antispew

First, you are talking about herbicides, not pesticides.

Secondly, GM opposition is a very odd thing. Every carton of milk I buy has a little sticker that it comes from non-GM cows, Every one of those stickers is a lie. We have selectively bred cattle for hundreds of years to build the modern dairy cow with specific genetics. It's been very scientifically done for a long time.

Third, the real issue here is not GM. It is IP. (I know Stallman would bristle at generically lumping it all under IP). But this new idea that one party can own a seed and just license it to others for planting is crazy. The idea that they can contaminate other crops and then claim ownership of those crops, too? Crazy.

Farmers cannot fight Monsanto. That is suicide.

Let's say you sue for an entire year's worth of crops and you win. Then you win the appeal. And you win the appeal of the appeal. All the way up the chain. For 10 years, you win on every level.

But you never plant another crop and you go out of business. At this point, Monsanto owns the world of agriculture. If you are planting something that is not owned by Monsanto, you are losing. Monsanta-engineered crops have such a higher yield that to plant anything else would wipe out your profit margin. The higher yield is magnified by the fact that non-Monsanto crops planted anywhere near Monsanto crops are dying from Monsanto herbicides.

It's simple math. No farmer can survive 10 years of losses due to inferior production. The giants like ADP won't go after Monsanto because they have not been affected. They are already using Monsanto seed. Young independents won't go after Monsanto because the only way they can compete against the ADPs is to use Monsanto.

So you have a few handfuls of old farmers who are ready to retire and have no family who want to carry on. They are going to sell out to some cookie-cutter subdivision developer anyway, so maybe they could be enticed into an otherwise suicidal court case. Or maybe they don't have the energy for it.

Those who win (iffy at best) will not win a real windfall. No court is going to give Monsanto a death sentence. And the farmers will have a hardtime arguing too much harm when they still got 50% of their crop harvested and made $millions$ by selling the land. Mansanto can absorb a million dollar settlement here and there.

If I'm Monsanto, I'm not worried.

If I'm a no-holds-barred in-it-for-the-buck securities advisor, I'd say "buy Monsanto." I might also say, "short Whole Foods" because their supply is dwindling and their prices have to go up. If I'm a save-the-world stop-injustice activist, I'm looking for new sources of significant capital to stem the tide. And I'll keep fighting on because it was a dim prospect from the beginning anyway.

Surely you meant "The only person I know to regularly write large programs in the present-day..."

Writing code with pencil and paper was a normal undertaking well into the 80s. The alternative required either unreasonable hours at a console for days on end or an unreasonable number of unproductive hours each day.

This is often referred to as "spewing." It is common for contestants to ask a judge about the judge's preferences before they actually begin the debate. Some will specifically ask about the judge's attitude regarding spewing.

It is also very common for debates to be judged by people who are very inexperienced in debate. A single weekend tournament can involve hundreds of rounds of debate, many dozens happening simultaneously. So a tournament can require several dozen judges. These judges are often volunteers recruited by the hosting school. They could be parents, teachers, janitors, the lunch lady, bus drivers, you name it. In such situations, the judges might get a 5 minute overview of what they are supposed to know, then they are handed a ballot that is "self-explanatory" (not).

If you spew to a judge like that, their eyes will glaze over and they will mark you down. But even if they don't, spewing won't help you because the judges don't know how to "flow" a debate to track all the arguments made, countered, etc. And they don't know they are supposed to reward non-rebutted arguments anyway.

So, spewing is really only a valuable technique when you are in front of a judge you know to be competent. This is a minority of all debates. So you have to be prepared to go at a normal speed, which requires a completely different strategy. And you will use those strategies so much more often that they become your bread and butter.

Unless you play on the national circuit. Then you can expect sharp judges.