think we're in for one emotional blog when Probability gets around to watching 'The Cove'.

09-10-2010

klink-

"After they serve in the government role they flip back to the company for a high paid job that is there waiting for them. This is largely why there is no regulation whatsoever in this industry."

This sounds like pretty unfounded conspircy theory, you should read this publication about the history of regulation by the USDOA before saying that there is "no regulation whatsoever", http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aib786/aib786.pdf ... basically this industry is probably one of the most highly regulated in the united states.

"* It's not only 10% because the other 90% are super happy working with Monsanto but rather because they were forced into this arrangement through litigation and strong arm tactics."

another pretty big lol, can you cite anything that people are being forced to use these crops. They probably use them because they are the best in the market, and if they don't, they won't be able to keep up in a free market system. Its really basic economics here, there is no way any of these farmers would rather use worse seeds than they have right now.

In general, its cool that stuff like this interests you, but there is obviously a lot of random stuff out on the internet that isn't always accurate. I suggest you try to find some non baised sources (university and scholarly studies, government and ngo studies) so you get a much more unbiased set of information to base your views off of rather than jumping on the bandwagon after watching a movie.

09-10-2010

preflopjitters

For more scary insight into the food industry, check out The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan. Some of it is very hopeful. Some of it is downright scary.

Everything Monsanto does with seeds is only a small part of their business. There is much, much more.

@LT: If the 10% of farmers using non Monsanto seed are surrounded by Monsanto seed using farms, then they are more likely to get Monsanto seed blown into their crops. They will all get attacked by Monsanto eventually because Monsanto is in the business of controlling seeds, among other things.

09-10-2010

Probability
Updated 09-10-2010 at 03:35 AM by Probability

deleted due to retardedness

09-10-2010

Mr Papagiorgio

That is NOT corn that you can EAT... It's for getting cows fat before slaughter and for corn syrup,

Check out a movie called -King Corn- Its a cool doc about 2 guys that plant a field of corn and follow it through the steps of being seeds, to comprising the majority of their hair composition.

My memory is that there was not a lot of "conspiracy theory" type stuff. Just a simple warning to cut out soda and pay attention to the food your ingesting.

09-10-2010

jupiter

Quote:

Monsanto gets terrible press and most of it is b.s. crap that is exacerbated by extremely biased organizations,

Ahh, let the fountain of impartiality gush forth.

Quote:

its also a bit pretentious of you to make such bold statements after watching a documentary and not actually reading any of the scientific literature on the issue (and no monsantosucks.com does not count as scientific literature).

BLOG POST

09-10-2010

mattmoe

GMO is anything but safe . If you search the scientific data (other then what Monsanto told you to look for) you will find that the data shows that gmo's highly effect every species that it surrounds.

For one , pesticide are increased on gmo crops. Pesticide are not good for anyone. Gmo's has also shown to create tumor's , steralization , toxic reaction in the digestion tracts, liver damage , immune reactions and can cause allergies and many more health effects .

why would they be lobying for years to make sure that no products are labbeled to say if its made by gmo's ? why not tell the population ?

why in europe consumers are demanding the right to be informed whether food they have consumed had been genetically modified?

50% of us and canadian citizen are against GMO's

Im very happy to see this blog posted . thanks probability for having the courage to blog about something that concerns you and wanting to share .

Its time we get active and more aware of the corporate institution and there impact on are daily live's.

This is a great start , and I hope people continue to look and keep there eye's open.

09-10-2010

mattmoe

I mean really .... the fact alone saying that they have the intellectual property rights of a seed is out right ridiculous and extremely scary.

09-10-2010

mattmoe

oh and having one company having control over the majority of are food is something else we should be concern about .

heh .... really tho ? corporation have been working in are interest ? they've been looking out for us ? Can someone please tell me one corporation that is not taking advantage of us and who is working in are best interest ?

I mean shit , let them continue indenting are countries and stealing are money . why not ? I think I will just give all my money to Goldman sachs right now :P

09-10-2010

hobiejuan1
Updated 09-10-2010 at 02:44 PM by hobiejuan1

LOL. Is this serious? Do people really think legal entities are taking over the world? Trust me there's a lot bigger things to worry about than Monsanto or any other corp. Jesus learn the difference between "are" and "our"

09-10-2010

mattmoe

did we say taking over the world ? are you serious ?

09-10-2010

IcarusJam

the sky is falling

09-10-2010

preflopjitters

I have a lot to say about this, here it is in bite sized chunks

Genetics and Business

I don't think anyone can argue that genetically modified crops exist for higher nutrition. It is all about output. A bigger output sounds great, Monsanto is doing humankind a favor. But really it has more to do with the commercial I saw on TV last night during the football game advertising 20 chicken mcnuggets for $4.99. It may sound trivial or flippant, but the path between Monsanto and other corporations like it and this seemingly great bargain is what is wrong with our food production in the USA. More on that later.

Monsanto is legally well within its right to protect its initial investments. I think protection is a little weak of a term. I think they are aggressively pursuing the largest market share of food production that they possibly can acquire. This is also well within their legal right, and their well paid cadre of lawyers and lobbyists make sure of this. (I think it would be pretty easy to verify that executives from large agribusiness have gone on to serve as agricultral regulators, and then gone back to being agribusiness executives.)Whether this is what is best for the American public's food supply or not is a different matter. Maybe they do spend millions of dollars in research and development, but they are not stupid. They aren't doing this out of charity or a sense of obligation to anyone. They are doing it to make money. Monsanto is a huge corporation and take in billions of dollars a year from interests all over the globe. They can easily employ people to carry out expensive lawsuits to protect their current and future interests. The individual farmers cannot.

09-10-2010

preflopjitters

I think it is safe to say that none of us at leggo poker are crop cross contamination experts. If there are any, please step forward. Individual farmers who do not use Monsanto seeds still end up with Monsanto products in their crops through no action of their own. Let's remember that corn is food, a species, not just a commodity, and it owes its existence to the ability to reproduce in this way. Anyway, it is hard to refute that this has not happened, that farmers who don't purchase Monsanto products end up with Monsanto products in their crops. And they have been taken to court by a big corporation with deep pockets and been involved in lawsuits they can't afford. I think Monsanto can also produce enough "scientific literature" with its own scientists to fend off any public outrage. I mean, just because something is published as science doesn't mean it is impartial. Scientists get work where the funding is.

09-10-2010

preflopjitters

Monoculture and Output

Over the last 60 years American fars have gone from producing a variety of products to producing mainly corn and some soybeans. Why? Because food production has little to do with farming or nature nowadays and more do do with an industrial model. It is more efficient to grow one crop and grow it really well with huge outputs and just manufacture food out of that. Corn is in over half the products you find in your supermarket. It is used in the building materials to construct the supermarket. It is used in the magazines and advertisements enticing you to go to the supermarket. It is used to feed the animals that are then slaughtered and sold to the supermarket. So if you sell the seeds to grow corn and own the copyrights on those seeds, you are in business. Also, you can sell the fertilizer, insecticides and tractors to produce it. You can develop corn that "needs" all of these things to produce a decent crop. Also, you can employ lots of lobbyists to influence public policy to keep corn cheap. Then you can buy corn at a price that is less than the cost to produce it and sell that corn in a variety of forms to the general public. That is what is happening, right or wrong.

All of this is done on an enormous scale because the profits are enormous that way. It is more like a factory than a farm. We are producing more food calories than we know what to do with, and large agribusiness is profiting at every step. As a species, corn is uber successful. It has displaced other species on farms across the United States, and is grown on every conceivable square food of land in these places. Whole food groups have shifted to being dependent on it.

09-10-2010

preflopjitters

Food has been for hundreds and thousands of years a natural product and has been limited by the laws of nature. In the past century we have taken these natural systems (sun-grass-cow) and broken them apart and expanded them to obscene scales. That is how we end up with cows knee deep in their own feces at a CAFO and then slaughter them without even a rinse. What naturally occurs in these types of unnatural situations is a whole lot of disease. And that disease is "controlled" by a lot of hormones, antibiotics, and nutritional supplements

09-10-2010

preflopjitters

The Hidden Costs

So how do we arrive at 20 chicken McNuggets for $4.99 or 99 cent hamburgers, or 20 oz. sodas with free refills? How can that possibly be? Well a large part of it has to do with the cost efficient methodology of producing all of this food. But what is not included in the costs we pay at the counter is the consequence of all of this methodology. First of all there is the pollution that comes from shipping all of this stuff around the country to the point of sale. Add to that the Type II Diabetes that is running rampant in our population from eating these very "affordable" products. Also we shouldn't overlook the direct polution of our environment from the runnoff of petrochemicals used to ensure the incredible output of these crops. The health problems and outright exploitation of workers used to harvest these crops is another key factor. The damage to the ecosystem due to the introduction of pesticides to the environment can't be overlooked. And the energy, the huge amounts of fossil fuels used per calorie of food produced from this industrial process is staggering. That energy is used all along the gamut of production from the manufacture of petrochemicals and insecticides to the shipping of food across the country from one centralized location. These are very real costs that we as a society will be paying for a long long long time. Don't expect large corporations who have profited from this system to pitch in.

09-10-2010

preflopjitters

You are what you eat

Eating is an agricultural act. You can't separate the food you choose to eat from the system that produces it, and you are at the very final stage of that whole process. I have read in many poker players' blogs about how they are trying to eat better for their own personal health by cutting out soda, junk food, etc. What about trying to avoid these foods for the health of your community, your country, even your species? There are a lot of choices to be made as far as what you eat goes. You can choose to eat organically and locally. You can eat minimally processed foods. You can buy directly from the farmer.

References

Here are some books I have read and I would encourage you to read:

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
Farm City by Novella Carpenter
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kinsolver

Here are some sites to check out regarding a different way of looking at food:

www.demeterbta.com
www.slowfood.com

Here is an article I read in the New York Times that started me thinking about all of this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/ma...2policy-t.html

09-10-2010

toocrispy

@preflopjitters

Now I am not a crop contamination expert, but id like to think that I know a good amount about biology and science in general (klink and hemmacuda should as well). As far as I know, corn is a plant and not a virus. Therefore If i plant 1000 normal seeds and 1 genetically modified superseed in a field I will have 1000 normal plants and one "superplant". It doesnt take an expert to figure this out, just someone with a basic knowledge of science

As for the whole "scientists will do whatever their employer tells them" or w/e, you cannot argue with empirical data. Klink was not asking you to have a sit down chat with a scientist, but rather look at some of their research papers and look at the relevant data. You would be hard pressed to find scientists that publish fraudulent data.

Throughout your argument you make a lot of statements without much proof. You say it wouldnt be hard to find agro execs who then went into govt? This may be true, but you should provide some examples of this. You also claim that this whole process is a huge burden on the environment? Provide some scientific proof of this (like maybe a paper that calculates the carbon footprint of an average cornfield?) Without this proof your argument is similar to a middle school child rambling on about something he just saw in a movie

09-10-2010

preflopjitters

There have been several cases of this happening. I am not making this up. Cross contamination was perhaps a bad term as it makes it seem like a virus or something. Read my references and tell me what you think.

Also, here are some links from just a cursory glance on the internet about "crop contamination."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20....contamination
http://farmwars.info/?p=3502
http://www.gmcontaminationregister.org/

Scientists don't just do what they are told. Scientists work on projects that they get funding for and the results of those projects (which are owned by the funder) are either published or not. Anyway, I will let other more qualified people sift through the mountains of data. I am sure Monsanto and Cargill and the others have a whole fleet of scientists that they pay for just this purpose. I think it is really naive to think that sort of thing doesn't happen and all scientists are completely independent

As far as agro execs in govt roles, here is one example:

http://www.organicconsumers.org/arti...icle_18866.cfm

There were 4 or 5 documented in the movie, but I am not going to spend another 90 minutes watching it so I can list them here. Anyway, I watched the movie which is more than you have done, I think.

It is a super easy to say "prove it" without really responding to anyone's ideas or thoughts. That, more than anything else, is like a middle schooler. And let's be serious, no one is going to do the work necessary to "prove" anything in this forum because we are not journalists or scientists.

09-10-2010

toocrispy

@OP

You mention that monsanto genetically modifies their seeds by using viruses and antibiotics (ZOMG!!!!). This is actually the standard procedure in the field of biochemistry for doing such things. No this doesnt mean they are using HIV to alter your corn. A virus is just a vehicle for depositing new DNA into a cell, and a virus can just as easily be "good" as it can be "bad".

So lets say we want to grow corn that is neon green (or whatever). We construct a chunk of DNA that will turn corn neon green, we put it into a virus , and we let this virus infect a culture of corn cells. Now if we have 100k corn cells, only 5k of them might have successfully been infected. So how do we separate them? Well when we were putting our neon green gene into our virus, we can also put an antibiotic in with it for penicillin. Then we can expose our 100k corn cells to bacteria that is known to kill corn cells but also gets killed by penicillin. Our 5k neon green corn cells will fight off this bacteria within the cell, and we will be left with 5k neon green corn cells that can be used to grow neon green corn, all because we used viruses and antibiotics

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Probability

Running Good At Life

Sep 09 2010 First Update In Forever Posted in Poker | View Comments (62)

First Update In Forever

Comments

Sep

09
2010

First Update In Forever
Posted in Poker | View Comments (62)